You don’t need a focus group to appreciate Three Lions
‘In order to really appreciate this song,” explained Sir Keir Starmer on Sunday’s Desert Island Discs, “you had to be in Wembley in the crowd – I was in the upper tier – for the semi-final of Euro 96 when we were playing Germany, and for the whole stadium to be jumping up and down, rocking to this.”
Most of us can’t lay claim to have sung Three Lions, the football anthem first brought to life almost a quarter of a century ago, in quite such as-the-(football) gods-intended circumstances. But that’s no condition to appreciation. That familiar refrain of “It’s coming home, it’s coming home” is silly, hopeful, lyrically rudimentary enough to “know the words” to without actually knowing the words and, crucially, tapping into the wild self-deprecation cum delusion central to our role any time we are on the world stage. Who wouldn’t put it top of their castaway soundtrack?
Cynics, apparently, who have decried Starmer’s selection as being landed upon by a “focus group” so that he would appear sufficiently man-of-thepeople-y.
Without wishing to denigrate Frank Skinner, David Baddiel and the Lightning Seeds’ possible future role in reclaiming the red wall, as a fellow Three Lions- ist, I can well believe that the Labour leader just really, really likes this enduring slice of novelty Britpop.
As the official anthem for England’s hosting of the 1996 European Championships, it reached number one (obviously). Recast two years later as the unofficial track for the country’s World Cup bid, it landed pole chart position for a second time, leaving the Spice Girls – part of the supergroup behind that year’s official bid – languishing in the #9 spot.
Multiple bites of the novelty track cherry make
Three Lions one of only three songs ever to have topped the charts more than once; it has been dubbed the de facto anthem of English football since 1996, in spite of the high-profile releases that have followed.
But that’s the brilliance of Three Lions – it’s not just a football anthem, but anthemic; it’s not the trophy, or the prospect of having to confront our paltry penalty track record, that hits you when the song begins with its building crescendo of crowd cheers. It is that those opening bars (and the track in its entirety) cannot fail to give rise to foot-tapping and head-swaying. (Or, as was the case of a Ninetiesthemed house party I once threw at university, such a sense of euphoria that the contents of the jumping throng’s cups ended up all over the walls.)
There are very few songs that can really lay claim to being such levellers, and Starmer’s other picks – among them Beethoven’s Sixth and Bridge Over Troubled Water by Artists for Grenfell (ft Stormzy), while likely prized ever so slightly higher in the musical oeuvre, don’t. The mainstream may be derided and the cheesy denounced, but sometimes everyone likes something for a reason, and that the very act of united enjoyment makes that thing better still.
Not that Three Lions needs any qualifiers, of course. During the World Cup two years ago it again reached number one, ringing out across streets and pubs and shops for weeks over that hot summer, further cementing its enduring status.
It’s not Beethoven, sure, but 24 years and thrice in the number one spot later, it’s still pretty darn good. follow Charlotte Lytton on Twitter @charlottelytton; read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion