The high drama and unplumbable emotional depths of England’s footballing adventures have long been heightened by song, from official tournament tie-ins such as New Order’s World in Motion to fan-generated favourites such as dance track turned terrace chant Freed from Desire. Now, ahead of the Women’s World Cup kicking off on Thursday in Australia and New Zealand, the England women’s team hope to have a crowd-pleasing singalong of their own: Call Me a Lioness.
A starting 11 of female-identifying British artists, including Melanie C and Self Esteem, have come together under the moniker Hope FC to record the unofficial track for England’s World Cup campaign. Songwriter Glen Roberts was hit by inspiration as the Lionesses won Euro 2022 and co-wrote it with producer Joel Pott and singer-songwriter Olivia Dean. Rather than focusing on the sometimes miserable experience of being a fan of the underdog – as Baddiel, Skinner and the Lightning Seeds did on their enduring Euro 96 hit Three Lions – it puts fans into the players’ mindset in the dreamlike aftermath of their 2022 victory, and manifests another: “We’re bringing it home again”, as one of several chantable lines goes.
Roberts, Pott and Dean started with a few beers and a checklist of elements that make a good football anthem: nostalgia, determination, national pride and a feeling of being in it together, be it euphoric victory or crushing loss. “If you look at Three Lions or Sweet Caroline, they all fall around the same tempo – they’ve all got this natural sort of moving stomp element,” Roberts says. And, of course, you need a rousing chorus that everyone can sing regardless of range. What was trickier was filling the time between the choruses, the quiet bit before the loud. “You can’t have a chorus full of singalong joy and just have the same in the verses.”
Dean was an essential female voice, who, as a West Ham fan since childhood, wanted to recreate the sense of being in a crowd and singing your heart out. She remembers sitting on her dad’s shoulders and singing – “they probably weren’t very PC songs or chants when I was 11 years old” – and how that made her feel like a part of the team. Women’s football has had to fight for years to achieve wider recognition, and that additional feeling – of being part of something bigger – was a big focus for her. “When we were writing it, all I could think of was girls in primary school and them having something to shout and sing together,” she says.
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Call Me a Lioness certainly has the feel of a community song. The artists – with Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell, Sports Team’s Alex Greenwood, Marika Hackman, Rachel Chinouriri, Shura, Jasmine Jethwa, Rose Gray and Highlyy rounding out the lineup – were invited to take part in a very casual way, mostly by way of being friends and football fans. The result is a good-natured song with the air of a school choir, albeit one with Sporty Spice ad-libbing in the background. “It’s not premeditated in any way,” Roberts says – while it’s getting distribution from EMI, it was brought together before the label’s involvement, and all proceeds are to be split between four sport-focused charities. “I think it’s really reflective of women’s football itself, where it’s all about community,” he continues.
Shura says she “never said yes to anything faster” – as a child she was scouted to play for Manchester City’s youth team and has always wondered: what if? What if there had been better funding, better sports rehab, better resources for girls like her playing in thick northern mud? “What I love about this England team is that they’re so aware and conscious and thankful to the women who have come before,” she says. “I can’t play for them, but I can sing for them now. I feel almost a part of that story.”
Just as the Lionesses’ progression to the World Cup’s knockout stages isn’t guaranteed, Call Me a Lioness also faces a struggle. For a song to become an anthem it relies on repetition, and at a time when people listen to music in a fragmentary way across radio and personalised streaming services, there’s a real chance that it won’t reach enough ears, often enough, to become part of the cultural soundtrack. Think of Olé by rappers Krept & Konan, the official England song for the 2020 Euros, which went more or less ignored.
But the artists and songwriters of Hope FC still hope to hear fans singing the chorus line – “Call me a Lioness, I wear it on my chest” – or even just the la-la-las. If it succeeds, it will be organic, like a grassroots local team come good. As Potts says, “it was just a bunch of mates coming together to make a song about football.”
“It’s about time that we have a song of our own,” Shura adds. “Especially since we actually won something.”
