Listening to men’s World Cup songs over the last century, one could be forgiven for thinking that AI slop is far from a recent phenomenon. Few music genres are more formulaic or more clinically constructed. That said, while these songs’ traits and purposes remain the same, their music styles have changed with the times. Moreover, if listeners are willing to dig beneath the tier of songs sanctioned by FIFA, some gems can be unearthed that better represent national cultures and real football experiences.
Music has been part of football since its earliest days, and popular songs have become terrace chants since the establishment of association football in 1863. When the World Cup was introduced to provide global competition for professional players, music made its presence felt immediately. Hosted by Olympic soccer champions Uruguay, the first World Cup in 1930 may have included only 13 nations, but that did not quell enthusiasm, as reflected in the streets of Montevideo, where tango music filled the air throughout the tournament—especially after the hosts won the final. Uruguay at the 1930 World Cup even put forth the first World Cup song, “Uruguayos Campeones” (Uruguay Champions), by José Pepino Minister.
Ever since, host countries have produced songs that seek to strike a balance between national pride (and boasting) and international connectedness and community. What was once a supplement, though, has since become a saturation, with FIFA promoting a song, an anthem, and a whole album of songs for the men’s 2026 World Cup, as well as a concert featuring Madonna, Shakira, and BTS that will prolong the halftime of the final to twice its usual length.
That’s just the music sponsored by FIFA. Beyond that, national football bodies contribute their own songs, as do TV stations, corporations, artists, fans, and, increasingly, AI. From the latter camp, “Imbattables” (Unbeatable), made by a “robot” called Crystalo, is currently racking up millions of views on YouTube.
Music For the Masses
World Cup songs are not made for music aficionados or aesthetes. Indeed, the more artistically inclined songs tend to bomb, an art-for-art ’s-sake mentality seen as an affront to the anti-elitist populism the genre embraces. Such was the fate of “How Does It Feel (To Be on Top of the World)?” solicited by the FA to be England’s representative song for the 1998 World Cup.
Made by England United, a supergroup consisting of hip indie rockers from Echo and the Bunnymen and Ocean Colour Scene (and the Spice Girls!), the FA no doubt thought it could ride the waves of Britpop and Spice-mania into the hearts of the nation. However, the song’s understated melody, cool demeanor, and obtuse messaging failed to strike a chord; fans preferred a rebooted version of The Lightning Seeds’ “Three Lions” and Fat Les’s novelty “Vindaloo” as their anthems for that tournament.
Made for the masses, and specifically for football fans, the World Cup songs that are most successful are those that most closely reflect the spirit—if not the style—of folk music. Such songs function as emotional glue connecting the music to the atmosphere and camaraderie of the tournament experience. Thus, songs must be flattering mirrors for the fans, adding to their pre-existing pumped and hopeful moods.
Folk music seeks to include, involve, and unite, thus complexity and subtlety become impediments. Simplicity and universal appeals are what work. Furthermore, just as much folk music is constructed to transfer readily to gatherings and marches, so the most effective football songs end up being sung by the thousands gathered in stadium stands.
The World Cup Music Formula
There is a reason most World Cup songs sound like AI-generated products. Both rely on predictable, preferred options rather than human idiosyncrasies. Therefore, these songs require the artist’s subordination to the larger cause, prioritizing generic appeal over individualized input. The music is constructed around broadly recognizable rhythms, accompanied by melodic hooks that invite involvement; the former engages the body, the latter the mind. The lyrics reinforce what the music is telling you: soar toward your dreams; put in the effort; experience joy; ride the swells of passion, energy, and excitement.
Some thought them lazy when FIFA chose Queen’s “We Are the Champions” as the song representing the USA during the 1994 men’s World Cup. A 17-year-old song by an English band made many wonder why the nation that brought the world rock ‘n’ roll could not come up with a song of its own. Nevertheless, one can see why and how staples of sporting events like “We Are the Champions” work. They enliven you with the beat, while encouraging you to contribute to the chorus lines.
