Lynyrd Skynrd’s Free Bird Sees A Surge Because of Olympics

The Lynyrd Skynyrd song was adopted by the USA Hockey Team for the Winter Olympics. A hockey defenceman had the idea on a long bus ride.

Zeev Buium is scrolling through the music on his phone. Previous U.S. hockey teams had pop hits, classic rock songs, and techno bangers into high-energy goal celebration anthems. Buium said that he and his teammates had discussed trying to find “something less generic, something more meaningful.

Free Bird was a chart-topping 1973 rock anthem by Lynyrd Skynyrd.

“How about ‘Free Bird’?” Buium asked his U.S. teammates on the bus, and his teammates approved.

The U.S. men’s and women’s national teams both adopted Lynyrd Skynyrd's anthem as the song that blasts over the arena loudspeakers whenever they score a goal.

Thirty-three times, the gold-medal-winning U.S. women found the back of the net over the course of seven consecutive victories in Milan. Thirty-three times, American crowds responded by pumping fists, waving flags, chanting U-S-A, and dancing or mimicking playing the guitar in their seats, though the song was barely audible above the din after Megan Keller’s overtime goal lifted the U.S. to gold over Canada.

Free Bird” was the soundtrack to goals from the U.S. men's and women's teams.

“If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?” The opening line of Lynyrd Skynyrd‘s “Free Bird” was inspired by Allen Collins‘ wife, Kathy. Check out the rest of the story by clicking this link

Throughout the Olympics, Spotify saw a huge increase in streams.

Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" played over 878 million times on Spotify. According to Spotify data, the song is one of the band's top hits, with 878,430,996 streams and daily streams consistently exceeding 580,000.