Perfect pitch
The reason you can’t stop humming ‘Three Lions’
The jitters kicked in over lunch. It was March 1996, and musician Ian Broudie and comedians Frank Skinner and David Baddiel had been invited by the Football Association to visit the England team at Bisham Abbey in Buckinghamshire.
The purpose? To play the squad the official song that the trio had written for the forthcoming Euro ’96, to be held in England. The song was Three Lions. And, despite the composers’ nerves, within weeks it was at number one.
Now, 22 years later, as England take on Croatia in today’s World Cup semi-final, the song is heading for the number one slot again. According to the Official Charts Company, Three Lions has been streamed 2.6 million times and downloaded 24,000 times since last weekend. Even George Ezra, who is currently number one with his song Shotgun, donned an England shirt and released a video urging fans to buy Three Lions to topple his own composition.
As the momentum behind England has grown, so has the ubiquity of this song. It is bellowed in the streets after every victory, including by many fans who weren’t even born in 1996, and features in social media’s current favourite meme (the internet’s version of a running joke). This involves dubbing the song’s “It’s coming home” chorus over familiar scenes from TV or film – so that Dorothy sings the chant as she skips down the Yellow Brick Road, for example, or Del Boy shouts it to Uncle Albert in a clip from Only Fools and Horses. Along with waistcoats (the sartorial choice of the England manager), Three Lions is undergoing the surprise revival of the summer.
So what makes Three Lions so enduring? And why, two decades later, is it unlikely to be bettered?
The release of an official song by a national football team ahead of a major tournament had been something of a tradition since England’s 1970 World Cup squad – then the world champions – released Back Home. The song, by Puppet on a String writers Bill Martin and Phil Coulter, was at number one for three weeks. But soon the law of diminishing returns, and diminishing performances, kicked in and the football song became a bit of a joke.
In fact, it wasn’t until 1990 that the genre regained some credibility, when New Order wrote World in Motion.a genuinely good song that could be sung on the terraces and danced to in clubs, World in Motion revived the football song and paved the way for ’96.
Three Lions worked for two reasons. Firstly, it was in tune with the cultural zeitgeist. In the blazing hot summer of 1996, Britpop and lad culture were at their zenith. In pairing The Lightning Seeds with Skinner and Baddiel, Three Lions combined both. The Lightning Seeds – effectively a solo vehicle for Broudie – played cheery guitar pop, flecked with a smidgen of melancholy; the perfect blend for long-suffering football fans, while Skinner and Baddiel embodied Britain’s new laddism.
As presenters of TV show Fantasy Football League, the real-life flatmates were poster boys for a new breed of football fan: hooligans no more, football supporters of the mid-nineties were capable of combining wit and intelligence with a love of the terraces and the pub. This mix of music and lad culture crested the previous summer with the Blur vs Oasis chart battle, and would reach a new apotheosis in August 1996, when Oasis played two vast outdoor concerts at Knebworth House.
But Three Lions really resonated – and continues to do so – for a second reason: its biting lyrics. This was the main reason its creators were so nervous in front of the team in 1996. Baddiel knew what was needed as soon as Broudie approached them early that year. “I remember sitting there with Frank, and what we talked about was [the fact that] all the other [football] songs that we grew up with told the lie. And the lie was that we’re going to win,” he recalled.
And so the song started with a huge dose of realism. “Everyone seems to know the score/ They’ve seen it all before/ They’re so sure/ That England’s gonna throw it away.”
Skinner recalled playing it to the squad, unsure about how they’d react. “It was nerveracking. We were having lunch with the players and, when we got to the cheesecake, Gazza couldn’t wait any longer and went to put it on. Fortunately, he was unable to use a cassette player.”
Once they explained the lyrics – that despite the nation’s low expectations, England could actually win – they were on board. But even this clever shunning of “the lie” couldn’t have foreshadowed how badly things started.
When England managed only a 1-1 draw with Switzerland in the opening game on June 8, it seemed that the squad had already thrown things away. But victory over Scotland and then a thumping win over the Netherlands changed England’s course. “But I know they can play,” rang Three Lions.
By now, the song was an anthem. For Broudie, hearing it sung at the Dutch game was unforgettable. “It didn’t feel like my song, it belonged out there, in the country.”
A quarter-final win on penalties over Spain merely increased the nation’s belief that football, and the cup, was actually coming home. Until, that is, the inevitable happened and England faced Germany in the semi-finals. They lost on penalties, just as they had done against West Germany in 1990. The bubble had burst. And the song had gone full circle. England had indeed thrown it all away.
Football songs were never the same after Three Lions, it was such a tough tune to beat. The 1998 World Cup saw England United, a group featuring the Spice Girls, release (How Does It Feel to Be) On Top of the World? Not only was it rotten, but it told “the lie”. England were knocked out before the quarterfinals. It was also overshadowed by a remix of Three Lions and probably the last great football song, Vin-da Loo.
Since then, we’ve had efforts from Embrace, Ant & Dec and Dizzee Rascal and James Corden.
Three Lions worked because it represented the confluence of a number of things: a cracking tune, a cultural movement, national pride, sporting glory (almost), nostalgia and a glorious hot summer. As Paul Rees writes in When We Were Lions, the summer of ’96 was “the summit of a halcyon period in the country’s modern history, both socially and culturally”.
Such moments are rare. Almost as rare as England victories. But as Kane, Maguire, Pickford and co do us proud, and we bask in the tail-end of another heatwave, it’s not too much to believe that, this time, football really could be coming home.
Along with waistcoats, ‘Three Lions’ is undergoing the surprise revival of the summer