5 Non-Football Songs Which Are in Fact About Football

Football and music go together like bread and butter, cheese and wine, Yorke and Cole. It's just a natural fit.

The game we all love has inspired many songwriters to create anthems about the beautiful game, with Baddiel and Skinner'sThree Lions or Chas and Dave's Ossie's Dream (Spurs Are Off To Wembley) two of the more famous examples.

In the same way, football fans have breathed new life into songs like Seven Nation Army and made older songs like Tom Hark arguably more famous than their original release by inventing fun and vibrant terrace chants out of them.

Some songs even make their way onto compilations of all time greatest football anthems by way of an inclusion on an edition of the FIFA video game or by a player featuring in the music video. Looking at Micah Richards for that last one, thanks T2...

What isn't quite as common, however, is when an artist doesn't go for the commercial acclaim that writing a football song can bring, and simply uses the sport as its subject for the lyrics. Ironically, these songs don't normally end up being rewritten for the stands, and in some cases, become forgotten by anyone who isn't a fan of the band in question.

Well, fear not, because here at 90min, we love all things football - including the songs that you may not have heard or known were actually about the game.

Here's our list of five tunes to include in your next pre-match playlist...

The Green and the Blue - Amy MacDonald

Scottish singer-songwriter Amy MacDonald shot onto the music scene with her debut album This Is The Life in 2007, which hit number one in six different countries.

It was her third album, Life In a Beautiful Light, which spawned the song in question, however. Released in 2012, The Green and the Blue talked about romance between rival fans of the Old Firm on derby day. A lifelong Rangers fan herself, the song goes away from the violent and sectarian connotations of the rivalry and focusses more on the pride she felt at being from Glasgow, having the whole worlds eyes on her city during the match, all to a very uplifting melody which is impossible to forget.

The link between Amy and football doesn't stop there, either. She was once engaged to former Portsmouth striker Steve Lovell and is currently married to Ross County right back Richard Foster.

Flowers and Football Tops - Glasvegas

Staying in Glasgow, but this time with a more sombre number. Flowers and Football Tops is a heart wrenching song inspired by the real life murder of Kriss Donald. The song focusses on the idea that nobody should be in fear of not returning home, and uses the common British practice of laying football jerseys and bouquets of flowers at the place where a tragic incident occurred.

The song ends with a beautiful rendition the Celtic anthem You Are My Sunshine as the anthemic outro draws to a close, a fitting tribute to a brutal event.

While the song itself isn't about the act of playing football, it is about the way football is used as a form of solidarity, as both Celtic and Rangers tops were offered as tributes for the memorial site. It marked a rare moment where the footballing families of Glasgow were united as one in grief for one of their own sons.

Swerving The Checkatrade - Half Man Half Biscuit

Half Man Half Biscuit, as well as having the greatest band name in history, are one of the most interesting bands of the last 40 years. They have a repertoire of surreal and satirical songs, often using comedy as a tool to express deeper themes.

As well as this, they do have an array of wonderful football songs, with strong titles like The Referees Alphabet, Mathematically Safe, and the wonderful All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit, which funnily enough was released five years before Mariah Carey did her version.

For their entry here, however, we're opting for their most recent effort. Swerving The Checkatrade is a hilarious ending to their most recent album, and tells the story of a man who deliberately rushes into a bad relationship purely so he has an excuse to not buy tickets to his teams Checkatrade Trophy (now the even worsely name Leasing.com Trophy) matches.

As Nigel Blackwell sings "Let me gaze upon you curves instead of Ipswich Town's reserves, Swerving the Checkatrade with you." Genius.

All Together Now - The Farm

Arguably the most recognisable song on our list, All Together Now is a song about the Christmas Day Truce during World War One. The song talks about the stories about numerous trenches during that first Christmas in 1914 putting their weapons down, meeting in no mans land in the middle of the bloodshed and, among other things, playing football together.

The event is seen as one of the greatest example of humanity in recent history, where men refused to kill one another and used football, the only language they shared, to bond. The song was written by a band of Liverpool supporters, The Farm, and released less than two years after the Hillsborough Disaster, which adds to its significance.

The song has been used in various media, including the introsuction to Sky Sports coverage of the Football League during the mid 2000s, but the original source of inspiration is more than enough reason for its inclusion.

World In Motion - New Order

Ok, so we may be cheating with this one as it was technically the official England song for Italia '90. But how can you overlook though cracking John Barnes backing vocals?

World in Motion does the thing that not many football songs do, it's actually a really good song by itself. You can legitimately listen to it outside of a major tournament cycle and have a good time. It fits in so nicely with the rest of New Order's back catalogue that, even with the iconic John Barnes rap, it still feels just as much an electronic pop song as Blue Monday or True Faith.

Considering the likes of Ant and Dec and James Corden have been tasked with more recent official England tournement songs, we should protect World In Motion, it's the last of a dying breed.