Imagine you’ve got a job at the English Football Association. One day, somewhat surprising to you, the job of picking the artist for the theme song for the World Cup appears on your desk.

And when you think about prior songs you think, “Wow, these are AWFUL.”

Except for “Back Home” from 1970. For whatever reason, that one was is fine. But all of the others are… blech.

So you’re thinking about what to do while listening to music, and you start thinking about how great Joy Division were, and - logically - the idea dawns on you, maybe New Order would do it?

Their stuff is pretty catchy. They have a World Cup worthy sound.

This is a true story by the way.

David Bloomfield is the guy this actually happened to.

He looked up the band, tracked down their representation - who just happened to be Tony Wilson at Factory Records, and pitched the idea.

If you’ve seen 24 Hour Party People you have a good idea of the state of Factory Records at that time, which will mean it probably won’t come as a surprise that Tony said yes, pretty fast.

The band got to work on it, pull out an older track they hadn’t used as their base, and then they pulled in prior producer Stephen Hague (“True Faith”) to make it pop.

There’s also a funny detail about how they got a comedian to help co-write lyrics, which produced a “E for England” line that later was vetoed because, well, it was a little too on the nose as an ecstasy reference. Candidly, I’m surprised they caught it.

In March of 1990, the band and a bunch of national team players gathered in a studio, drank a ton of champagne, probably didn’t do ecstasy (but who can really say), because the resulting product still had its fair share of innuendo and substance references.

Is the song good?

You’ll have to be the judge.

And be nice about the John Barnes “rap” in the middle, it was 1990 remember.

Music and sport go hand in hand. They are shared experiences.

And, in this case, I bet your average New Order fan doesn’t know this was their only UK #1 single.

Happy World Cup - I am so excited I will even listen to this song twice.

ps. here’s “Back Home” in case you’re curious