2018 World Cup’s official song ‘Live It Up’ lacks anthemic, adrenaline quality

I’ll be honest. It’s been a week of the World Cup and I’m happily nosebleeding football, and don’t really have the time or earspace for music. But me being an immersive kind of chap, I spent the last few days being serenaded by official World Cup songs in between games.

But first, a warning. Unlike moving football songs like Gerry and Pacemakers’ ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ that’s not just the anthem for Liverpool FC, but football lovers in general; or Cologne band Höhner’s rendition of the Scottish folk song, ‘The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond’, ‘Mer Stonn Zo Dir’ (We Stand By You), which is the battle cry for German club FC Köln, World Cup songs are tacky. Think Eurovision tacky.

So even if Iceland hosts a World Cup, don’t expect the official rouser to be on the lines of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’. It’ll be more likely to be a clubber’s delight.


Which is what the 1988 France World Cup song – the bouncy Samba-doused Ricky Martin ‘classic’,‘La Copa de la Vida’ (The Cup of Life) – is less about Charlemagne’s search for a holy chalice and more about “Here we go! Ale, ale, ale!/ Go, go, go! Ale, ale, ale!” hitched to ‘Shake Your Bon-Bon’feelings. And it totally works from the stands – whether of football stadiums or pre-match sofas.


Then there’s another Spanish song, that actually was neither originally a Spanish song, nor even a football song – ‘Y Viva Españ’ (And Long Live Spain) Manolo Escobar’s 1973 rendition of the 1971 Belgian hit number sung in Dutch by Belgian singer Samantha, Eviva España, about looking forward to holidaying in Spain. Its preppy, peppy marionette tune suddenly gives way to the lift of the chorus ‘Y Viva España’.

So why is it associated with football? Apart from the pointless reason of the Tony Rees and the Cottagers version of the song converted to ‘Viva el Fulham’, it’s because it was played on high rotation during the 1982 Spain World Cup, and the tune – trumpets, Franco and fantango and all – remains a favourite footballing earworm, no matter which side is playing.

But the World Cup song has to be the 2010 South Africa zinger of a hip-shaker, Shakira’s ‘Waka Waka in, once again, Spanish. Adapted (read: nicked) from Cameroonian band Gold Sounds’ 1986 hit song, ‘Zamina Mina (Zangaléwa), Shakira’s rendition was raunchy and innocent, pelvic and choral at the same time. ‘Waka Waka’ remains, rightly, the biggest-selling World Cup song of all time.


This World Cup’s official song – ‘Live It Up’, by hip-hopster Nicky Jam, R&B-pop singer Era Istrefi and Will ‘Getting’ Jiggy Wit’ It’ Smith – has been playing on the telly before every game. It’s nicely jumpy, Istrefi’s singing perfectly as ironic as a Messi penalty miss, even as it tells us “One life, live it up, ‘cause we got one life.’ But what it lacks is that anthemic, adrenaline quality that’s partparty, part-game.

But who knows? If and when my team Argentina gets booted out of the World Cup, I’ll take solace in this. Or, most likely, in The Offspring’s more therapeutic (nonfootballing or World Cup) ditty, ‘Hit That’ – “I’m on a roll/ With all the girls I know/ I know you wanna hit that/ I know you wanna hit that.”