England manager Fabio Capello may have forbidden an official England World Cup song, but that hasn’t stopped some of the biggest football commentators in England from recording a song to support their country’s team in this summer’s World Cup. Problem is it’s one of those songs that is grating the first time you listen to it. And it gets worse on repeated listens.

The song, entitled “Let’s Hear It England,” features commentators from ITV, BBC, Sky and ESPN together with the Cotswold Male Voice Choir. Commentators appearing on the track include Guy Mowbray, Jon Champion, Clive Tyldesley, Martin Tyler, Steve Banyard, Rob Hawthorne, Ian Darke, Peter Brackley, Simon Brotherton, Peter Drury, and Steve Wilson.

The project was created by football commentator Steve Banyard. He composed the song and oversaw the production. “For the demo track, Steve recorded all the instrumentation, and much of that is retained in the final version.
Steve began playing the piano from age 9, and has been writing music since he was 11, but this is the first time he’s ever released one of his songs,” according to the Commentators United website.

While I enjoy Banyard as a commentator and I appreciate the effort he has made to create a song to get behind the England team, this is a song that people will get sick of hearing over and over again between now and the World Cup in June.

Take, for example, the lyrics to the chorus:

“Let’s hear it En-ger-land (oh-ay, oh-ay-o)
Let’s hear it En-ger-land (oh-ay, oh-ay-o)
We’re gonna red, white, blue you
Shoot right through you now.”

Yikes.

What do you think? It’s definitely no New Order “World In Motion,” or “Three Lions” by The Lightning Seeds.