Let's Hear It England

Album: Let's Hear It England (2010)
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Songfacts®:

  • The 2010 World Cup of soccer prompted a massive outburst of patriotism in England especially, and literally tens of thousands of fans flocked to South Africa to support their country. If they'd known in advance what would happen, most of them would have stayed home.

    In the first round, the much vaunted England team could manage only a draw with the USA, which in spite of its size and influence on the world stage was a minnow in this sport; in their second match they could manage only another draw, against Algeria, this time without even scoring a goal, and in the third of their group matches they managed only a 1-0 win against Slovenia, another minnow, with a population of a mere two million.
    All hyped up for the knock out stage, they were crushed 4-1 by Germany. Shoddy though England's performance may have been, Italy, the world champions, didn't even get that far, which was of course no consolation to the England supporters who had paid good money to see pathetic play.

    The jingoism surrounding the World Cup also prompted an outburst of songs, and at least one English TV news programme ran a song competition. It has to be said that if most of these songs were written by amateurs they were far more professional than the team they were written to support.

    "Let's Hear It England" (sung "Let's hear it In-ger-land") which runs to around 3 minutes, was composed by TV commentator Steve Banyard. Although they may not be the most impartial of judges, Banyard's fellow commentators praised the song to a man. Ian Darke said it all came out of nowhere; they were asked to record some sound grabs by one of their colleagues (Banyard) and...

    Steve Wilson said his kids loved it, and so apparently did Manchester United, because when it was played in front of a 75,000-strong crowd, they joined in spontaneously.
  • The song features the voices of no less than 11 of the country's top sports commentators in addition to the Cotswold Male Voice Choir. It was produced by Red White Blue Music Ltd for the Prince's Trust, an organisation set up by Prince Charles in 1976 to help disadvantaged youngsters. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 2

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