Everton’s 2023/24 away kit was launched on Friday and made available to buy online at evertondirect.com.
The video to introduce the coral and navy strip was posted on Club channels at 8am – but it wasn’t the players showing off the new look as Evertonians might have expected.
Instead, the Blues and partners hummel and Fanatics called on acts from Merseyside’s thriving music scene to model the coming campaign’s away design – a remix of two fan favourite kits of the 1990s.
Zuzu, Starkey The Messenger and Megan Wyn all appear in the launch materials for the new strip, alongside Johnny Quinn and Sean McLachlan from band Spinn, whose upbeat ‘Outside of the Blue’ also provides the video’s soundtrack.
The result is a retro tribute to ’90s Liverpool that’s befitting of the kit’s bold and striking style – a contemporary twist on the Club’s popular away offerings from the earliest years of the Premier League era.
Let’s meet the stars of Everton’s 2023/24 away kit reveal…
JOHNNY QUINN AND SEAN MCLACHLAN, SPINN
The front man and lead bassist of Liverpool four-piece Spinn, Johnny Quinn and Sean McLachlan couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be part of the launch.
Avid Evertonians, the pair once worked shifts supervising the car park at Finch Farm “to make ends meet” between touring and recording.
“It’s a very, very proud moment,” said Quinn, who cites The Smiths, The Cure and fellow Evertonians DMA’s as being among the band’s inspirations. “It’s cool enough that they asked us to come down and wear the kit but then we carried on talking and got an email to say ‘Can we use Outside of the Blue on the video?’
“We’ve done loads with music, been all over the place, but I think this is what’s made my family the proudest!”
Outside of the Blue is the title track from Spinn’s second album and Quinn revealed another of their songs features an instrument borrowed from one of his all-time Everton heroes, renowned music aficionado Leighton Baines.
“I don’t know if Leighton knows this,” he explains,“but we were recording in Parr Street Studios and he’d lent his guitar to another musician. They passed it over and we actually played Leighton Baines’ guitar on one of our tracks. So nice one, Bainsey - we appreciate it!"
Find Spinn
Facebook/Instagram/Twitter: @spinn_band
Spotify: Spinn
ZUZU
The multi-talented Zuzu is an Evertonian born and bred - and another who jumped at the chance to model this season’s away strip.
With a sound inspired by artists as diverse as Taylor Swift and Alex Turner (“He taught me to embrace my accent and sing how I speak - that’s always been really important to me as an artist”), the guitar-playing singer songwriter released her debut album Queensway Tunnel in 2021.
She’s currently working on a second album and, like the lads from Spinn, cites Leighton Baines as a childhood Everton hero.
“For so many reasons – the main one being he’s got great taste in music!” she says.
“I was born a Blue - as soon as I opened my eyes, my dad was there to make sure I supported Everton and to be involved in this [launch] is just super exciting.
“I love the kit, love the colours and getting to be part of it all and seeing how the final video has come out… it's surreal."
Find ZuZu
Facebook/Instagram/Twitter: @thisiszuzu
Spotify: ZuZu
YouTube: ZuZuOfficial
STARKEY THE MESSENGER
Having started out solo, Starkey the Messenger’s journey led to him linking up with MC Nelson and Dayzy and becoming one third of Liverpool-based rap collective Black Borough.
Having grown up listening to A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul, Starkey and his bandmates got to live out a dream earlier this year when they supported another of their inspirations, Slum Village.
But what about his Everton heroes?
“I loved Tim Cahill,” Starkey says. “But when I was young I also had a teddy that I named Tony after Tony Hibbert! I was a big fan.
“I’ve been an Everton fan as long as I can remember - and probably before that as well.”
Find Starkey The Messenger
Instagram: @starkeymusic / @blkborough
Spotify: Starkey the Messenger / Black Borough
MEGAN WYN
The outlier of our musical Evertonians in that she is actually from Anglesey in North Wales, that didn’t stop Megan starting early with her love for the Blues.
“The first thing I ever wore was an Everton baby grow,” she says. “That was my dad’s doing. I’m glad he did.”
A singer who used her free time during covid lockdowns to learn guitar, Megan’s sound is an indie rock-pop fusion that has led her on to the stage at the Isle of Wight Festival and to play at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium ahead of Wales’ autumn international rugby match against Georgia last November.
What’s more, she can count her all-time Everton idol among her fans.
“It’s got to be Neville Southall,” she says when asked to identify her favourite former Blue. “He’s Welsh to start off with, and he also likes my music, which is just bizarre for me. He’s a legend, and such a nice guy as well.”
Megan’s new single You Don't Get It is due out on 4 August.
Find Megan Wyn
Instagram/Twitter: @megannwyn
Spotify: Megan Wyn
