I didn't do any general World Cup songs though, summing up the highs, the lows, the creamy middles of association football's finest hour/four weeks. So as a Blogger premiere, and before the happy memories of Brazil 2014 fade entirely to be replaced by the human rights fiascos of Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022, here's the World Cup mixtape you never knew you wanted. Non-football fans are welcome too, since most of the selections are only vaguely linked to the World Cup, and I promise not to go on about the Dutch deployment of wing-backs too much.
1) World - Julia Holter
Case in point - Julia Holter was probably not going for a universal World Cup anthem when she wrote this, or if she was she did a terrible job, instead coming up with a sparse, haunting elegy to... hats? Mothers? God only knows what the enigmatic lyrics are hinting at. She mentions tennis at one point, which isn't really in the spirit of things.
But I do like ol' Julia - saw her the other day, as it happens, playing St. John's Church in Hackney with her merry band of double bassists and sax players, and was very impressed with their live sound, which replicates the eeriness of her records but in a massive church, for added atmosphere. You probably won't see this soundtracking the ITV highlights of the final or anything, but I think it makes a nice low-key start to proceedings, before we ramp it up a bit with...
2) Cups - Underworld
I'm just getting into Underworld, having been only a nipper in the '90s and only used mind-bending drugs on a recreational basis. They're pretty great - I know everyone says they're dated, but I reckon the people who say that are dated themselves, and need to drag everything they once loved down with them. To paraphrase David Brent, a good twelve-minute techno odyssey is a good twelve-minute techno odyssey FOREVER.
This track, the opener to the exquisitely-titled "Beaucoup Fish", starts ponderously before gradually gathering steam and bursting into a thrilling finale. Which is pretty much the opposite of the last World Cup, but it makes the cut because: "Underworld - Cups", and because I don't have a lot of options here.
3) World Domination - Ash
A very silly song for what is, after all, a very silly competition - amazing how all-encompassing the World Cup can become, for better or for worse, fuelled by the frothing media and lack of anything else going on in June/July. And amazing how 22 men kicking a ball around can be perceived as more of a quest for world domination than, say, invading Ukraine.
My Brazilian wife and her family were dead against this year's competition - the strain on the country's infrastructure, the diversion of resources from already under-funded areas like education and health, the hordes of football fans, the endless singing - until it actually started. At which point the protests died out almost immediately, everyone started cheering on Brazil and all was right with the world until the team got an absolute pasting from Germany in the semi-final. Such is the power, and the power of distraction in particular, of the World Cup. As an outsider I was able to enjoy the whole thing guilt-free, which made it even better!
4) I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor
Until Brazil's now-infamous semi-final collapse, I thought the 2014 World Cup - taking place in Brazil shortly after I married a Brazilian and got to know the country for the first time - might run along the same lines of the 1998 World Cup, in which the hosts France lifted the trophy the year I moved there with my family. Personal involvement always makes these things more interesting, and the 1998 final remains one of my fondest memories, football-related or otherwise - my first World Cup (apart from the rather dull '94 final), and the first time I felt a real kinship with my adopted home country, as fans swarmed into the streets to celebrate through the night.
I'm not sure why "I Will Survive" became the World Cup '98 French victory song - it's got nothing to do with football, or France - but for some reason it was played relentlessly at parties, discos and town fairs for the next few years, with everyone singing along to the wordless interlude and breaking into rhythmic chants of "et un, et deux, et trois-zero" (another catastrophic Brazil defeat, by the way - maybe this year's finals were pretty similar to '98 after all). The memory of that rather spectacular alignment of personal and national circumstances has actually made this song bearable to this day, although I apologise for thrusting it upon you who have no fond memories attached to it at all.
5) Boys From Brazil - Simple Minds
A word, though, for this year's host nation. Amid all the social unrest and immense domestic pressure, "the eyes of the world" were indeed on the Selecção, as Jim Kerr so prophetically/nonsensically sang back in 1981 - a simpler time, before Simple Minds jumped the shark and went all Bono on us. They (Brazil, not Simple Minds) had to win convincingly, not only to reclaim their crown as the GOAT, but also to prevent total social meltdown and save national face on the global stage (by the way, good luck with that in 2022, Qatar).
