User:FrostFairBlade/sandbox/Three Lions

Background

In May 1992, the UEFA announced that England would host the UEFA Euro 1996. In preparation for the event, The Football Association had asked its executive producer of music, Rick Blaskey, to come up with an anthem for England's national football team. While the official anthem for Euro 96 tournament was Simply Red's "We're in This Together", FA officials decided to move in a different direction music-wise, as the song had only reached number 11 on the UK charts.

Blaskey was an experienced producer who had previously worked on the 1991 Rugby World Cup and the 1994 FIFA World Cup. He understood that the proposed song would need to lift the spirits of the British public. The Euro 96 was the first time England had hosted an international football tournament since the 1966 FIFA World Cup. However, the national team had not won a major title since then. Furthermore, several incidents of football hooliganism over the years had tarnished England's reputation. Its football clubs had been disbarred from European competition by the UEFA in 1985 after the Heysel Stadium disaster, with the ban being lifted five years later after the British government saw better fan behaviour at the 1990 World Cup. The Euro 96 was thus seen as a second chance for England to prove it had sufficiently improved its reputation on a global stage. Blaskey knew that English football fans had suffered from both the team's lack of success and the hooliganism. In an interview with The Guardian, he recalled telling FA officials to set the public's expectations appropriately, stating, "[...] it had been a rotten time for football, so you can’t do a campaign telling everyone ‘We’re great, we’re going to win.'"

After seeing the contents of a marketing dossier by Saatchi & Saatchi, who had pitched an idea to the FA around the phrase "football comes home", Blaskey felt inspired. Familiar with BBC's Match of the Day, he wanted something similar to the song that played during the programme's "Goal of the Month" segment. After inquiring with the head of BBC Sport, Brian Barwick, Blaskey learned that the song was "The Life of Riley" by The Lightning Seeds. Blaskey successfully recruited the band's frontman, Ian Broudie, to write the song, as long as someone else would be the main singer. Seeing the success comedians Frank Skinner and David Baddiel were having with Fantasy Football League, Broudie realized the duo would be the perfect representative of British football fans, and brought them onto the project as both lyricists and singers.

Writing and recording

When we wrote 'Three Lions', with the slightly modified Euro '96 slogan at its heart, the song was far from arrogant. It was all about pain, disappointment and that tiny glimmer of hope that keeps football fans going back for more.

Frank Skinner, from his 2011 book Dispatches from the Sofa: The Collected Wisdom of Frank Skinner

Briefed by Blaskey to deliver a song themed around "football comes home", Broudie began writing a song demo to send to Baddiel and Skinner. The songwriter ended up composing a song featuring two choruses. After being sent the demo, Skinner and Baddiel wrote the lyrics together in the living room of their flat.

Speaking with The Guardian, Baddiel recalled that his and Skinner's intent behind the song was to portray the reality of being an England fan: that the team would likely lose based on past experiences, but hoping that they wouldn't. He further explained in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, "Every football song before 'World in Motion' tended to perpetuate the myth that England were going to win this tournament. That was always wrong, it was always a lie." To counterbalance the painful memories, Baddiel and Skinner included references to iconic moments in English football history. This included the line "Terry Butcher at war", referencing the defender's insistence on playing a match despite a deep head wound soaking his uniform in blood. Blaskey recalled that while he thought the pair's lyrics were "genius and very funny", he frequently tried to rein in their cynical lyricism throughout production. This led the comedians to call Blaskey the "chief of police".

The song was completed by March 1996, and was recorded on April 1, 1996 at Dave Stewart's production studio, The Church Studios. Multiple sound effects were mixed into the song; the chants heard at the beginning of the song were Brøndby IF fans that Broudie recorded during a match at Anfield the previous year. He refused the FA's offer to have members of the national team sing on the recording, as he did not want the song to come off as overly nationalistic. To Broudie, the phrase "it's coming home" was about "being a football fan, which, for 90% of the time, is losing."

Lyrics and music

"Three Lions" is a Britpop song performed as a football anthem.

