Over the past decade of its existence, the Pakistan Super League (PSL) has thrown up a huge number of songs, as each team has issued multiple anthems while the league itself releases a much-anticipated official anthem each season. In fact, such is the volume of output that in the interests of word count, we will only be reviewing the teams’ overall oeuvre rather than individual songs.

For my money, the best songs have come from Peshawar Zalmi. The team with the strongest brand identity since the PSL’s inception has also had a similarly robust approach with its music. While most teams, and the league, have been obsessed with employing aging rockers in their 40s and 50s, Zalmi has consistently featured younger and lesser-known artists, and has experimented with songs in English and Pashto.

Multan Sultans, the newest franchise, somehow managed to make a song with Ataullah Essakhelvi that was quite forgettable. However, their anthem with newer artists Manu and Natasha Noorani was really fun, while they had an absolute banger with QB and Soch.

Soch is one band that has had consistent success with making crowd pleasers, and their greatest achievement might be Rang Jeet Ka, which they made for Islamabad United. Like the city they represent, United are often accused of being a bit boring, and their tagline of #DimaghSe shows that they also lean into their cerebral image. Most of their anthems have been quite forgettable, but Rang Jeet Ka manages to infuse an urgency and emotion to a team which prefers to analytically overpower its opponents.

Quetta Gladiators have tended to punch above their weight with their songs - Kai Kai Quetta with Faakhir was an iconic song that played well into their team’s image. And after a host of boring efforts, they struck gold with DJ Bravo’s We The Gladiators. Bravo, who was already unique in terms of being a star cricketer with a hit song, worked his trademark style into Quetta’s anthem, allowing it to bask in the afterglow of Bravo’s own hits.

While Lahore Qalandars’ record six last-place finishes has often made it the butt of jokes, statistically the worst PSL side in the tournament’s history has been the Karachi Kings. And while the two are unrelated, the unimaginative cringefests that are the team’s anthems feel reflective of its uninspired on-field performances. Most Karachi Kings anthems feel like a hastily made song that unpaid interns worked on. Exceedingly loud and with forgettable lyrics, their videos are choked to death with stars from ARY, the media group that owns the team. ARY’s discount approach pervades everything about the team - from its marketing to its players to its absolutely awful anthems.

Finally, we get to the most insane side of the PSL - the Lahore Qalandars. Despite their hot-and-cold performances, Lahore are arguably the most popular side because of how genuine they are, an idea best expressed in their official anthems. Asrar’s original anthem was a great hit, but even their worst, most unprofessional efforts have struck gold. The video for Bol Qalandar feels like the players were drugged without their consent and forced to dance in front of a green screen, and yet it is one of the most joyous and fun anthems to ever exist. It retains that title over another strong contender, Pappu Yaar. The song’s video had Qalandars dressing all their stars - including the goras - as vaguely rap-rock type stars dancing to Junoon’s iconic song.

But while anthems for teams can occasionally become quite popular, the most attention is always reserved for the league’s official anthem. In the past decade, it has become one of the most prestigious gigs for any Pakistani musician, although it has rarely gone to the most deserving ones. In my mind, the most ideal musician to have sung the PSL anthem is Naseebo Laal, who is arguably the most popular musician in Pakistan overall. Due to her association with stage shows, Naseebo has always been treated with a level of disdain by cultural elites, yet Groove Mera showcased her appeal as it ended up being the second most played PSL anthem on Youtube.

It did significantly better than even its successor, the 2022 anthem sung by Atif Aslam - easily the most successful musician of this era. Over his career, Atif has proven that even if he just read the alphabet out loud, it would probably result in a hit song. As such, Agay Dekh also carries with it the inevitable Atif gold dust, but it didn’t quite reach the heights of Naseebo’s effort.

As with featuring Atif, getting Fawad Khan to end his decade-long sabbatical from music was a big coup for the PSL. For oldies like myself, it was a real pleasure to hear Fawad sing again, and like Atif’s song, it did well in having an instantly recognisable catchphrase in its chorus.

