The Golden decade of the England football song

 

In the Nineties music and football reached a moment of harmony. New Order’s 1990 song `World in Motion` managed to both encapsulate sport and music without being embarrassing to either. It set the standard met by two other similarly inclusive songs ; 1996’s `Three Lions` and 1998’s `Vindaloo`. This trio rescued football songs from the mire in which they had hitherto lurked simply because these are great songs anyway even if you ignore the sport. Back in the Seventies and Eighties football songs largely consisted of a lyric about how the team was going to win the Cup, ironic really that few teams who released such songs managed to achieve that goal. 

 

 

In those grey days, the `singing` was often mostly undertaken by footballers themselves looking awkward in the TOTP studio in jumpers and clearly wishing they were anywhere but there.  `World in Motion` changed all that and remains a gold standard including the masterstroke of getting one of the then England team, John Barnes, to rap on part of it. I say `rap` because it’s not exactly that but it’s a character moment that elevates an already intriguing song that mixes sporting ambition with social behaviour in a way that doesn’t lecture. 

It was definite step up from the standard football song boasting about how good they were. Remember the one where the Scotland squad declared “and we’ll really shake them up when we win the World Cup.” Surely, they knew that was not going to happen. Compared to such stuff `World in Motion, penned by the band plus Keith Allen  carries a message of positivity and co-operation with values like “express yourself” and "never give up”.  It even declares “This ain’t no football song” and all this on top of an infectious tune. Plus, I still laugh any time I see the video with Keith Allen’s expression when Barnes does the line about going round the back.

 Allen was heavily involved in the later `Vindaloo` which grabbed the nettle of racism (always an issue in the game) by linking an Indian meal with Englishness. The lyric is packed with references to English imagery and includes a fantastic line that manages to splice knitting and football together- “knit one, pearl one, drop one, curl one”. All together it’s not quite as clever as `World in Motion` but it does the job and provides both a singalong chorus and a riotous video.

In between these `Three Lions` is the best-known football song and often revived or remixed for subsequent competitions. Rather than seek to amuse (despite being the creation of two comedians) its lyrics focus about how long we’ve waited to win the World Cup yet this time we just actually might. It plays to the patriotism and pride of wearing the England shirt and how the whole nation is behind the team, with the chant “its coming home” being an easy one for large crowds to sing. Updated and re-released regularly the only downside is that the “thirty years of hurt” space is easy to change over time so that soon we can sing “sixty years of hurt”. What the three songs have in common is a sense of community and togetherness only possible because it’s England they are supporting. Club football is something different and very tribal indeed.

It seems that the idea of the national football song means much less now, even to those on the terraces. maybe those singalong choruses, with all their good intent, still played into the cliche of the chanting supporter being a chorus away from starting a fight. Does singing these national songs antagonise other supporters?  After winning the 1966 World Cup, England returned in 1970 with a song called `Back Home`, title alluding to the fact we had the cup and we were gong to bring it back. It reached number one but nobody seems to know the song much now. It was penned by Phil Coulter and Bill Martin, a song writing duo who specialised in up tempo stompalongs like `Congratulations` and `Puppet on a String`. Amazingly it wasn’t till 1982 that England dared try another song called somewhat more modestly `This Time We’ll Get It Right`. After `Three Lions` people went a bit crazy with England’s World Cup songs so you got the likes of Ant and Dec, Ian McCulloch and Embrace having a go. The results were reminiscent of Britain’s attempts to succeed in Eurovision by not really taking it very seriously.

With the Euros now in full play you may be wondering whether we have an official England song and the answer is we don't. In fact it all came to a halt in 2009 when England’s actual manager at the time Fabio Capello, a fan of opera rather than pop, banned the official England song before there even was one. Perhaps he had been haunted by images of sportsmen holding onto their studio headphones for dear life while miming words that were definitely not the proper ones. It’s not just us, most countries no longer have an official song for international football tournaments. Like the rattle and jumpers for goalposts, the England football song is part of history.