• Song begins with crowd noise, first chanting then groaning, followed by quotes bemoaning the state of the team from various football commentators like Alan Hansen, Trevor Brooking, and Jimmy Hill
  • "I think it's bad news for the English game": Alan Hansen
  • "We're not creative enough, and we're not positive enough": Trevor Brooking
  • "We'll go on getting bad results": Jimmy Hill
• Then a harpsichord, cello, and bass play
• Opening verse: "England's gonna throw it away, gonna blow it away" recalls how many times the English team has let down its fans
• Song's title refers to the badge on the uniform of the England national team; the team wears the logo of the FA, which in turn is based on the royal arms of England
• References several players, such as Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton, Nobby Stiles, and Gordon Banks, who played on the 1966 World Cup-winning team
• Baddiel states the goal of making those references was to "isolate some moments which will raise goose pimples on the back of England fans' necks"
• The song was completed by March 1996
• According to Broudie, the FA's initial response to the completed song was negative due to Skinner and Badiel's involvement: "When we delivered that tune it got a terrible reaction from the FA—they contacted me and said, ‘Right, you’ve got to get those fellas off it, change the words, this is terrible...’ sort of thing."
• Author David Goldblatt: "[...] 'Three Lions' encapsulated the unresolved post-imperial nostalgia of English football and replaced an aggressive English macho with a more mawkish and sentimental masculinity"

Recording

• Recorded on April 1, 1996 at Dave Stewart's production studio, The Church Studios, in Crouch End, North London
• The chants heard at the beginning of the track were Brøndby IF fans that Broudie recorded during a match at Anfield in 1995

Release

• Single first released on May 20, 1996
• 25 years after its first release, it was announced that "Three Lions" would be reissued on vinyl on June 4, 2021. The original 1996 recording was released as its A-side, and the 1998 World Cup version as its B-side

Commercial performance

• The first time "Three Lions" was played in public was during a friendly match between England and Hungary on May 19, 1996; despite Blaskey's requests to the DJ to keep playing the song throughout each match, the crowd remained uninterested and did not sing the song
• However, "Three Lions" ended up exploding in popularity after England beat Scotland 2-0 on June 15, 1996, as England fans began singing it in Wembley Stadium
• Fans then began singing it after every goal scored by England in their next match against the Dutch national team; the song's popularity skyrocketed after being played on two popular British morning radio programs, Capital Breakfast with Chris Tarrant, and Radio 1 Breakfast featuring Chris Evans
• Entered the charts at #1 on May 26, 1996
• Sold almost 100,000 copies in its first week
• While it dropped to #4 shortly after, it moved back up to the #1 spot after England beat the Dutch team, leading the crowd at Wembley Stadium to begin singing the song in celebration
• Its popularity spread outside England supporters; German supporters were singing it on the way to Wembley Stadium, and it became popular in Germany after multiple German players, including Jürgen Klinsmann, sung it on a balcony during their homecoming following their tournament win
• Reached #16 on the German charts
• Became the first song since "Bohemian Rhapsody" to hit the British #1 spot on two separate occasions
• Is the first song in chart history to spend four separate periods at #1 with the same lineup
• The song makes appearances on the charts every time England performs above expectations at tournaments
• World Cup 2018 - despite being knocked out in the semi-finals by Croatia, the original recording of "Three Lions" reached UK #1

Reception

• An article by The Independent in late June 1996 summarizing England's success in the Euro 96 remarked that "by now 'Three Lions' had established itself as the national football anthem, each airing attracting more support than the last"
• Broudie recalled that "Three Lions" had a lukewarm reception by the media; he speculates that critics wanted another song similar to "World in Motion", and that "even Radio 1 weren't particularly supportive of the single at first."
• In an interview with Broudie, Caroline Sullivan of The Guardian described the song as meeting "all the idiotic criteria", from "simplistic gruntalong melody", "thick-necked yob vocals", and "dumb jingoistic sentiments"
• Johnny Sharp and Steve Sutherland, NME: "It’s no classic, and may not figure too highly in critics’ end-of-year polls, but as a traditional football anthem it does the job of appealing to eight-year-olds and the man on the Wembley omnibus alike."

