Key Change: John Green on "You'll Never Walk Alone."

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Hrishikesh Hirway. This is Key Change, where I talk to fascinating people about the music that changed their lives. My guest today is John Green.

My name's John Green, and I'm a novelist and YouTuber.

John is the award-winning number one best-selling author of books, including Looking for Alaska, The Fault in Our Stars, Turtles All The Way Down, The Anthropocene Reviewed, and Everything Is Tuberculosis. John and his brother, Hank Green, have co-created a lot of projects together, including their massive YouTube channel, Vlogbrothers, and their podcast, Dear Hank and John. John also serves on the board of trustees for the global health nonprofit, Partners in Health. And when I asked John if there was a piece of music that changed his life, he knew the answer right away.

It's a song by Gerry and the Pacemakers called You'll Never Walk Alone, which is a cover of a cover. It's from the musical Carousel, I think. And it's a little bit of a convoluted story how this song came into my life. But, you know, in thinking about your question, have you listened to a song that really changed your life, there are certainly songs that mean more to me than You'll Never Walk Alone.

Hmm.

But there's no song that's changed my life more dramatically.

How do you parse the difference between those two things?

Well, you know, my favorite band is a band called The Mountain Goats. Uh, there are songs by Will Oldham that I really treasure. There are, you know, are songs by Loretta Lynn that I really treasure from my childhood. But You'll Never Walk Alone had this, or has, I guess, this ongoing deep impact on my daily lived experience, which is very weird for me. I mean, I'm not a music guy like you. Like, I don't have the relationship with music that you have, but I do find that certain songs kinda carry me through, and You'll Never Walk Alone is chief among them.

Do you remember the first time that you ever heard it?

Oh, yeah, vividly. So when I was 12 years old, I was a soccer player. I was very bad, but I was very passionate.

[chuckles]

And I worked really hard, but I didn't have any talent. And there was this kid on our middle school soccer team named James who was from England, and this kid was incredible. I mean, he was the best soccer player any of us had ever seen. He was so overwhelmingly the best soccer player on our team. I mean, I don't think we won a single game, but he would score goals from, like, 30 yards away. It was incredible.

[chuckles] Where were you playing soccer when you were on this team?

Oh, in Orlando, Florida, the white-hot center of American cultural life.

[laughs]

And James told us that in England, where he was from, you know, tens of thousands of people would go to soccer games, and they would be arm in arm, and they would sing these songs together, and he told us that the best team in all of England was called Liverpool Football Club. And I believed him. And I remember the first time I ever heard You'll Never Walk Alone, it was on a VHS tape in high school, a VHS tape of an old game between Liverpool and I can't