You'll Never Walk Alone" is a show tune from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel. In the second act of the musical, Nettie Fowler, the cousin of the protagonist Julie Jordan, sings "You'll Never Walk Alone" to comfort and encourage Julie when her husband, Billy Bigelow, the male lead, falls on his knife and dies after a failed robbery attempt. It is repriced in the final scene to encourage a graduation class of which Louise (Billy and Julie's daughter) is a member. The now invisible Billy, who has been granted the chance to return to Earth for one day in order to redeem himself, watches the ceremony and is able to silently motivate the unhappy Louise to join in the song.

The song is also sung at association football clubs around the world, where it is performed by a massed chorus of supporters on match day; this tradition developed at Liverpool FC after the chart success of the 1963 single of the song by the local Liverpool group Gerry and the Pacemakers, and it is considered a theme song of Liverpool FC more so than any other team

Besides the recordings of the song on the Carousel cast albums and the film soundtrack, the song has been recorded by many artists, with notable hit versions made by Roy Hamilton Frank Sinatra, Roy Orbison, Billy Eckstine, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Lee Towers, Judy Garland, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Andy Williams, Glen Campbell, Johnny Maestro and The Brooklyn Bridge, Olivia Newton-John and Doris Day. Progressive rock group Pink Floyd took a recording by the Liverpool Kop choir, and "interpolated" it into their own song, "Fearless", on their 1971 album Meddle.

From 1964 through 2010, Jerry Lewis concluded the annual Jerry Lewis Labor Day MDA Telethon by singing the song. After the end of a concert by the rock band Queen, the audience spontaneously sang this song, according to lead guitarist Brian May,and this helped to inspire the creation of their songs "We Are the Champions" and "We Will Rock You". Italian-American tenor Sergio Franchi sang a notable version accompanied by the Welsh Men's Choir on the 9 June 1968 telecast of The Ed Sullivan Show. He also covered this song in his 1964 RCA Victor album The Exciting Voice of Sergio Franchi.

In 1990 at the Nelson Mandela: An International Tribute for a Free South Africa concert at Wembley Stadium, London, the audience spontaneously broke out into a mass rendition. Mandela turned to Adelaide Tambo who accompanied him onto the stage and asked what the song was. She replied, "A football song".