However much we grow weary of such songs, or cynical about their predictable hooks, crass slogans, and clichéd messages of inspiration, when a song like “We Will Rock You” starts pulsing through the PA system of a stadium, who can resist stomping their feet and chanting along to its inane title-line? The value of a World Cup song will never be measured by critics; only the fans will determine its use value.
World Cup Songs That Make the Whole World Sing
The advent of rock ‘n’ roll in the mid-1950s created a global audience for American popular music. Prior to that, World Cup songs tended to reflect the folk traditions of individual host nations, such that the rest of the world learned about a different type of music but were too removed to fully engage with it.
That all changed in 1962, by which time Elvis Presley et al had filtered into the popular culture of most nations. That year, Chile hosted the World Cup, with its band Los Ramblers providing the first official FIFA song, “El Rock Del Mundial” (The World Cup Rock).
Stylistically, “El Rock” is an outlier of the genre, its rockabilly beat appropriately propulsive, but an aberration in the history of tournament songs. Lyrically, though, one witnesses the kind of pithy positivity that subsequently pervaded World Cup songs. Los Ramblers speak for their nation when they sing—in Spanish—of “celebrating our triumphs”, being “ready to fight”, and “joy invad[ing] us”, while recognizing the global context in their “universal celebration” and gracious promise that their fans “will show good humor to foreign teams.” With football-friendly handclaps, kazoos, and whistles periodically injected into the rockin’ rhythmic flow, “El Rock” became so popular with fans that it remains Chile’s biggest-selling song of all time.
Equally unusual in the pantheon of World Cup songs was England’s contribution when it hosted four years later. Again, an upbeat rhythm provides the foundation for Lonnie Donegan’s “World Cup Willie”, but its skiffle style was unfamiliar to much of the world. In England, though, skiffle reigned supreme in the late 1950s, its vaudevillian jauntiness later showcased by the Beatles in songs like “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and “Maggie Mae”.
Donegan was the king of skiffle, though his star was waning by the time his ode to England’s mascot was presented to the world. Nevertheless, an international frenzy ensued around the song, a whole cottage industry of merchandise springing up around Willie the anthropomorphic lion.
The official World Cup songs of 1962 and ’66, while tying the genre to emerging pop music, proved to be curious novelties in historical context. What we have come to recognize as the typical tournament song was first brought to us by Ricky Martin, who got the whole world singing and dancing to “The Cup of Life” during the 1998 World Cup in France.
Martin was already a star within and beyond his native Puerto Rico, but this song rocketed him into global superstardom, sparking a Latin explosion still heard, seen, and felt in pop music today. The key is in the chorus, with its multi-lingual chant of “Allez, allez, allez” (French), “Olé, olé, olé” (Spanish), and “Go, go, go” (English). This was the moment, it appears, when the inclusion of one or more of these touchstone words became a compulsory requirement of the genre.
“The Cup of Life” checks all the boxes we are all too familiar with: sped-up samba beats travelling at 125 BPM; repetitious chants of one or two-syllable words; instructions to work hard and play hard—motivational directives aimed at both fans and team. Building a bridge between music and sport is the essential task of all songwriters in the field. Accordingly, the camera in the video for “The Cup of Life” constantly switches between the star (Martin) performing on stage and the receptive fans singing in the audience; this infers a synonymous parallel of that relationship with the players and fans in a charged-up soccer stadium.
ESPN voted Martin’s the second greatest FIFA World Cup song of all time, saving its top spot for “Waka-Waka” Shakira’s contribution to the 2010 tournament held in South Africa.
Fittingly, the singer’s customary Latin rhythms are substituted with Afropop ones here, a switch-up she has repeated with this year’s “Dai Dai” offering. With four World Cup songs on her résumé, Shakira is the undisputed queen of the genre, her triple threat of voice, dancing, and looks giving her a multifaceted allure.
