The Five Stripes

Lyrics

I remember the first one.
Red, black, gold.
Still smelled of the factory.
We held them up at Bobby Dodd in 2017.
A borrowed house.
Waiting for the real home to open.

Then the concrete dust settled at Mercedes-Benz.
That new turf smell.
Tata Martino drew it on the whiteboard, you know.
Pass and move. Total football.
Here. In the South.
They said it wouldn't take.
They said this was a different kind of town.
But the waiting list was 25,000 names long
before a ball was ever kicked.

And the five stripes blur into one.
A thousand scarves become a river.
Seventy thousand voices become a single roar.
Red, black, and gold in the Georgia night.
We are Atlanta.
This is our house now.

Spike Lee made our home movies.
Put our faces on the halo board.
Made us legends before we'd won a thing.
And we showed up.
July 22, 2018.
72,243 of us against the Galaxy.
A record. A statement.
A promise kept to ourselves.
We filled every seat they gave us.
And asked for more.

And the five stripes blur into one.
A thousand scarves become a river.
Seventy thousand voices become a single roar.
Red, black, and gold in the Georgia night.
We are Atlanta.
This is our house now.

And that night in December 2018...
The cup held high.
The confetti falling through the stadium lights.
It wasn't just a win.
It was the sound of a key turning in a lock
we didn't even know was there.
A city finding a new way to sing its own name.

I still have that first scarf.
Folded in a drawer.
Sometimes I take it out.
Red. Black. Gold.
The beginning.