Embrace to Record England’s World Cup Anthem

Precisely why the English Football Association feels the need to have an official anthem for this year’s soccer World Cup is unclear. This is especially true since the last few anthem attempts in previous years were dreadful. This time, the Huddersfield quintet Embrace will record the official tune. At least, the world has been promised “There will be no [Wayne] Rooney rap.”

Singing on the terraces, of course, is half the fun of English soccer (and no, hooliganism isn’t the other half). However, the FA isn’t really interested in that, the spontaneous tribal chanting. What the lords of soccer want is something they can market, a number one with a bullet to wrap up the whole “buy this crap” campaign.

This was the thinking (or what posed for thinking) when they decided to have the Spice Girls and Lightning Seeds do “(How Does It Feel to Be) On Top of the World” for the 1998 Cup. According to a poll done by Littlewoods (the people who do the soccer pools every week-end) this was the most hated anthem done by professional singers. The 1982 English side recorded “This Time We’ll Get It Right” which was worse, but these guys were not singers by trade. Although to be fair, none was as bad as the Chicago Bears of the NFL doing the “Super Bowl Shuffle.”

That’s not to say that an anthem is a bad idea or that an anthem is inherently a bad tune. “World in Motion” by New Order and the 1990 England Squad topped the Littlewoods poll, and could well have made the charts without the soccer tie-in. Lonnie Donegan’s “World Cup Willie,” which can probably still be acquired on eBay, had the merit of being the song during England’s 1966 World Cup Win, and it wasn’t horrible either. And Fat Les’ doing “Jerusalem” worked in 2000.

But that number was already an anthem, if not an official one, of English patriots. It worked because it resonated with all that makes one proud to be English (other than beating the Germans 4-1). It became an anthem; it wasn’t created as one. Maybe the FA should spend more time developing soccer talent in England, and a bit less trying to get on “Top of the Pops.”

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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