What makes fans tick?

Fandom’s remarkable fusing.

Simon Burton-Jones

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

Scottish football fans wearing kilts march down a street singing and waving their arms alogt.

Scotland's Tartan Army of football fans.

"A fat, sarcastic Star Trek fan: you must be a devil with the ladies."

This put down of Comic Book Guy in The Simpsons neatly sums up a prevailing attitude to fans. To be a committed fan is to devote yourself to a niche pastime; to be weird and nerdy and, simply, not cool. At its worst, the fan becomes a fanatic, from which the noun is derived; an obsessive who stalks the object of their passion online and, at its most dangerous, offline.

Times are changing, though, and the internet is chiefly responsible. Where once fans could feel isolated and able only to relate to fellow afficionados slowly via the postal system, now they can find people who share their love in a handful of clicks and build relationships in real time. A lot of anguish is spent on how the internet allows people to find extremist chat rooms where abhorrent behaviour is normalised; less attention is given to the wonder of being able to find fellow lovers online of Massey Ferguson tractors, Australian mullets or Rubik’s Cubes. Many fans feel less alone online, building a new sense of belonging and purpose – a realisation that others will take them seriously.

Yet experienced from the inside, a remarkable bonding is taking place, where fans not only fuse with others, but with the team itself.

In Fans: A Journey into the Psychology of Belonging (Picador, 2024), the academic Michael Bond gives a perceptive and generous insight into the world of fandom. There are Beliebers, Directioners, Trekkers, Swifties, Janeites, Ricardians. For the uninitiated, that’s lovers of Justin Bieber, One Direction, Star Trek, Taylor Swift, Jane Austen, Richard the Third; though strangely one of the biggest bases of all simply goes by the title Star Wars fans. Bond spends some time looking at the phenomenon of Michael Jackson. Professor Gayle Stever has researched the pop star’s fans and found them, like many other fans, to be ‘normal people carrying on normal lives with functioning relationships and jobs, who just had this passion for Michael Jackson’. Despite the discomfort of idolising a celebrity who lived, and died, with serious child abuse allegations made against him, they saw Jackson as ‘the target of racist abuse and unwarranted criticism throughout his career’.

Fans often identify very personally with their idols. Cosplaying conventions allow fans to reinvent themselves and Houston University studies have shown that people can ‘feel less lonely and less anxious in the face of rejection simply by thinking of a favourite TV show’.

But what of football fans? Many find the aggressive tribalism involved hard to accept. I have observed young male fans of London Premier League teams chanting loudly at train stations in a way that made young women nearby shrink away, making me wonder whether my opening line from The Simpsons ought to be re-purposed. The ritualised conduct of football crowds – the fist pumping, jumping and embracing at a goal, the verbal and hand abuse of opposing players and referees, and the chants that defy pre-match announcements about tolerance at games – can look bizarre and scary. Yet experienced from the inside, a remarkable bonding is taking place, where fans not only fuse with others, but with the team itself.

‘... the best of sport is not the earthy moment of victory, but the privilege of watching athletes tilt at divinity.’

Emma John

The deeper the love for a club, the greater the joy and the pain at success and failure. It is a high-risk investment that many stake because it makes them feel so alive. The peerless interpreter of football fandom, Nick Hornby, says that football is a context where watching becomes doing’. Anyone whose leg has involuntarily jerked as a player reaches for the ball will grasp that.

I wonder if some football fans who identify as Christian struggle with the secret reality of uncontrollable mood swings every weekend? Should a win on a football pitch matter that much, when so many things are so much more important? They may aspire to the whimsy of Ecclesiastes (there is a time to win and a time to lose, the author nearly said) but feel the coursing testosterone of Samson instead.

God made us playful, and football is a disarmingly simple game to watch and play. There is also breathtaking beauty in the movements of its finest exponents, like the choreography of Michael Jackson himself. If we are called to life in all its fulness, isn’t this also a part of that fulness (even if some games are a stretch)?

In recent interviews, Nick Hornby has said he couldn’t write Fever Pitch again, his pained love letter to Arsenal FC; middle age has brought a new perspective. Writing in Prospect magazine (May 2024), sports journalist Emma John says: ‘I have observed many of my sports-loving friends follow the same trajectory…the best of sport is not the earthy moment of victory, but the privilege of watching athletes tilt at divinity’.

At least, until the final penalty shoot-out, when for the diehard fan it’s absolutely all about the earthly moment of victory.

Review

Belief

Culture

Music

Race

11 April 2025

5 min read

Annie Caldwell: “My family is my band”

A force of nature voice that comes from the soul.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A family group stand and sit for a photo.

Family album.

The Caldwells.

They say that good things come to those who wait. Annie Caldwell is someone who has experienced the truth of that proverb.

The album she and her siblings (known as the Staples Jr. Singers) made and paid for themselves in 1975 sold only a few hundred copies but, when reissued in 2022, was received as a stone-cold classic and led to the recording of a second album 49 years after the first. Now, her other group, Annie and the Caldwells, have released their major label debut to rave reviews, 30 years after they first began performing.

