Number 1s of 2010 – 13 June 2010
In England, they take the World Cup very seriously. Those of you on the other side of the Atlantic may not fully grasp quite how excited they get down there. The English operate on a strict schedule. Whenever the World Cup or the European Championships come around (every second year, basically), they proudly declare that this will be their year, and that they will finally win a major tournament for the first time since 1966. They get terribly wound up about it. And then, when they invariably get knocked out in the quarter finals, they go into an enormous national sulk.
Here in Scotland, it works slightly differently. The national team – for arcane historical reasons, the four components of the United Kingdom all enter separately – probably struggles to qualify at all, and if it does, the Scots are pretty much delighted to win a match. I’m not kidding – just look at the official team song from 1998, Del Amitri’s “Don’t Come Home Too Soon”, a wistful ode to the distant dream of getting past the group stages.
(If you’re too young or too American to remember, the video is a parody of a Nike advert with that year’s Brazilian team.)
The English… well, as we’re about to see, the English are a bit more bombastic.
And this week’s top 40 is a veritable tour of the English football song. When album track downloads were first admitted to the singles chart, a deluge of seasonal favourites swamped the chart over Christmas. It’s died down in later years. This is the first World Cup of the download era and the results speak for themselves. There are seven new entries on this week’s chart, and six of them are football-related singles. Three of them are from the back catalogue. One of them is in the top ten. A couple of them are quite good. A couple of them definitely aren’t.
Still, at least none of them has a vuvuzela. Give it time.
There is no official England team song this year. That leaves the way clear for Simon Cowell, who has banged out a charity single. Unveiled on the final of Britain’s Got Talent and released midweek, this shifted 110,000 copies in four days to become number one. “Shout” by Dizzee Rascal & James Corden.
You’ve got to hand it to Dizzee Rascal, he’s desperate to get rid of that last remaining shred of credibility. A mere two weeks after “Dirtee Disco” was number one, he’s back on a Simon Cowell novelty single. It’s his sixteenth top 40 hit since 2003 and his fifth number 1 (all of them coming since 2008). Commercially, he’s never been bigger.
James Corden is an actor who’s been around for years, but saw a major career upturn when Gavin & Stacey, which he co-wrote with Ruth Jones, was widely acclaimed as one of the BBC’s best sitcoms of recent years. He’s never shown up in the charts before, though Jones, in character as Vanessa Jenkins, did have a number one with last year’s Comic Relief single “Islands in the Stream”. Since the success of Gavin & Stacey, Corden has been trying to diversify into comedy with decidedly mixed success. A sketch show with Matthew Horne was generally agreed to be one of the worst comedy shows the BBC had ever made, and the less said of their film Lesbian Vampire Killers, the better. Supposedly he’s better as a panel game host, and he’s doing ITV’s post-match comedy show for this year’s World Cup coverage. Basically, he’s talented but with a horrific lack of quality control, and his presence on this record is not a surprise.
The song is a mash-up of “Shout” by Tears for Fears (number 4 in 1984) with bits of “No Diggity” by Blackstreet (number 9 in 1996) and a load of yelling about the prospects of the England World Cup team. It’s not awful, and it’s certainly better than a lot of charity singles that Simon Cowell has had a hand in, but it’s not exactly a classic.
At number 2 we have the week’s lone non-football single, “Frisky” by Tinie Tempah. This is the follow-up to his debut “Pass Out”, which was number one earlier in the year. Fans of the arrangement will be pleased to see that it’s back, complete with the double-paced drums in the last thirty seconds. He just about gets away with it, though, and at least he’s more in touch with roots than most of the grime crossover acts have been.
At number 10, we have the original version of “3 Lions” by David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and the Lightning Seeds.
Originally recorded as England’s official single for the Euro 96 tournament (held in England, hence the “It’s coming home” chorus), this is a rare example of a football single that’s legitimately quite good. Baddiel and Skinner are comedians who were hosting a football comedy show at the time, and the song is basically about being a fan of a team who haven’t actually achieved a great deal in 30 years. It’s unusually open about England being obsessed with past glories, too.
The Lightning Seeds – represented in the video by their songwriter Ian Broudie – will probably be best known to Americans for their 1989 single “Pure”, which was really quite good, now I come to think of it.
