World in Motion...
single
"World in Motion..." is a song by English band New Order (performed with the England national football team, credited as ENGLANDneworder). The song is New Order's only number-one song on the UK Singles Chart. It was produced for the England national football team's 1990 FIFA World Cup campaign and features a guest rap by England footballer John Barnes and additional vocals by several members of the English team of 1990 and comedian Keith Allen, who co-wrote the lyrics.
Singer Bernard Sumner described the single to NME as "the last straw for Joy Division fans", noting how its upbeat sound had inverted their former band's famously gloomy image. The song was originally to be called "E for England", with lyrics that ran "E is for England, England starts with E / We'll all be smiling when we're in Italy", but the Football Association vetoed the title, realising that it sounded suspiciously like a reference to the drug ecstasy.
Song
Origins
The Football Association's (FA) press officer at the time, David Bloomfield, who had been a fan of Joy Division, contacted Tony Wilson, the head of New Order's label Factory Records, with the suggestion that the band record a track for the forthcoming World Cup in Italy. Without any hesitation, Wilson agreed. Bloomfield had seen and heard England's previous World Cup tunes and thought them uniformly dull, with the possible exception of the 1970 single, "Back Home".
Bloomfield had been inspired by a track by Colourbox called "The Official Colourbox World Cup Theme", and he had noticed that the respected BBC Radio DJ John Peel occasionally played tracks by American football teams, deeming them good enough to play on his show without a hint of irony.
Watching television one night, Bloomfield found himself watching Best and Marsh, a concoction of football chat and action clips.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “World in Motion...” is single. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through World, Motion and single, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “single” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1342453. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1990 and 1970.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “World in Motion...” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.