It’s been a big week for the Three Lions, as the England football team won in a knockout match in a competitive championship for the first time since 2006, beating Colombia on penalties.
But players and fans aren’t the only ones that stand to benefit. David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and The Lightning Seeds’ track of the same name is enjoying a surge in popularity in the Official Singles Chart and beyond.
One of the biggest selling UK singles ever, it was originally released in 1996, when England hosted the European Championships, and soundtracked an ecstatic summer that ended all too soon in semi-final defeat against Germany.
For the moment, fans of the song – not to mention Epic and Columbia, who released it – can smile again, as it looks set to crack the Top 40 this week.
The Official Charts Company has revealed that the song is sitting pretty at No.35, having leapt from No.56 on Monday.
On Spotify, Three Lions reached an all-time high of 450,000 global plays on Tuesday night, as Gareth Southgate’s team beat Colombia. The 1996 version also topped the iTunes chart following the match.
Three Lions has 6,775,326 Spotify streams to date, and the 1998 release has 3,263,163. The original video has almost 9 million YouTube views.
According to figures released by Amazon Music, ahead of England’s first match against Tunisia, streams of Three Lions increased by 4809%, while it was the most popular song on the platform after the team's 6-1 victory over Panama. Streams increased by a further 450% after the Colombia match, and the track is Amazon Music's most popular football song of the summer.
In the summer of ’96, it spent two weeks at No.1, while a 1998 version, reworked for that year’s World Cup, enjoyed three weeks at the top. Together, the songs have a combined sales figure of more than 1.6 million.
Tournaments in 2002 and 2004 also prompted re-releases of the hit, and saw it reach No.9 and No.16 respectively. The 2002 version has a to date sales figure of 42,922, while 2004’s has 248,938.
Overall, Baddiel, Skinner and The Lightning Seeds have two UK No.1s, two Top 10s, five weeks at No.1, 16 weeks in the Top 10, 33 in the Top 40 and 50 in the Top 75.
It’s looking like England will go into tomorrow’s quarter final against Sweden with the anthem back in the Top 40.
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