Like Ricky Martin, Shakira recognizes the phonetic power of simple words repeated over a percussive rhythm, every verse cliché couched next to a chorus tag that signals globe-speak. Waka-waka = Do it! Dai Dai=Come on, come on! Pitbull and Jennifer Lopez followed this same formula with “We Are One (Ole Ola)” (Brazil, 2014), as did Trinidad Carbona with “Hayya-Hayya” (Qatar, 2022). None has mastered the mix like Shakira, though “Waka-Waka” has racked up over 4.5 billion views on YouTube.
Cool Britannia Rules the World Cup Songs
The FIFA formula has produced songs with unrivaled international reach and resonance; it has also led to an increasingly standardized form in which the men’s World Cup songs sound safe, sanitized, and soulless. Thankfully, there is a parallel universe where FIFA has not imposed its focus-group mindset, where individual countries express more unique and distinctive versions of the genre. No nation has done this better than England, particularly during the 1990s.
Britain in the 1990s is remembered and romanticized in the same light as the 1960s: as a golden age of music, football, and culture. The era’s Britpop had much in common with the classic pop and rock of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Kinks, while the national team came closer to winning a tournament than it had since hoisting the World Cup in 1966. Branded as “Cool Britannia” by an enthusiastic media, the nation was promoted as the hub of hip Europe. In 1996, England hosted the Euros, as it had the men’s World Cup 30 years earlier, and fielded a team regarded as on a par with the previous period.
Football and music culture had already been brought into a finer synthesis earlier in the decade when New Order embraced football—and vice versa—with “World in Motion”, the FA-sanctioned anthem for the 1990 men’s World Cup. Showcasing the proto-EDM sounds of Madchester, the song features team players singing along with the band, left winger John Barnes even contributing a rap section in the middle. The perpetual messages of self-belief in the lyrics offered something a little different than past World Cup songs, but by using New Order, the FA signaled a desire to associate English soccer with the cool indie scene of its music culture.
The subsequent rise of Britpop around Oasis and Blur brought closer attention to football terrace identity, both bands regularly wearing “casual” sportswear as part of the larger “Lad culture” of the period. By the time of UEFA Euro 1996, Britpop was fully aligned with that culture and answered when the FA came calling. The result was “Three Lions”, now the de facto anthem of English national football for both the men’s (Lions) and women’s (Lionesses) sides.
Written by Ian Broudie of the Lightning Seeds, with lyrics by comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, the song encapsulates three primary characteristics the English are renowned for: great pop music, a wry sense of humor, and the most delusional football fans on the planet. Unlike most tournament songs, “Three Lions” shows awareness of the absurdity of the genre itself, simultaneously mocking while indulging in its excesses. Unlike others, too, the song focuses on the real experiences of fans rather than churning more empty bromides off the production line.
“30 years of hurt, 30 years of dreaming” bemoans the singer on the song’s release on the cusp of the ’96 tournament. Rewritten for the ’98 World Cup, the updated video begins with images of the missed penalty that had knocked England out two years earlier.
How often does a World Cup song revolve around the despair and disappointment of the supporters and their team? Still, being England, hope springs eternal, so the band in 1998 sang “No more years of hurt, no more years of dreaming” with the kind of tentative conviction only an England fan can understand. Few songs have better captured the rollercoaster of emotions fans go through, and none with a more endearing attitude of self-deprecation.
Supporters clearly recognized themselves in “the song”Three Lions”, heartily singing its key line—“Football’s coming home”—from stadium terraces in 1996, ’98, and every other year England has participated in a tournament since. Each time the song heads back to the top of the charts, supporters consistently validate it as their own unofficial national anthem.
In 2022, when the England Lionesses took home the Euros, the players interrupted manager Sarina Wiegman’s closing media briefing, jumping on the tables and collectively belting out a celebratory chant of “Football’s coming home.” Listen closely to the England fans this month, and you will hear that infectious chorus of sarcastic optimism again and again—rebooted—even after the team gets knocked out on penalties…again.
Editor’s note: Our favorite song from the Women’s World Cup goes all the way back to 2023 with Miss Li’s “Våran sång”.