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\"Three Lions\" was the official anthem of the England football team for the 1996 European Championships, held that year in England. The music was written by The Lightning Seeds, with comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner providing the lyrics. more...

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The song was a much bigger success than most football songs, and was said to capture the Zeitgeist perfectly. The title comes from the emblem of the England football team, which is in turn derived from the Coat of Arms of England.

Themes

The lyrics spoke not of unbounded optimism for victory - but instead told of how, ever since 1966 and the one unequivocal success of the English football team, every tournament has ended in dashed hopes and the feeling that England will never again reach those heights (\"Three Lions on a shirt, Jules Rimet still gleaming / Thirty years of hurt, never stopped me dreaming\"). The song's intro included samples of pessimism from football commentators Alan Hansen (\"I think it's bad news for the English game\"), Trevor Brooking (\"We're not creative enough; we're not positive enough\"), and Jimmy Hill (\"We'll go on getting bad results\").

Despite the failures of the past, each tournament is greeted with fresh hopes that this might be the year they do it again, and the song's exuberant chorus proclaimed that \"It's coming home, it's coming home, it's coming, football's coming home\" (derived from the tournament's slogan, 'Football comes home').

The song makes reference to English heroes of the past, specifically Bobby Moore, Gary Lineker, Bobby Charlton and Nobby Stiles. According to Frank Skinner's autobiography, the original lyrics submitted to the FA included the line \"Butcher ready for war\", in reference to the player's notorious heroic performance in a qualifying game against Sweden. The FA requested this was changed, so as to avoid hooliganism imagery, and the \"Bobby belting the ball\" was written as a replacement. The \"ready for war\" motif was later used in the 1998 version of the song (see below), attributed to Paul Ince.

The commentary of the end of the song contrasts that of the song's opening with positive lines which suggest that England could win a major football championship:

\"England have done it in the last minute of extra time!\"; \"What a save! Gordon Banks!\"; \"Good old England, England that couldn't play football\"; \"England have got it in the bag\";

The single featured a karaoke version as a second track.

Success

The Britpop phenomenon was at its peak in 1996, and the Lightning Seeds were one of its leading lights, so their involvement gave the song very wide appeal. It stormed to number one in the singles chart, and as England progressed to the semi-finals, stadia around the country echoed to the sound of fans singing the song after English victories over Scotland, The Netherlands and Spain. It was so popular, in fact, that even other teams loved it. England faced Germany in the semi-finals, and Jürgen Klinsmann said later that the Germans were singing the song themselves on the way to the stadium, and perhaps even more ironically, the German team and the crowd sang the song as they paraded the trophy on a balcony above a square in Frankfurt.