“3 Lions” is held in genuine affection. It reached number 1 on its release in 1996. A rewritten version (which is a bit whiny, to be honest) reached number 1 again for the 1998 World Cup. A reissue made number 16 for the 2002 World Cup, and in 2006 it made number 9. A cover version credited to The Squad, with Baddiel and Skinner’s blessing, was released a couple of weeks ago, and crashed out at number 21. People want the original instead, and I don’t blame them.
At number 22, we have “World in Motion” by New Order. (The original release was credited to “englandneworder”, but presumably people have been downloading it from New Order’s greatest hits album.) This was the official England single for the 1990 World Cup, when it reached number 1. It remains their biggest hit (the runner-up being “Blue Monday”, which got to number 3). The lyrical connection to football is… tenuous, to put it mildly. It sounds suspiciously like a song they had lying around the studio, to which some football references were added at the last minute. But that’s probably for the best. As a concession to the remit, it also includes a notoriously terrible rap from striker John Barnes. The bloke standing behind him is comedian Keith Allen, who co-wrote the lyrics. We’ll be hearing from him again later.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, number 23 is “If I Can Dream” by Terry Venables, who was the England manager in the mid-nineties. This is being used in an advert by the Sun newspaper, and it’s basically a joke. It’s a cover of an Elvis Presley single which reached number 11 in 1969. One of those rare records which is not quite as bad as you’d think, yet still dreadful.
And now, back to Keith Allen.
This, god help us, is “Vindaloo” by Fat Les, originally a number 2 hit for the 1998 World Cup, and now back at number 32. Fat Les were Keith Allen, Alex James from Blur, and Damian Hirst. On the offchance that some of you might conceivably not recognise it, I’ll mention that the video is a parody of “Bittersweet Symphony” by the Verve.
It’s certainly an odd record, with the weirdly sinister layered vocals. Depending on your point of view, it’s either a self-deprecatingly ironic celebration of Englishness, or an extremely compelling argument for napalming the Groucho Club.
Despite being involved in two separate England singles (plus his unofficial Euro 2000 England single “Jerusalem”), Keith Allen is Welsh. His daughter is Lily Allen, who has made some vastly better records.
Finally, and perhaps appropriately tailing in last, we have the official anthem of the 2010 World Cup.
Because nothing says “football” like Shakira doing Afrobeat! It’s called “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)”. It’s her tenth UK hit – she’s released fewer singles than you’d think.
Next week… probably a return to normal, assuming anyone’s crazy enough to try and promote a single when the population’s busy watching the football.
Corden is a weird cat. Gavin and Stacy came off the back of some really well-regarded performances in THE HISTORY BOYS and FAT FRIENDS. I didn’t hate Corne and Horden as much as the average viewer – YES, SPIDER-MAN, HA HA HA – in as much as of all those vaguely similar BBC3 shows (Russell Howard, Lee Nelson, Rob Rouse, Lily Allen), it was by no means the worst.
The “blokey” stuff has the whiff of trytoohardism – I watched an episode of the Sky panel show, and it was *wobbles hand*. I thnk Gavin and Stacey was just such a massive hit that it caught him unawares. I’d’ve watched a second series of C&H, god help me, but it would have needed a pretty tight rein.
He wasn’t bad in Doctor Who last Saturday. I don’t want to sound mean, but he did a lot with a little.
Terry Venebals had his own TV drama. It was called Hazell. Hazell was a detective.
I think a Great Britain football team would have worked a treat back when Giggs and, hell, Vinnie Jones were playing (the only Scottish footballer I can name is Henrik Larsson, which should tell you about my relationship with the Beautiful Game).
I mean, speaking more generally, there’s something sadly predictable and codified about our relationship with The World Cup, in England. All the flags – and by fuck, are there a lot of them. Mostly bearing advertising slogans! – the ambivalent confidence, the predashed expectations. It’s almost like a month-long Eurovision Song Contest. The horns are the crab on the pube on the turd on the table of the birthday party where nobody came, though. Bad enough that people let those idiots play two bars of The Great Escape over and over ad fuckatonne. What was wrong with a rattle and a pie and a respectful ripple of applause for Charles “Charlie” Charles, eh?
