Whether their team wins or loses, March Madness fans have something to look forward to at the end of the season. Every year, the NCAA compiles the tournament's highs and heartbreaks in a video montage set to the iconic basketball tune, “One Shining Moment.”
Over 39 years, the song has become the heartfelt tribute for both players and fans as they reminisce on some of the most memorable moments of the season.
When Ann Arbor musician David Barrett wrote the song in 1986, he never thought it would set out to become the March Madness anthem.
“I played a lot of basketball,” Barrett told Stateside host April Baer. “I was trying to write about things I know about. This was one of them.”
It was a quick write for a song that would go on to be so revered.
From napkins to national TV
Back in the mid 1980s, Barrett was a musician and songwriter trying to make it in the music industry. After playing a gig in East Lansing, he remembers striking up a conversation with a waitress on the poetry of sports.
Even though the waitress was not that into the conversation, it got Barrett thinking. While waiting for a friend for brunch the next day, he ended up writing what would soon become the lyrics of “One Shining Moment” on a bunch of napkins.
“As soon as we got done,” he said. “I went home and wrote [the music] in 20, 30 minutes.”
It took a few years for Barrett to get the courage to send the song to a friend in New York who was working at Sports Illustrated. His friend took the song to CBS and the network bought the exclusive rights to the song.
“It took me 15 minutes to believe that this was CBS calling me out of the blue,” said Barrett. “And then they said, ‘You better get a lawyer, young man.’”
Every year since 1987, "One Shining Moment" has been the music b the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament's annual video montage.
The Song that built a career
When the song was first recorded in 1986, Barrett was the principal singer, but the song has been sung by other artists since then, including Luther Vandross, Ne-Yo and Jennifer Hudson.
To this day Barrett still hears from fans about the ways that his song has influenced them.
Just a few months ago, it was Michigan State University basketball coach Tom Izzo who reminded Barrett of the impact the song has made on him during an NCAA event in Detroit.
“They announced that I was in the crowd and [I] stood up and bowed my head,” Barret recalled. “As soon as they finished, Tom got off the platform and hustled over, put his arm around me and said, ‘You have no idea how much your song means to me.’”
Twenty years after CBS first aired the song, Barrett ran into the waitress whose conversations inspired the song. “She said, ‘I totally get what you [were] talking about. The poetry of writing, the poetry of performing basketball.’”
Barrett has gone on to make music for television, several PBS documentaries, and, most recently, an acoustic album of his own, titled, “Guitar Stories from the Midwest.”
The record came together from moments that he had “collected like seashells,” along with personal reflections on Michigan’s beauty which are woven into the music.
“Grand Haven and the beaches down there are world class,” the songwriter said. “And there’s nothing like a morning on the straits of Mackinac watching the sun come up. All those things collected in this music.”
Still, Barret said, “One Shining Moment” is the highlight of his career. “There’s a lot of songwriting that goes on and, every once in a while, an arrow comes through and hits you and you just have to pay attention."
