Honeymoon Suite Music

The World Cup starts tomorrow. Four years on from Qatar 2022, this is to be the first major tournament of the post-Southgate era for England. Despite Thomas Tuchel’s rather ludicrous squad selections, the familiar national optimism that ‘this is our year’ is inevitable – and perhaps that optimism is justified given some of the talent that we have at our disposal. As I pride myself upon being topical, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at New Order’s 1990 single ‘World in Motion’ and why I believe it to be the greatest World Cup song of all time.

World in Motion was released on the 21^st May 1990, a month prior to the start of the 1990 World Cup in Italy – dubbed ‘Italia 90’. After England’s 1966 World Cup win on home soil, the furthest England had reached in a World Cup prior to Italia 90 was the quarter finals in the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. For 24 years, England had found themselves stuck in a cycle of non-qualification and lacklustre tournament performances. Aside from international football, English football as a collective was in a dark place. Hooliganism was rife, matchday attendances were at an all time low and most harrowingly, English football was still in the process of recovering from the events of the Hillsborough Disaster that occurred only a year prior in 1989.

The nation was also entering its last few months under Thatcherism at the time of Italia 90 which, if you look at English football from a socio-historical perspective, accounts for why hooliganism was such a problem throughout the 1980s. Hooliganism was such a problem that Thatcher herself considered withdrawing England from the World Cup in the fear that it would potentially act as a ‘natural focus’ for hooliganism. Margaret Thatcher committed some truly heinous acts of violence against this country in her eleven-year stint as prime minister, but even for her withdrawing England from a World Cup was one step too far. However, Thatcher’s government did take action in attempting to minimise the risk of English hooliganism from the World Cup by requesting for all of England’s fixtures to be played on the Italian island of Sardinia. In the eyes of Thatcher’s government, isolating England fans from mainland Italy would provide Italian authorities with greater control should there be any outbreaks of hooliganism.

Enough of the digressing, let’s speak about World in Motion. If you are not familiar with New Order, they are new wave band from Manchester that formed in 1980. Three of the four members of New Order were previously members of the legendary Manchester band Joy Division. After Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis passed away in April of 1980, Bernard Sumner (guitarist, keyboardist), Peter Hook (bassist) and Stephen Morris (drummer) decided it would be disrespectful to continue under the name of Joy Division and hence formed New Order to respect Curtis’ legacy. Sumner became frontman of New Order, and the band introduced guitarist and keyboardist Gillian Gilbert to the band soon after they formed.

Over the course of the next ten years, New Order established themselves as a pioneer of the new wave genre. In comparison to Joy Division, New Order’s sound was more upbeat, more poppy and was easily distinguishable from the gloomy, more atmospheric sound of Joy Division. This is something I respect immensely – New Order didn’t just form under the pretence of replicating the sound of Joy Division, they transformed their sound completely. To me, this feels a lot more respectful to the legacy of Joy Division and more significantly the songwriting of Ian Curtis.

The idea of New Order recording a track for the 1990 World Cup is credited to one David Bloomfield, who was press officer of the Football Association (FA) from 1982 to 1997. Bloomfield was said to have been a massive fan of both New Order and Joy Division and felt as though New Order could be the band to eradicate the stereotype of English World Cup songs being treated as more of a spoof as opposed to a genuinely well-written pop song. Developing upon the idea, Bloomfield contacted Tony Wilson (head of New Order’s record label Factory Records) with the proposition. To Bloomfield’s surprise, Wilson agreed almost instantaneously and talks quickly began with New Order on producing a song.

One issue that presented itself during the recording of World in Motion was the England squad’s lack of enthusiasm to participate in what they assumed to be yet another spoof song for a World Cup. Both Bloomfield and Wilson were adamant that World in Motion would not be yet another joke song that would fade into obscurity as quickly as it entered the public eye, but the England squad were not convinced. The recording of World in Motion took place on the 25^th March 1990 at Sol Studios in Berkshire. Six England players turned up to the recording of the song – Liverpool’s John Barnes, Peter Beardsley and Steve McMahon, Tottenham’s Paul Gascoigne, Marseille’s Chris Waddle and Nottingham Forest’s Des Walker.

Something that made me laugh upon researching World in Motion is that the only request that FA Press Officer David Bloomfield gave to New Order and the England players was that there was to be no mention of hooliganism in the lyrics – my god everyone was on tenterhooks about hooliganism in this country. The initial idea for the rap verse of World in Motion was for each of the six England players to perform a line each, but it quickly became apparent that John Barnes was the only player of the six that could actually match the tempo of the song whilst rapping. Just the fact that somewhere there is likely to be a recording of Paul Gascoigne performing a line from the rap verse in World in Motion is brilliant.  

World in Motion would go on to be New Order’s first and only single to reach number one on the UK Singles Chart. The song managed to break the stereotype of English World Cup songs being viewed as parodies and remains as relevant in English footballing culture today as it did in 1990. Aside from World in Motion being a genuinely well-written song, what cemented the song as iconic is what it was able to represent. Both World in Motion and England’s 1990 World Cup campaign share a handful of similarities – the expectation for both was low and came after years of either terrible songs or miserable World Cup performances. With England reaching the semi-finals of a World Cup for the first time since 1966, World in Motion became an anthem that was representative of the brightest future that lay ahead for English football – one that sought to move beyond the tragedies, hooliganism and pessimism that had defined the previous decade.