I love the nervous warmth of the original Three Lions, though. Good old Frank Skinner.
//\Oo/\\
No love for Ally’s Tartan Army?
I like Corden on the panel show. That’s as someone who’s never really watched Gavin & Stacey. Didn’t watch the sketch show either. Agree he was decent in Doctor Who.
The World Cup show’s been pretty bad so far, though.
I think the official FIFA song really suits Shakira’s voice. Which strikes me as odd, what with the warble and being South American.
I didn’t realise ’til one of the many recent music channels’ footie song marathons that Venables did a single in 2002 as well.
So… England football fandom is Boston Red Sox fandom c. 1918 – 2004?
I can live with that.
For all your dissing of Americans, you still only tied us. Sure, it may have been lucky, but still. Of course, you’ll blame it all on your Italian coach.
Assuming you are rooting for the English team…
“Assuming you are rooting for the English team…”
my experience has been that most Scottish folk were rooting for the US, or should I say, against Eng-a-land.
The Scots traditionally support whoever’s playing England, at least once Scotland has been knocked out – google “Anyone but England” for this year’s crop of newspaper articles. It’s a mixture of long-standing team rivalry, genuine anti-English sentiment in some quarters, and a backlash against a “British” media that assumes everyone watching is English (a couple of weeks of which is enough to annoy even the least nationalist Scot).
It doesn’t work in reverse, because the English don’t really much care about Scotland (any more, to be fair, than the Scots can be bothered thinking about the Welsh most of the time), and because they tend to conflate England with Britain anyway.
As an Englishman who doesn’t give a toss about football, it does annoy me that all of Britain is subjected to the ins and outs of the England team’s inevitable failure in the World Cup. If Scotland, Wales of Northern Ireland ever managed to qualify for a tournament when England didn’t, you can guarantee that the media either wouldn’t care or continually refer to them as British.
But then we all have to put up with the same sort of thing when anything of only local importance happens in London and the rest of the country is expected to care.
Matthew Craig said: “I think a Great Britain football team would have worked a treat back when Giggs and, hell, Vinnie Jones were playing (the only Scottish footballer I can name is Henrik Larsson, which should tell you about my relationship with the Beautiful Game).”
Maybe you’re being tongue-in-cheek, but Henrik Larsson was Swedish – he just played in Scotland for a large part of his career. It was a strange choice, as he was talented enough to play for top teams in any of the big European leagues but chose to stay north of the border as a big fish in a small pond. Perhaps he was just settled and content at Celtic.
On the subject of Vinnie Jones, he’s from Watford and only qualified for Wales through a grandmother. He switched nationality because he was never in any danger of being picked for England for two main reasons – his reputation and the fact that he was very limited as a player.
The argument for a Great Britain football team is wheeled out every couple of years – FIFA is apparently very keen on the idea, but it will never happen because none of the home nations will agree to it. Plus, it’s a struggle to think of many non-English players that would objectively make the squad. *Steels self for flaming*
The Scots wouldn’t accept a unified UK football team for three main reasons: first, the trend for about 20 years now has been towards increased independence from the rest of Britain; second, it would be a merger with a team they see as a traditional rival; and third, the resulting team would basically be England.
On paper, it’s unfair to other countries that the UK gets to enter four times – but in practice, since three of those teams are basically no-hopers, it doesn’t make a huge difference.
If Scotland, Wales of Northern Ireland ever managed to qualify for a tournament when England didn’t, you can guarantee that the media either wouldn’t care or continually refer to them as British.
I’m not so sure. When the Republic of Ireland qualified for the 1994 World Cup, they were broadly adopted by the British/English media. They didn’t refer to them as British, but it was almost anything but. I could certainly see the media getting behind Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland if England were out, albeit reluctantly, I’m sure.
Maybe Wales, Scotland, and N. Ireland could pool their resources to create a competitive team?
Call it, I dunno, Britain, or England Sucks.
As an ‘Englishman’ I was really surprised by the anti-English vibe I got when I went to T in the Park. It was a real eye-opener – far more anti-English than my Irish family (with the exception of my Grandad who called the British flag the “rag of inequity that stinks in the breeze”). Hoping I won’t feel it when I go to Edinburgh this weekend.