Unfortunately they just weren't very good this year, but that's not their fault. Everyone I knew - apart form the Brazilian contingent, obviously - turned on them from the first game, blasted them for eliminating the entertaining underdogs of Chile and Colombia, and seemed to relish their absolutely stunning 7-1 capitulation against Germany in the semi-final. I on the other hand grew quite fond of the hopelessly mismatched and bedraggled squad - especially my namesake Fred, who did his best up front, which was very far from good enough. Their elimination was unnecessarily cruel and I hope some of them can live to play again next time around (probably not Fred though; he looked like he was for the knacker's yard).
6) Tight Pants - Seeed
And a tip of the hat to Brazil's victors and humiliators-in-chief, who went on to win the thing outright. I've always had a soft spot for Germany since they proved just too good for England (better at penalties, anyway) back in Euro 96 - incidentally the last time England were any good at football. And what better way to honour the triumphant Mannschaft than with a cracking tune from Germany's most efficient rappers?
I am indebted to my friend Eric for introducing me to Seeed when I went to visit him in Berlin during university; I haven't heard any of their other stuff, nor do I particularly want to, but this masterpiece of falsetto and oompah made such an impression on me that I chose to include it here over, I don't know, Kraftwerk or "Deutschland Uber Alles". Bitte schön.
7) Corrupt - Depeche Mode
No run-down of the World Cup could be complete without a tribute to FIFA, the bastions of moral virtue and decency at the beating heart of the game. This one's for Sepp Blatter and, fittingly for the subject at hand, features Depeche Mode on total autopilot and long past their prime.
8) Another Star - Stevie Wonder
The song that soundtracked the Beeb's World Cup coverage this summer, on account of it being a bit samba-ish and unerringly catchy. As with most things, Auntie outdid its rival ITV in the soundtrack department, and even made England's damp squib of an exit seem faintly poetic by deploying Aimee Mann's rueful "Wise Up" in the bi-annual "England getting knocked out montage song" slot.
The song itself is bloody great, if a little long - Stevie had a double album to pad out though, and in fairness it's a hook that's worth milking for eight minutes, so we'll let him off. I remember this closing his set at Glastonbury 2010 (along with a version of "Happy Birthday" ft. MC Michael Eavis, naturally), and cropping up in a duet (quadruplet?) with Pharrell and Daft Punk at the Grammys, which is pretty cool apart from the bit about Pharrell and the Grammys. Stevie Wonder is the man, basically.
9) World Cup Drumming - Mclusky
Into the home stretch - the third-fourth place play off of the compilation, if you like - with a short blast of gibberish invective, from Wales' finest vitriol merchants since Richey Edwards went AWOL, and the only song here to actually reference the damn competition at all. I would also have accepted "The World Loves Us And Is Our Bitch", which should really be the song that all participating teams play in the dressing room before taking to the field. "It's war, I tell yer!"
10) The Flying Cup Club - Beirut
And so the World Cup playlist draws to a close, aptly enough with a song that has almost nothing to do with football, but crucially does include the word "Cup" in its title. And what a stirring closer it is too, all harmonized warbling and accordions set to "whimsy". Reminds me of a football terrace chant in a way, although maybe I'm just saying that to retroactively justify my rather generous inclusion criteria. There are no terrace chants at the World Cup in any case, just vuvuzelas and endless brass bands.
Ultimately the World Cup does what it does very well. Even a rubbish World Cup, like 2010, is still pretty great all things considered, and World Cup 2014 proved to be among the best in my lifetime, if not ever. The future is uncertain, given the ongoing and lucrative rise of club football at the expense of its national equivalent, and FIFA not even trying to conceal its own greed and corruption anymore. So all the more need for a tenuous and barely thought-through playlist accompanied by some half-hearted commentary, to reflect on the good old days which have literally just happened. Take it away, John Barnes.
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