A curious piece of news from the world of anthems: the Spanish football chant ‘Olé, olé, olé’ has been officially recognised as a cultural treasure, archived for posterity. Meanwhile, the creators of the UK’s own ‘Three Lions’ are said to be dissecting its formula, hoping to bottle lightning twice. But what does this say about us, and about the very British art of collective singing?
Let’s be clear. ‘Olé’ is not a carefully crafted pop song. It is a beast of pure, unselfconscious joy. It emerged from the terraces, passed from voice to voice, a three-note hook so simple it could survive any translation. It is the sound of a crowd becoming one organism. That is its power, and why the UK anthem makers are right to study it. We have our own canon: ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ brings a lump to the throat, and ‘Sweet Caroline’ now has a strange second life. But our anthems often carry a weight of irony or nostalgia. ‘Olé’ carries nothing but now.
I spoke to a man in a pub in Stockwell who remembers the 2010 World Cup. “We sang it all night,” he said, “though no one knew the Spanish words. It didn’t matter.” That is the human cost and cultural shift: the globalisation of a sound. We no longer need to understand to belong. The phrase becomes a passport. Meanwhile, ‘Three Lions’ works because it is a diary of shared pain and hope. But its creators are wise to look to the Iberian model. The formula? Repetition. Open vowels. A rising melody. And, crucially, no bridge. A bridge is where pop songs get complicated. An anthem must never complicate.
The cultural shift here is that we are now all anthropologists of euphoria. The British class dynamics play in too: chanting has often been seen as the domain of the rowdy working classes, yet now the middle classes sing along at corporate screenings. ‘Olé’ levels the pitch. It is the sound of pure, unembarrassed happiness, which in Britain is a rarity. We tend to prefer a wry smile to a full-throated roar. Perhaps studying its formula will teach us how to be less reserved, even for three minutes.
Of course, you cannot manufacture an organic chant. That is the risk. But you can learn the ingredients. The archivists in Spain have immortalised ‘Olé’ not as a fossil but as a living tradition. The UK anthem creators, if they listen, might hear the echo of what we have lost: the simple, tribal shout of joy. And that, truly, would be a triumph.