I’ve never noticed an anti-Scotland vibe here.
Personally I can’t stand football or Corden, so I’m really not watching much TV at the moment.
No mention of … whatever Embrace’s song in 06 was? (I only remember this one at all because of Mitch Benn’s parody “Try Singing This On The Terraces“).
If we’re talking about Scottish World Cup Songs, it’s hard to forget “We Have A Dream>” by B.A. Robertson. Although it’s certainly worth trying.
Just occured to me, I should add that while I always think of “We Have A Dream” as being by Robertson, he’s not the numpty yelling his way through it; that’s John Gordon-Sinclair of Gregory’s Girl fame. Robertson does the actual singing bits.
Maybe Wales, Scotland, and N. Ireland could pool their resources to create a competitive team?
Even then, it wouldn’t be a particularly competitive team. It’s not like there are any players of individual brilliance in the Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish squads at the moment. There is no Best or Dalglish and even Giggs has retired from the international scene. You’re effectively left with Darren Fletcher, possibly Craig Gordon and Craig Bellamy at a push.
There is definitely anti-Scottish sentiment amongst English fans, although it’s not their raison d’etre (which sometimes seems the case for the Scots and Irish).
There’s actually boring football politics reason why the UK will never field an unified team (or island of Ireland for that matter). The rules of the game of football are controlled by the International Football Association Board which is made up of the Four Home Nations and FIFA. This system gives obviously the UK a huge say in the direction of football.
In any case The British Isles is pretty confusing when it comes to sporting teams – I mean the four nations of the UK play seperately in football but the island of Ireland plays together in the Olympics (where there’s a GB team) and Rugby Union (where there’s seperate teams for England, Wales and Scotland). In Cricket, England is the name of the test side but its managed by the English and Welsh Cricket Board and regularly poaches any Irish or Scottish players that look any good. And then there’s the regular farce of the British and Irish Lions Rugby Union ‘Super Team’ try to find an anthem that both the Brits and the Irish can sing together.
Btw, in the eighties a UK team would have been something to behold – Dalglish-Linkear, Robson-Souness, Hansen-Butcher. Awesome stuff.
As someone from Scotland born in England with a German surname (and Grandfather, so can play for them) living in London, I got into this discussion a lot last week.
I was saying that the Scots player who could easily make the English team is Craig Gordon. I can’t help feeling Sunday somewhat vindicates me there.
I often get accused of supporting “Anyone But England”, but actually, that’s a lot more acceptable a position down here than my actual position of “Germany supporter”. (And I’m speaking as someone who got made fun of at school for being English a lot. I am generally near rabidly pro-union, but tend to be amused at England’s exit from tournaments, as it’s always good.) The key thing to bear in mind is that supporters of Scotland have, for many years, been known as very friendly, whereas the supporters of the English team is often accused of some of the worst hooliganism in the world. The humourlessness of the English support, the obssesion with 1966 and the sheer insanity of the media also help. The Sun, which has been running constant “The Sun supports England” taglines for weeks had the entire front page of yesterday’s edition devoted to an in-depth snooping and mocking of the private life of Rob Green, who surely doesn’t need more attacks at this time.
If FIFA will let the U.K. split itself, I wonder why it doesn’t let Spain do it as well. Perhaps because Catalonia is decent team?
@Andrew J: No it’s just because the home nation football teams predate FIFA. It’s less letting it split itself and more accepting that it’s already split.
It does accept teams from places like the Faeroe Islands and Palestine and Hong Kong and other such places not recognised as independant countries too, to be fair.
There are so many weird things regarding FIFA and some countries.
Australia is allowed to move from Oceania to Asia for its competitions.
Israel is part of Europe. (this one is more understandable)
Although the Sun presents itself as representing the common English man, I think it’s a bit unfair to lump all English football fans into the “we invented the sport, we’re entitled to win it, this time for sure, fancy foreign types with their stupid nancy falling over will ruin it for us” brigade. A significant portion of the fanbase will be the 3 Lions “well, we almost certainly won’t win it. But there’s an outside chance, and isn’t football a sport where sometimes the underdog can win”?
(and to be even fairer, even the Sun’s slogan for the tournament isn’t overflowing with arrogance and self-confidence. As loath as I am to admit it, “maybe, just maybe” does sum up how I feel about English’s chances.”
