Tony Britten thought he had seen it all. The man who wrote the Champions League anthem has watched Andrea Bocelli perform his masterpiece and even witnessed Cristiano Ronaldo mouth the iconic chorus before a huge game. But Sam Fender walking out at St James' Park to those familiar strains? That had never happened before.
"That was a first," Britten told ChronicleLive. "Goodness me - that's one to tell the grandchildren!"
Among those in attendance at Fender's gigs last month was Callum Wilson. A remarkable campaign had come to an end and the Newcastle number nine already knew he was now representing a Champions League club.
However, it was only when Wilson heard the anthem on that second night that it truly hit him. "I was like, ‘This is absolutely real,'" he recalled. “I could see how much it meant to everybody in the stadium."
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Understandably so. It has been 20 long years since Newcastle were sat at Europe's top table. Twenty long years since Britten's work last played out at St James'.
"It kind of keeps reinventing itself," Britten said. "When you write something like this, you do whatever you can to make it as good as it can be. The minute you start trying to future proof it, you are probably in trouble.
"Yes, it's derived from a classical piece, but it doesn't have any strong connections to any particular genre of music. It veers towards classical.
"It's timeless - it's always been the same. When you hear pieces of music that are associated with particular sporting events, if they are too much associated with what's current in 2023, you won't be current in 2024."
It is as current as ever on Tyneside, at least. Eddie Howe even received a number of WhatsApp messages with the anthem attached from friends after Newcastle qualified for the Champions League last season.
Bruno Guimaraes, who previously had a taste of the competition with Lyon, has called the music 'very special'. Joelinton could not help but roar "THE CHAMPIONS!" as he gate-crashed Dan Burn's interview after the pair's dream was realised following a goalless draw against Leicester City.
Clearly, the anthem still retains a certain magic more than three decades after it was first recorded by the London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chorus. Why is that?
"Various players have said in interviews and to my face that it's that moment where you know that you've arrived," Britten said. "It's that moment in any sport where you think, 'OK, I can't talk about it anymore. I can't read about it any longer. I've got to do it now.'
"I enjoy that notion. It's nice that the players feel that about the music. I'm glad the Newcastle boys are in that camp. It's a kind of affirmation. Newcastle have had a fairly torrid time of it over the last few years. Good for them."
To think Britten, who was the music director and orchestrator of Guys and Dolls at the National Theatre, had never previously worked in sport before his first foray into this new world. The Crystal Palace fan was in a phase of doing a lot of adverts and jingles at the time when his commercials agent informed him UEFA needed an anthem for the launch of a new competition in 1992.
Following the success of The Three Tenors and Italia '90, UEFA wanted something classical that would reflect the gravitas of the Champions League, which only featured eight teams at the time. The champions, as it were.
Remarkably, Britten's only other brief was that UEFA did not want soloists so the composer sent the governing body a mixtape of choral music, including Zadok the Priest, which was written by George Frideric Handel for the coronation of George II in 1727, to see what they liked.
Sure enough, it was the same rising string phase from the start of Zadok the Priest that gave Britten the inspiration for the anthem's opening. Then there was just the small matter of the lyrics.
"In the early '90s, football was not in a good place," Britten added. "There was a lot of hooliganism - not just in this country but right across Europe. I wanted to restore the beauty in the beautiful game. That was very important for everyone.
"I wrote down a whole host of superlatives: the best, the most exciting, the place to be. I then employed a linguist to literally translate into French and German, which are UEFA's official languages. Then I threw it all into the pot and out it came.
"There was no particular magic, but I managed to express what the football authorities wanted in that this was going to be something special. That has remained. As the competition has got bigger and bigger and more special, the music has grown with it, which is nice, and it's got a hook in 'the champions!' Virtually everyone in the world knows that."
