Riot Games unveiled the 2024 League of Legends World Championship Anthem. It is a new track by Linkin Park, called Heavy is the Crown. A brand new music video was released today on YouTube.
Riot announced that the 2024 Worlds Music Video depicts renowned League of Legends professional player Lee 'Faker' Sanghyeok in the role of a newly crowned king, as he battles a legion of aspiring leaders who arrive at his doorstep. The video tells the story of a warrior who fights to protect a Kingdom under siege. It honors Faker's and T1’s victory at Worlds 2023, while capturing the spirit of League players. It also celebrates London's rich history of dynasties and kingdoms, where the Worlds Finals on November 2, 2020 will take place.
This is what seems to be happening. The ritual of succession is a bit more active in League of Legends than I'm used to as a loyal British citizen: Instead of, y'know "the kid gets to lid," it seems that they just put the crown jewels in the throne, and let whoever comes throw their hands for it. This despite great expenditures of energy amounts to very little, until Faker arrives, pushing his way into massive double doors, in the dramatic manner established by Aragorn in Rohan.
Here's a list of all the pretenders and their teams, courtesy of Riot:
- T1: Faker, Keria, Gumayusi, Zeus, Oner
- G2: Caps
- Flyquest: Massu
- Red Canids: Brance
- BLG: Bin
- GenG: Chovy
Faker is a heavyweight, but "heavy the crown" isn’t just the title of the song. It's a parody of a famous Shakespearean line: "Canst, O partial sleep give thy rest to the wet boy at an hour so rude? And in the calmest, most stillest night with all appliances and methods to boot, deny a king?" Then, happy low, lie down! Uneasy lies a head that wears crown."
Mel Brooks' view on the matter is more appealing to me: It's good being the king, but there's no doubt that someone will come for the king sooner or later. Faker is widely regarded as the greatest esports athlete of all time, with multiple championships under his belt, including the 2023 worlds. The good news is that losing a tournament, while it's bad, doesn't mean your head will be on a pike or your limbs will be scattered to four corners of the universe.
Linkin Park isn't known for their best songs. It's a Linkin Park track, and the response to the song in the YouTube comments seems to be generally positive. But to my ears, it sounds formulaic and phony, as if the band was just going through the motions to get paid. It's not Pop/Stars the 2018 K/DA song that briefly made me a K-Pop lover.
Now , that's an anthem.
The League of Legends 2024 World Championship will begin tomorrow, September 25 and conclude at the O2 Arena London on November 2. You can follow the action at lolesports.com.
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