Zip File (74 MB)
World In Motion
Factory Records Fac 293
Produced by Stephen Hague (except The B-side, produced by Roli Mosimann)
May 1990
Tracklisting:
1. World In Motion
2. The B-side
3. World In Motion (Subbuteo Mix)
4. World In Motion (Subbuteo Dub)
5. World In Motion (Carabinieri Mix)
6. World In Motion (No Alla Violenza Mix)
7. World In Motion (Alternate Subbuteo Dub)
1 - 6 sourced from rips of PolyGram Canada CD single 846 237-2
7 sourced from Factory/MCA UK 45 RPM 12" single Fac 293R
Notes from Bruno Republic:
A string of tragedies struck English football starting in the mid-80s. On May 11, 1985, 56 people were killed in a horrific fire at Valley Parade stadium in Bradford. Later that same month, 39 spectators were killed at Heysel stadium in Brussels at the European Cup Final between England/Liverpool and Italy/Juventus after confrontational Liverpool fans started a melee. On April 15, 1989, 96 people were crushed to death at Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield due to inadequate crowd control. Finally, on June 3, 1990, mobs of football fans pushed sales of this single to the top of the charts, giving New Order as well as Factory Records their only number one hit. How did this happen? Well, the song was done as the theme for the English football team during the 1990 world cup.Some notes from Wikipedia:
50PoundNote doesn't want me to be too harsh on this song, so I'll hold back the snark from this point on, and stress the positives.
[Insert protracted silence here.]
Not too much to do here, mercifully. For the most part, just volume adjustments.
There are numerous different edits of several of the tracks. We've gone with the longest ones that we know of in each case. The only exception to this is what we're calling the Alternate Subbuteo Dub, which appeared on the remix 12", which is being included as it's a slightly different mix and cannot be recreated from editing down the longer version. There's a few snippets of spoken word near the beginning and end, the now-horribly-dated M1 piano sound is panned slightly differently.
Many thanks to JohnC for the lossless rips of this single. The Canadian CD from which most of this was sourced now goes for a fortune on eBay, as it's the only place where many of these mixes ever appeared on CD. Although for many years I could easily obtain this disc locally, I never bothered. I chose to get a UK copy instead because it had a superior tracklisting, with only four versions instead of six.
• The lyrics were co-written by comedian Keith Allen, who also appears on the track
• The original title was to be "E For England", but the Football Association nixed it
• The backing track is strikingly similar to the Reportage theme, which was also written by Stephen and Gillian
• The track has regularly topped polls to decide the best football song ever
At the time it was released, I quite liked this track. May 1990 was pre-internet, and Americans were/are largely ignorant to the World Cup, so it was a nice surprise to have an unexpected New Order single dropped in my lap. It's a shame, though, that the band's only #1 single amounts to a novelty song.
Keith Allen is Lily Allen's dad, and was in Making Out - for which New Order also provided the theme tune.
ReplyDeleteKenneth Wolstenholme did not grant permission for his legendary 'They think it's all over' commentary from the 1966 Final to be used, so an impersonation had to be done.
Barney wears an Elvis suit at one point during the video, anyone know why??
For me, the big win was the sleeve and its football-panel map of the world. Top-notch design.
ReplyDeleteThe t-shirt was fab. I do think everybody is a bit hardsh on this track. Yes, it really is of it's time but hey! Summer 1990 was great and this kicked it off big style.
ReplyDeleteThere was no real reason for Barney's Elvis suit other than it was part of a NME photoshoot at the time of making the video.
As much as I appreciate your bringing this (and all the precedes and will follow) to the table, I gotta be honest:
ReplyDeletehttp://rateyourmusic.com/collection/kingofgrief/rating13867339
I distinctly remember the first time I heard this. It was playing in Pat's Skate Shop on University Ave in Saint Paul, MN.
ReplyDeleteI was always afraid of being outed as a poser. Then I walk into this locally respected skate shop and the owner was sitting there listening the World In Motion single on his boom box.
OK, it's not even close to their best work. But it was exciting to hear when it first came out.
Oh, come on kids, you're being a bit hard here. It's no True Faith, but compared to most football songs it's a masterpiece. I have very fond memories of listening to this in the car on Simon Mayo's BBC Radio 1 breakfast show here in the UK the morning after we had scraped through to the World Cup Semi Finals after somehow seeing off Cameroon.
ReplyDeleteIt was incredibly exciting to hear this and think that we were just 90 mins away from the final.
novelty song - no way- it was (and is) very english and picked up on the time when the cool kids could admit to liking football, werent hooligans and got the whole acid house / summer of love thing. I remember DJing in a club in Derby in 1990 and playing this - it was great the time I saw the the indie kids and the casuals dancing together and chanting eng er land!
ReplyDelete@ Jane - oh, come on! You have to admit on SOME level it's a novelty song, as the FA doesn't normally commission pop singles. :D
ReplyDeleteI know my UK/Italian/South American/etc. friends love their football. I'm not making fun...well, not much. ;)
Excellent work once again, and congrats on finishing this portion of the series. One note -- unfortuately, I couldn't get all of the images to extract correctly using WinZip. I DLed them from Flickr photostream, but thought you might like to know that there could be a problem with the file. Thanks again!
ReplyDelete@ pronator: I will now gladly concede on that point. Shortly after I posted this, a friend of mine sent me Youtube links for several other football songs, from both before and after WIM.
ReplyDeleteAnd... oh... my... god!! THEY'RE WORSE THAN CHRISTMAS MUSIC!!! My screams of horror could not drown out the hellish sounds coming from my tinny computer speakers. I think I confessed to the Lockerbie bombing before blacked out from the pain. I didn't think sound could have that effect... Living in Canada for my entire life, I was blissfully ignorant of the horrors of football music. I had no idea that there were such draconian laws requiring such torturous songs to be created and inflicted upon the populace. It is the law, right? It has to be... I mean, I can't think of any other reason as to why such sonic warfare would exist.
I now understand that New Order risked their careers, their freedom, and even their lives by subversively creating a football song that only *appeared* to be a form of torture, and was actually just a really lame tune. They covertly joined the system to attack it from within. Now that I understand this, my respect for them has increased one hundred-fold.
The rap *cough* in the song was provided by England squad member John Barnes, but apparently most of the squad had a go when they turned up to do the chorus. There are some, particularily that of Newcastle's Peter Beardsley, that I would love to hear.
ReplyDeleteTo move away from the sentiment of the song for a moment...are the levels all over the place for anyone else? I'm continually raising and lowering the volume on my player.
ReplyDelete@ Rbettendorf - you must have some weird setting in your player, because everything is at a consistent level.
ReplyDeleteI also had the same problem as CakeSaint; however, nothing a little image searching cannot fix.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for doing this.
Thanks for all your work on these.
ReplyDeleteCan you re-up World In Motion? When I extract the zip, it says file is empty.
Cheers
although this is the completists' paradox, bear in mind that new order are all football fans.
ReplyDeleteyou have to understand that if a band got a chance to do the world cup song, pleasing a few goths who want to 'let joy division stay in their dark caves' would be far from their minds.
and england's team need all the encouragement they can get.