All of these songs featured multiple artists even when it didn’t make sense musically. The forced inclusion of Aima Baig and the superstar rap duo Young Stunners didn’t add much to Naseebo’s Groove Mera. The same could be said of Aima’s efforts with Atif or Young Desi’s inclusion with Fawad, but at least these songs worked better. But for 2020’s Tayyar Hain or 2023’s Sab Sitaray Humaray, the buffet-style approach with multiple artists led to largely forgettable songs.

But you can’t have a discussion on PSL anthems without featuring Ali Zafar. In the aftermath of Meesha Shafi’s harassment accusations against him and his various odious responses to them, I personally have little respect or interest in Ali Zafar. However, having featured on four out of the nine official anthems so far, his presence in this space is unavoidable. But even when restricting our discussion to solely his music, there is a cynicism and a strong sense of the contrived to his work that needs to be called out.

Before that though, it has to be acknowledged that Ali Zafar has made the most successful and popular PSL anthems. His first effort in the inaugural season Ab Khel Ke Dikha was immediately popular while his second Ab Khel Jamay Ga still has the most plays of any PSL anthem on Youtube. He returned for a hattrick of official anthems with Dil Se Jaan Laga De, and was controversially asked to return to perform the official anthem in 2024, the first instance after the harassment allegations against him. In between, he also ran a PR campaign to be rewarded with the 2020 anthem, releasing his own unofficial anthem at the time.

The first thing that becomes clear from just the song titles is Ali Zafar’s repetition of words and themes in these anthems. Indeed, an analysis of the lyrics seems to suggest a very calculated, algorithmic approach to the songs. For example, after using “jam ke khelenge” in the first anthem, the phrase Khel Jamay Ga features in all three of the following anthems. Similarly, “stage sajega” and “seeti bajegi” show up repeatedly in the second and third anthems, while “jeeto ya haaro” repeats in the first two anthems. Moreover, Ali Zafar also seems to be acutely aware of the power of the non-verbal chorus, with every single one of the anthems featuring extended sections of such.

But refreshingly, his fourth anthem showed that music is still art, not a cynical science that can be coded into a hit. On the face of it, Ali Zafar brought back all of the things that had worked before - there are the same lyrical themes, there is a musical refrain referencing the original anthem, there is the return of Aima Baig (inexplicably the most featured artist on PSL anthems after Ali Zafar, despite not having many hits) and there is an almost torturous level of non-verbal choruses, as Ali Zafar descends into infant-level babbling with Hey-Ya-Baba-Baba-Yeh-Ya-baba–babaheyyabababababa at the start.

But as the 2024 PSL progressed, something funny began to happen. The stadium DJ is obligated to play the league’s anthem for important moments in the match, yet increasingly during PSL 9, one could hear another song being played instead of the official Ali Zafar anthem, which the whole crowd would be singing along to. The song in question wasn’t an official PSL anthem or even a sports song, but instead was released by Canadian artist Deep Jandu. Called “Aa,” it featured an incredible cameo by Arif Lohar, who would start all of his lyrics with a shouted “Aa!” Every time it was played in the stadiums for PSL 9, you could hear the whole crowd yell “Aa” along with Arif Lohar. By the end, it had truly supplanted the official anthem as the most beloved song of the tournament.

It was a powerful reminder of the really simple tools a song needs to be popular with sports fans in a stadium. Moreover, it was an equally important lesson in the limits of calculations when it comes to making a hit - just because you reuse the melodies, phrases and gimmicks that worked before doesn’t mean they will do so again. Ali Zafar, whose public persona had long deserved a comeuppance, received a resounding one on the cricket field.

And in that sense, the power of anthems and music in sports is often similar to the power of sports themselves - they retain the capacity to surprise, to inspire, and to subvert expectations. The very best ones take on a life of their own, beyond the purpose they were created for and onto something transcendent. And I hope for your sake that these are the kind of anthems you encounter next time in the stadium, rather than something cynical with a cringe chorus that keeps getting repeated a thousand times per match.