Chasing Stars

The underdog’s anthem — Rudy in a song.

Chasing Stars is a pop ballad about the people who were never supposed to make it — and who chase the dream anyway. It is the underdog’s song, in the plainest possible language, and it earns every word of it.

It opens with the verdict: “You weren’t the best by far.” Not a put-down, but a starting point. The song follows the dreamers and hopers, “all on the wrong bus, watching pavements pass by” — the ones who hear “no, no it can’t be done” from their fathers, who are told to know their place, and who end up “fixing rich men’s cars.” It is a portrait of working-class dreams deferred, drawn in plain language.

But the song does not stop there. It is, at its heart, the story of Rudy — the 1993 film about Rudy Ruettiger, the undersized dreamer who refused to accept that he wasn’t good enough to play football for Notre Dame. Rudy was never the best by far, either. He kept pushing, one yard at a time, until the dream chased him back. And Chasing Stars follows that same arc: by the final chorus, the fathers are telling their sons a different story — “Ya, ya it can be done” — and the ones who were fixing rich men’s cars are now “chasing stars.” The want, the song says, “is bigger than the Chinese wall. If I keep pushing, then the bricks will fall.” The artwork knows it — the Great Wall of China, under a sky full of stars.

It is a different colour in Franklin McKay’s catalogue — a pop ballad about ambition and belief, written for anyone who has ever been told they weren’t enough. It sits naturally alongside the work of Robbie Williams and S Club 7: melodic, earnest, and built on a chorus that lifts. It’s from the album Awake (2021), and it first appeared on Motleys Anthem (2015).

If you love Robbie Williams or S Club 7, this one’s for you.