Over the years I’ve gone from a cynical look at these football and music tunes to one of appreciation.
John Peel was the same with the Eurovision Song Contest. At first you find amusement and eventually you do become of fan of the tat. Yes most of it is so clichéd, but you end up celebrating these terrible tunes.

Some of them as you will see in this next example, have become a historical document of sorts.

Before I continue I want to mention dj jedredy of myvinyldreams, one of my favourite places to visit. You can also listen his DJ sets at BUMS LIVE on a Sunday. It’s his fault for this next bit. Thank you.

As mentioned this is a record (pun intended) of an upcoming event in the summer of 1990 and the fact that it will be on (nearly) all of the telly for the next few weeks. BUT… there’s a twist. Stay tuned.

A quick look before we have a listen – The idea (I think) of this single was to be tongue in cheek and as you will hear, a parody of an artist who was topping the charts in that year.

As you’ve guessed from the band name and as you will hear the style of music they were trying to mimic Soul II Soul. Then further a spoofing with the tune which you might remember from the “Just one Cornetto” adverts, which is in itself a parody of O Sole Mio, a Neapolitan operatic tune. So a parody of a parody.

I’ve been building this up long enough. Let’s have a listen to: Goal II Goal Featuring Jazzie J with Oh No, Not Football:

Samples from Saint & Greavsie as well as from commentary for various games. It then has a stereotypical wife/girlfriend complaining about football, their significant other gathering around the TV to watch the World Cup as well as the aforementioned S&G and just ITV for some reason. And then… she moves on to the footballers, seeing Lineker playing and suddenly changing her mind. If she’s got to watch football, England’s her team. The chorus now switches to her wanting England to bring back the World Cup from Italy.

Ah ha, got you there. Thought it was going to be all negative weren’t you.

I did some extra digging to see if I could find who was behind this. There’s no point in asking why, as with serial killers there’s never a reason. But I did find two of those named on the single, Charlie Skarbek and Rick Blaskey went on to cash in on various other major sporting events, including the Olympics and back to the World Cup with an anthem for the 1994 World Cup with Daryl Hall belting out Gloryland.

On a slightly related note – still sticking with Italia ’90 is the following tune which is similar to the above in that the artist is trying to copy another popular act from that year.

Despite the title and the cover this was actually a production via Germany. But back in 1990 it was Italo House music which was all the rage. The producers behind this one decided to jump on that bandwagon with their sub-Black Box mimicry:

Digitalia - Coppa Del Mondo
Digitalia - back
» Digitalia – Coppa Del Mondo (World Cup Italia)

(Song supplied by the mighty 45Football)

Why do I think this is a spoof ? Have a look at the names with the music and lyrics: Dirk Heine and Marcus Jockschat. If these are their real names then my apologies, but this musical effort was really phoned in.

The reason I bring this up is that there will be a podcast starting next month which will cover Italia 90 and I will make an appearance in one of the episodes in which I mention the above tune. This pod will look at every match from that tournament. That’s right there will be a pod every day for every game. How he has achieved this I will never know, but since there isn’t going to be a Euro tournament in a few weeks you might as well listen to this instead.

Starting from 8th June, subscribe and listen at: vincera90.podbean.com

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