‘Gloryland’: the forgotten 1994 World Cup anthem written by Daryl Hall
Music is as essential a part of the FIFA football World Cup as sticker albums, bizarre mascots, and trepidatious international politics. Granted, the music that has accompanied the football tournament over the decades has produced its fair share of stinkers, but back in 1994, the World Cup’s official anthem boasted the songwriting power of Daryl Hall behind it.
World Cup anthems, often in a less-than-official sense, stretch back over half a century. Whether it was the 1970 England squad giving a less-than-inspiring rendition of ‘Back Home’, John Barnes giving us a glimpse of what could have been a career in hip-hop on ‘World In Motion’, or the Tartan Army’s recent, unexplained adoption of ‘Yes Sir, I Can Boogie’, international football has always boasted a specific soundtrack. Yet, it was only back in 1990 that the World Cup itself began to have official songs to mark each tournament.
‘To Be Number One’ was the English title of that inaugural anthem from Italia ‘90, and Giorgio Moroder’s legendary compositional skills provided a fitting soundtrack to that utterly iconic tournament. However, the Italians left rather large shoes to fill when the next World Cup rolled around, so the Americans called upon one of their most successful songwriters to fit the bill.
Having released his solo album, Soul Alone, the year prior, Daryl Hall was rapidly moving away from the 1980s pop stardom that his glory days with Hall and Oates provided, but there was no doubting his credentials. With a multitude of number-one singles under his belt and a discography beloved by audiences across the globe, Hall’s appointment to deliver the World Cup’s official anthem back in 1994 was not completely out of left field.
Using the traditional song, ‘Glory, Glory (Lay My Burden Down)’ – a song with its own footballing heritage – as its basis, Hall’s version added lyrics befitting of such a grandiose occasion. A strange blend of 1990s mainstream pop and gospel, the song could perhaps be accused of being outside of Hall’s typical wheelhouse, but that is the least of its worries.
Adhering to all the stereotypes, the World Cup anthem confirmed the rest of the globe’s view of the United States as an overly patriotic, overly dramatic nation. ‘Gloryland’, as its name suggests, is among the most painfully patriotic songs ever put to tape; sounding as though Hall vomited stars and stripes onto the mixing desk after one too many ‘Big Gulps’.
Admittedly, the World Cup’s official anthems are, by and large, pretty forgettable. For instance, the mere existence of Russia’s World Cup anthem from 2018, ‘Live It Up’, completely escaped my personal subconscious until researching this article. For those who are similarly forgetful, let it be remembered that that particular anthem featured Will Smith as a contributor.
Meanwhile, anybody who remembers Qatar’s contribution from only four years ago deserves to have their memory skills studied.
Nevertheless, there have been some World Cup anthems that have stood the test of time, the archetypal example being Shakira’s ‘Waka Waka’ from South Africa in 2010. It seems bizarre, then, that a songwriter as accomplished as Daryl Hall could lend his talents to the anthem for such a high-profile World Cup, only for the song to be forgotten about as soon as the final whistle blew on Brazil v Italy.
