This story about the Three Lions song originally appeared in the July 2012 issue of FourFourTwo
“I’ll never forget it,” says David Baddiel, one third of an unlikely musical ensemble that, in the summer of 1996, captured the mood of a nation and produced a record that summed up how excruciatingly bonkers it can be to be an England supporter.
“England were 4-1 up against the Dutch,” laughs Baddiel. “4-1 up! Suddenly Three Lions starts being sung around Wembley. 76,000 fans singing our song. My manager, sitting in front of me, he turns round and says: ‘David, if you ever win an Oscar, it won’t be as good as this.’ I think he’s right.”
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By the time England gave the creators of total football a taste of their own medicine, Three Lions by Baddiel, Frank Skinner and The Lightening Seeds had become the soundtrack to a summer. “If I hear that song today, I’m taken back to 1996,” says Teddy Sheringham. “It helped the squad and the more the country got behind it, the more confident we felt.”
Even if you didn’t like football you were humming it, and the words were ingrained on a country daring to believe. “30 years of hurt/ never stopped me dreaming.” Maybe, just maybe. But how did this strange trio ever even get to pen a ditty that so captured the footballing zeitgeist?
“I was approached by the FA,” recalls Ian Broudie, frontman of the Lightening Seeds. “They asked if I could do something, but at first I said no. ‘Why would I do that?’ I thought.
“It was the peak of my career, and I didn’t like football songs. Then one night I was watching Fantasy Football. I really liked Frank and David and thought, if I could convince them to get involved, we might be on to something.”
Fantasy Football was the weekly show presented from a couch that summed up the new, acceptably laddish, take on the game. “Fantasy Football was going well, but I was surprised to get a phone call from Ian,” says Baddiel. “Would we like to write the lyrics and sing on the record? Why not?! Ian didn’t seem to care that I couldn’t sing at all.”
From the off, the team agreed that this couldn’t be a celebration: this had to be about reality, about pain. “The song had to reflect that,” says Baddiel. “Instead of singing about how we were going to win – which songs like Back Home and This Time had done – we should do one about how we probably won’t. A song about the belief all fans have in their team, despite all the hurt. It’s not triumphant at all.”
Broudie agrees that this song was not to be about delusions of grandeur. “I didn’t want any players singing on it, and I didn’t want to talk about us being any good, because I didn’t think we were. Being from Liverpool, I got excited that Italy would be playing at Anfield. I wanted to celebrate that this tournament was coming here.”
The song has a chant-like quality, though, that the previous success, World in Motion by New Order, had purposefully tried to steer away from. “Theirs is good,” says Baddiel, “but it’s not a football song, it’s a love song and is actually quite apologetic about being linked to football. Ours isn’t.”
Broudie recalls the day he received Skinner and Baddiel’s lyrics – and was deeply confused. “They’d been written out by someone from their office and it said: ‘Three Lines.’ What the f**k does that mean? They rang me and said, ‘What do think?’ I said: ‘I like it but what do you mean by three lines? ‘Lions!’ ‘Oh I get it!’”
Confusion over, the guys soon realised they had a good song on their hands. They were in a minority. “We had to go the England camp, and play them the song,” says Baddiel. “That was depressing. They were so not interested.”
“That was bad,” recalls Broudie. “The first bit of the song is basically about how crap we always are and we probably won’t win and we’re playing it to the team. Awkward. The FA were the same. They expected, ‘England are fab, we’re going to win,” instead they get, ‘England’s gonna throw it away!”
Prior to kick-off, the song reached number one. It would alternate for weeks with The Fugees’ Killing Me Softly. “I often laugh at the thought of Lauren Hill wondering what this silly song was that knocked her lot off top spot,” says Baddiel. Then – as England proved they could play a bit – it became the anthem that celebrated that surprising turn of events.
"It was the second-half against the Scots," says Baddiel. “Jamie Redknapp comes on, England win, and the mood changes. The Wembley DJ puts on our record and everyone joins in. That was the greatest moment of my life. OK, so it doesn’t compare with having kids, but in my work, that was the best moment.”
It wasn’t only the fans that loved it, either: Gazza would play it in the hotel, on the bus, signing along, refusing to leave a room until it had finished, often with tears rolling down his cheeks. The anthem followed England throughout, before the eventual winners took it and made it their own.
“That was so German of them,” laughs Baddiel. “Frank and I were even invited to the German Sports Personality of the Year awards to sing it. We went along in our ’66 tops and they tried to talk us out of wearing them. ‘You are aware of what this song is about?’ we said.”
Plenty of football songs have followed – including a re-make in 1998, but with little success. “Keith Allen is negative about ours, saying Vindaloo was the real thing,” says Baddiel. “But 79,000 fans sang ours and hardly any sing his, so we’ll leave it there.”
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