Contemporary reception

• In 2021, NME listed as one of the best football songs
• A separate NME article described it as the "ultimate football anthem", noting the song was great because it acknowledged the English national team's lack of success
• New Statesman: "'Three Lions'—perhaps the most rousing and uplifting of all football songs—is living proof that nostalgia for 1966 will never really go away; that for the English, that was the year when everything was how it should be."
• Noisey, 9/10; complimented the song's ability to build itself up into "something explosive", notes that the song is just as effective when its content is stripped away to simply "it's coming home"
• Radio X, in "10 of the best football songs", #1

Music video

• The music video was directed by Pedro Romhanyi
• Baddiel recalled that Romhanyi insisted that the music video feel "homely", opening with Skinner and Baddiel making tea while watching television at home
• Shot part of the music video after an England training session; the director could only get Teddy Sheringham, Steve Stone and Robbie Fowler to re-create memorable moments in English football history for the video
• Scenes at a pub were shot in late April at a pub called the Queen of the Isle in the London Docklands

Live performances

• The Football Association had intended to invite Skinner and Baddiel to perform the song after England's semi-final match, but called it off hours before kick-off over safety concerns regarding fan behavior
• On July 9, 2021, The Lightning Seeds, Baddiel, and Skinner performed the song on The Last Leg during the Euro 2020
• On July 30, 2022, Baddiel, The Lightning Seeds, and singer Chelcee Grimes gave a special performance of the song at the Electric Ballroom in Camden alongside former players Fara Williams, Faye White, and Rachel Yankey.
  • This version featured reworked lyrics to celebrate the England women's national football team reaching the Euro 2022 finals against Germany, with references to current English players:
    • "Ellen White standing tall": White had scored two goals in the tournament, having already become England's all-time female leading goalscorer before the competition
    • "Russo’s ready to score": Alessia Russo had scored four goals in the tournament, including a backheel goal in the semifinal against Sweden at Bramall Lane that went between Swedish goalkeeper Hedvig Lindahl's legs.
    • "Stanway kicking the ball": Georgia Stanway scored the winning goal in the quarterfinal against Spain at Falmer Stadium in the 96th minute with a shot from outside the box.
    • "And Beth Mead screaming": Mead would be named both player of the tournament and top scorer with six goals and five assists.
  • The team went on to defeat Germany 2-1, breaking the 56-year streak of losses for both the men's and women's national teams

Legacy

• Rio Goldhammer in The Conversation notes that the lyrics of "Three Lions" would redefine the football anthem
• The Economist notes that the dejection in the 1998 version of "Three Lions" is unlike any of the other World Cup anthems, which primarily focus on attaining glory; states that "'Three Lions' captures that quivering between hope and despair."
• Author David Winner asserts that the reference to the "three lions" team badge had popularized it as a symbol of English identity, and that the song helped redefine the Saint George's Cross as a genuine symbol of support, rather than its association with far-right extremism; "Three Lions" and the flag "have gone on to become enduring symbols (for now, anyway) of an Englishness derived in large part from football history."
  • Skinner: "I think 96, that song and—strangely—the cross of St George seemed to bring less menace than the union jack. Maybe it's because I'm Catholic. That was the first time it felt more family. I'm not saying it can't all go off at games—I was at the final of the men's Euros last year—but there was no one chanting 'No surrender to the IRA' or stuff like that. That right-wing thing seemed to go in 96.”
  • Baddiel: "Because of things that have happened since, like Brexit and the hardening of the far right, it might look different now. But, at the time, the music and the vulnerability of the lyrics meant people were singing a song that was patriotic, yearning after this idea of England that was not nationalist or aggressive. It was a song about losing. As a result, the singing of it and waving of flags felt to me like a type of gentle non-aggressive patriotism."

Cultural impact

• In the autumn of 1996, Labour opposition leader Tony Blair addressed his party's conference with the quote "Seventeen years of hurt, never stopped us dreaming, Labour's coming home"
  • This was a play on words from the song's chorus and in reference to his confidence that Labour would return to power at the forthcoming general election, having been in the opposition since the Conservatives ousted them from government in 1979
  • When the election was held on 1 May 1997, Labour won by a landslide
  • Broudie: "It was a bit cheap [of Blair], but I loved hearing Trevor McDonald reading our lyrics on the news."
• The French football club RC Strasbourg Alsace used it as a walkout song for home games