Annie Brown was 11 when the Staples Jr. Singers was formed in honour of Pops and Mavis Staples of the famed Chicago soul-gospel group, The Staples Singers. The siblings gained popularity at churches and functions throughout the American South and Midwest, being mentored by Mississippi greats like Lee Williams and Spiritual QCs.

Back then, the South was desegregated on paper but not always in practice. Their parents found refuge and support in the church against the backdrop of an unwelcoming town (and nation), while the children found refuge and a greater purpose in life in the music. They were influenced by what they saw - the backlash after desegregation, Civil Rights - and wrote music with messages of community and social justice. “All the songs we were singing about,” said Annie’s brother Edward Brown, “We were going through it.”

The Staples Jr. Singers got to make a single record together, one which, because of its rarity, became coveted by gospel soul collectors: When Do We Get Paid. They paid for the record themselves and pressed a few hundred copies, selling most of them on their front lawn to their neighbours. On its re-release in 2022, The Guardian called their socially conscious gospel album “Powerful,” and UNCUT said that it was “music that deserves your attention.”

As a result, the Staples Jr. Singers finally had their time in the sun, including multiple European tours. Annie spoke then about being able to “do many things that we didn’t get the chance to do in the beginning of life … Because the time and money wasn’t there. It all came late, being in our sixties now—but it looks like it’s just beginning, you know? Life is just beginning for us.” She concluded that: “God has blessed us and opened up doors that we couldn’t even see,” and said that, “If I can help just one person, I know that I’m not singing in vain.”

They play a powerful disco soul and delivering energetic and moving musical testimonies that blend the fiery sounds of gospel with the slow groove of soul.

One warm evening in October 2023, the family gathered in a single-room church in West Point, Mississippi, called The Message Center to record their second album Searching. There, across the street from Annie’s house, they played songs they had written nearly fifty years before and did so together with four generations of their musical family. The original three Staples Jr. Singers, Edward, R.C., and Annie, were joined by some of the new vanguard: Edward’s son Troy on backing vocals, R.C.’s son Gary on bass, and R.C.’s grandson Jaylin on drums. “It was good to be able to go back,” said Annie, “and look back over our life. Some of the same songs that we had sung, those songs have a new meaning to me.”

“The process was very easy,” said producer Ahmed Gallab, who performs as the artist Sinkane. “There’s nothing like a family bond/band. It was so special to watch how locked into each other everyone was. You can hear and feel that on this record.” He concluded: “I feel like I was able to witness part of this family’s continued story and legacy in real time. That was a very special thing to witness.”

Annie and the Caldwells is also a family band, being led by Annie and her husband of the last fifty years Willie Joe Caldwell, Sr. (who plays guitar). Annie says, “My family is my band”: she is backed by their daughters Deborah Caldwell Moore and Anjessica Caldwell and goddaughter Toni Rivers; their eldest son Willie Jr. Caldwell is on the bass and youngest son Abel Aquirius Caldwell is on the drums.

Annie traces the genesis of the band back to the moment she heard her daughters sing at a talent show: “They were really good. I said, ‘Let me get those girls before the devil gets them!’ Because I was raised up in gospel, so I think you should use what the Lord gave you for good. I decided to raise them with the values my father taught me – singing for the Lord.”

They generally play on weekends, so for their day jobs Willie Jr. drives a forklift, Abel Aquirius drives hospital patients, Anjessica works in customer care for an insurance company, Toni is an elementary school teacher, and Deborah does hair. Annie runs a clothing store on Main Street called Caldwell Fashions, which has been a beloved staple for women dressing for COGIC (Church Of God In Christ ) convocations and anniversaries since the 1980s.

Prior to the latest album, they released two albums under Ecko, a renowned soul and gospel label from Memphis. Influenced by The Gap Band, Chaka Kahn, and Bootsy Collins, they play a powerful disco soul and delivering energetic and moving musical testimonies that blend the fiery sounds of gospel with the slow groove of soul. Their music embodies the full power of gospel – the very kind The Message Center, where the family regularly performs, experiences on a weekly basis. The Message Center is also where Joe plays guitar every other Sunday, and where his father used to be a deacon.

Like Searching, Can’t Lose My (Soul) was also recorded at The Message Center and produced by Gallab. He has said of the recording session: “Hearing Annie’s voice for the first time was like witnessing something rare. Like you’re in the presence of a force of nature that’s been here long before you. It’s visceral, almost like it’s coming from her soul. You can feel every part of her life, every little piece of her journey, in each note she hits. It’s pure talent: no effort, no pretense, just real and raw.”

In his five-star review of the album for The Guardian, Alexis Petridis wrote: “These are great, powerful, moving songs, made all the more potent by the fact that they’re recorded live, without an audience, in a church … their message is ultimately one of hope. You don’t need to share the Caldwells’ faith to find something powerful and inspiring in that, particularly given the current climate, which can easily incline you towards hopelessness …”