So far, my favorite moment of anything related to the World Cup is Woody Harrelson scoring the winning goal over the English team in the Soccer Aid match.
http://g.sports.yahoo.com/soccer/world-cup/blog/dirty-tackle/post/Woody-Harrelson-penalty-kick-master?urn=sow,246022
I always thought James Corden, and his character, were the weakest links on Gavin and Stacey. The dire quality of his later output makes me suspect that all the stuff that made that show enjoyable (it’s basically about family relationships, with Nessa and Smithy bringing down the tone to stop it being too cloying) came from writer Ruth Jones…
Isn’t “Maybe, just maybe” the slogan of the National Lottery?
Regarding the home nations, the basic issue is that FIFA is (effectively) an association of governing bodies. Most of those governing bodies are national, but not all of them. The reason for letting some teams play in tournaments where they shouldn’t strictly belong is mainly because otherwise they’d have no meaningful competition. I believe the major New Zealand club plays in the Australian league for the same reason, or something like that – if they had to play in New Zealand, they’d never get a game against another team of their standard.
With Israel there’s the fact that most of the neighbouring countries would refuse to play them, or at the very least that the games would be a security nightmare and probably have to take place in closed stadiums. Simpler just to let them play in Europe.
As an American who usually only watches soccer when it’s available on basic cable, that is, during the World Cup, I’m rooting for England, and I do see it as a lot like rooting for the Red Sox in baseball (until 2004, like Taibak says).
The English love it so much, but they can’t seem to get a break. If they ever win, it will be nice to see all those happy Englishpeople on the news. Of course, I’d be able to turn off the TV when the endless “At Long Last” specials got annoying; real UK residents would not be able to.
To allow the NZ professional club the Wellington Phoenix to play in the Australian league across the confedaration divide, officially they pretend to be an Australian team, that just happens to be based in NZ.
Neither the Asian Football Confederation or FIFA are particularly happy about it, but they turn a blind eye to it as it’s common for NZ teams to play in Australian competitions (such as rugby league) or for there to be a joint competition where Australia and NZ are more evenly matched (rugby union and netball).
Still, they cannot qaulify for the Asian Champions League – even if they win the league.
The New Zealand club situation is not uncommon in world football. There are three Welsh clubs (Cardiff, Swansea, Wrexham) playing in the English leagues and one English team (Berwick Rangers) playing in Scotland. Derry City plays its football south of the border in Ireland. There are also three Canadian sides in the US football pyramid and so on.
The common theme seems to be the level of competition these sides would face if they stayed in their own domestic leagues (apart from Berwick Rangers, which is down to geographic logistics).
Going off on a tangent slightly, but I’ve never understood there isn’t some 6 Nations equivalent for football in the UK. Or even just an England/Scotland game every year or so would draw big crowds. And who knows, if Scotland won enough times, it might break England out of the delusion of adequacy on the international stage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Home_Championship
at Jonny K
“The key thing to bear in mind is that supporters of Scotland have, for many years, been known as very friendly”
Hmmm… convieniently forgotten the Wembley pitch invasion, riots in London and subsequent home international ban then eh?
In case I am accused of raking up the past, right up to date are the ‘Old Firm’ games where Jocks happily murder each other (Patrick McBride), and send death threats to the players (Nacho Novo). All in a friendly manner of course.
As this article is about songs, let’s hear a jolly Scottish one:
Hello, hello, we are the Billy boys,
Hello, hello, you’ll know us by our noise,
We’re up to our knees in Fenian blood,
Surrender or you’ll die,
For we are the Brigton Derry boys
BTW your arse is for sitting on, not talking out of.
at Chris Moore: being 23 allows me to have forgotten that event which happened 9 years before my birth, yes. I am aware of it, though.
It does confuse me: the first world cup I remember is 1998, where Scottish fans were praised as the best fans. I’ve never really been able to put it all together to make sense. Best idea I’ve got is that Scottish football hooligans only ever let things out at England, which is appalling. I wasn’t meaning to be overly anti-English; anti-overly-English media (Sun), anti-hooligans, yes, but not anti-English. If I was, I would probably not be as anti-SNP as I am.