Writing a hit World Cup song could set you up for life, but one chart-topping band claims it was the worst thing they ever did and killed off their career. Anthemic rockers Embrace were riding high at the start of the century when the English FA approached them to record a song for the 2006 World Cup. With peak Rooney, Gerrard, Lampard, Scholes, and Beckham, this was a vintage England team, and they wanted a song to propel them to the final in Germany.
Embrace penned 'World At Your Feet,' which reached No. 3 in the charts but at a cost to the band's future. The quintet says the FA gave them only four tickets to the World Cup, and they have warned others not to bother recording a song. Guitarist Rick McNamara admitted: 'It's one of my biggest regrets doing that, and smoking. If I could live my life again I wouldn't go near it with a barge pole, and I would advise anybody else thinking of doing it not to do it either.'
A Dream That Turned Sour
It started as a positive idea, one they hoped would unite the country. McNamara said: 'When the World Cup song came along initially our label went, 'No, we don't think that's a good idea.' But we all went, 'Yeah, let's do it'... I think we were on a short list of one band, so we thought, 'Ah, great, man. Everyone's gonna get behind it, and it's gonna be such a uniting experience, and gonna be good for us and the country, whatever.''
The band launched the song with a show in London, but the treatment they received making it, and the aftermath, was disappointing. They reckon it turned the tide of opinion against them, and any music that followed their World Cup song didn't get considered by Radio One. Rick added: 'It clipped the wings of the album, really.'
Lack of Support and Snobbery
They received hardly any support from the English FA or former World Cup heroes while making the track's video. 'The FA gave us, like, four tickets to see a match in Germany; there's five of us in the band,' said Rick. 'You know what I mean? There was, like, talk that they wanted a hip hop song, rather than indie song,' he added. 'A bit of snobbery going on there; nobody wanted to be in the video. We asked some of the old World Cup squad if they wanted to be in the video, and they wanted an extortionate amount of money.'
In fact, money was their overriding memory of the experience. 'It's all about money football as it turns out, I didn't know,' he said. 'So we played this PFA Awards ceremony. And we were like by the teams that are lower down in the leagues, like Sheffield and stuff at the time, and they were like, 'go on lads.' Giving us good vibes, but then all the Premier League players are just like snubbing us and stuff and just left us with a really nasty taste.'
'It's one of my biggest regrets doing that, and smoking. If I could live my life again I wouldn't go near it with a barge pole, and I would advise anybody else thinking of doing it not to do it either.'
