Assembly Bangers

The informal phrase ‘assembly bangers’ came into usage in the early 2020s in the United Kingdom to describe a body of hymns and other songs that were widely sung in primary school assemblies in the 1980s and 1990s. The phrase draws on the wider use of ‘banger’ as a slang term, defined in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as ‘an energetic song that is very striking or extraordinary’. The phrase was seemingly coined by British music teacher James B. Partridge, who recorded a series of videos on the TikTok social media platform in 2021 charting his personal ‘Top 40 Assembly Bangers’ as part of his wider efforts to provide material for his pupils during the Covid-19 pandemic. These rapidly became...