TUNE!

The World Cup kicks off tonight, and I started my annual leave today to celebrate. I also had those two comedic genii, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner @baddielskinner follow me @leaveforthecup on Twitter, which cemented for me the idea that this post would be about tunes, more importantly, World Cup tunes. Today, one of my followers, @oliyoung made mention of Australia's official World Cup song by Rogue Traders, which I then went on to mention was quite rubbish. If you've been lucky enough to avoid the song, well, I'm about to bring that to an end...



Now, as many people have mentioned, it can't truly be an official song without members of the team singing, or even rapping, on there somewhere, but that aside, this isn't really a song that inspires me to watch football, nor can I imagine it firing the boys up to get out on the pitch. I certainly can't imagine any of us singing it on the terraces (if there still were terraces, that is) which truly must be the mark of what a classic World Cup tune should be.

In 2006, SBS ran a show before the World Cup called Song For The Socceroos, which was a competition to write an official song for the team in Germany. What resulted was a truly forgettable number by an outfit called Freedom of Though which was called Green & Gold, and it went a little something like this...



OK, I promise to get to some good tunes soon. To be fair though, Australia's only had three World Cups, so we have some catching up to do in terms of penning the perfect football song. The Green & Gold Army had a crack this year and changed the words to Africa by Toto, which isn't a horrible effort, and probably more apt to being sung at the game than the other two efforts, but it still isn't really what I'd call a classic.

For me, it's always been the English that have provided the best World Cup tunes, and my favourites when I was younger was New Order's World In Motion from Italia 90.



As mentioned earlier, I have a Grandmother who was born in England, and my Godmother was also English, so I've grown up with a bit of a passion for the mother land, and football is just one of those things that I've grown to be obsessed with. For the World Cup in 2006, a friend made me a compilation of many English football songs, many I was not familiar with, but grew to love instantly. Two of those were Vindaloo by Fat Les...



..and Three Lions by Baddiel & Skinner, which was initially written for Euro '96, but re-released for the World Cup in '98.



As you can see by these last three examples, they certainly are a lot different than Australia's recent efforts. Now, what I'd like to see for 2014 would be an effort made to really embrace the idea of the football tune, and come up with an effort that gives us something to be proud of, something that's memorable and something we'll want to, and be able to, sing, especially if we've had a few, when it's not always easy to remember how to speak, let alone sing. This is my mission to you, Australia, and if you're not willing to step up to the challenge, well, I might just have to defect...

...well, maybe not quite anything that drastic yet.

Oh, and while we're discussing Baddiel & Skinner, if, like me, you have an interest in things English and want to listen to what the lads are up to, they're podcasting for Absolute Radio from South Africa. You can catch it at http://www.absoluteradio.co.uk/football/baddiel_and_skinner/ or on youtube, like this one here...



My next blog will include my thoughts on some of the games I've watched, as well as my experience watching the Australia vs Germany game in 3D, crazy, I know! Also, if you don't have Twitter, you can see my Tweets about this game on @iWorldCup as they'll be publishing my Tweets about the game live here... http://iworldcup.org/live/