Switched on Pop - Music only the World Cup could make

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

The quadrennial soccer (or fútbol, depending who you talk to) competition is upon us again: it's the FIFA World Cup! And while the World Cup is a sporting event, it's still relevant to the folks at Switched On Pop, because every four years a new crop of songs gets commissioned to drum up excitement for the games. This year, the official song is by Shakira and Burna Boy, but offerings from IShowSpeed and a madcap collaboration between Andrea Bocelli, David Guetta, EJAE, and Megan Thee Stallion also play the field. On this episode, Charlie and Nate explore them all – including the Shakira and Ricky Martin songs of World Cups past. Links: ⁠Newsletter⁠, ⁠YouTube Songs discussed: Shakira, Burna Boy – Dai Dai K'NAAN – Wavin' Flag Tears For Fears, Lil Baby – The World Is Yours To Take Jelly Roll, Carin León – Lighter LISA, Anitta, Rema – Goals Jung Kook, BTS – Dreamers Andrea Bocelli, David Guetta, EJAE, Megan Thee Stallion – DNA (More Than A Game) IShowSpeed – Champions (WC 26) Ed Sheeran – Shape of You Shakira, Carlinhos Brown – La La La (Brasil 2014) Shakira, Freshlyground – Waka Waka (This Time for Africa) Zangalewa – Zangalewa Ricky Martin, Pablo Flores – The Cup of Life (La Copa de la Vida) Ricky Martin – Livin' La Vida Loca Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This week on a Touchmore, The Beautiful Game, I am sitting down with fashion designer DJ and the Washington Spirit's first ever creative director, Domo Wells, in her L.A. studio. We talk about Domo's unusual path towards sports fandom and how her work as a DJ makes her a better designer. And what designing for women's athletes and their fans should actually look like.

Check out the latest episode of A Touchmore, wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube. Even though it's all I ever think are talking about, the Knicks winning their first NBA championship in 53 years isn't the only major sports news going on right now. We are in the middle of the World Cup. Honestly, I am probably the worst sports fan on the entire planet. When the Knicks won, I was like, why is everyone screaming out my window? FIFA World Cup? Exciting.

It's happening everywhere. I honestly have no idea what's going on. so please educate me. Welcome to Switch John Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan, and I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. The quadrenial soccer slash football competition is upon us again.

And even though we're a music podcast, the World Cup is important because it heavily involves music. Every four years, FIFA commissions a new crop of songs to drum up excitement from the competition. So Charlie strap in, because we are going to listen to a head-spinning variety of banging tracks from global superstars to AI fan creations.

Are you ready? Strapped in? Charlie, I also don't know a ton about the beautiful game, as it's called, but I do know that music is a really important part from the thousands of fans who sing these songs together, like during the actual matches, to these FIFA-sponsored songs, that kind of soundtrack. this event every four years. And this year, Charlie, in 2026, the official World Cup song is by Shakira and the Afrobeats artist Burnaboy. And it's called Die Die. Love them both. Let's hear it. Ooh, let's go. Right? Is that getting you pumped up for some football, Charlie? Yeah, I feel like that's got to be like chorus one because it is not the stadium level rousing chorus that I'm expecting. Well, that's actually the outro that I just played you.

Oh, okay, outro. We are done chanting. Yeah. The chant is waning. Totally. We're cooling down a little bit. We'll hear at the beginning soon. I just wanted to give you a little taste of it because this track is one in a long lineage of World Cup songs.

FIFA started adopting this tradition of, you know, having official songs back in 1990. And in the year since, There's been a bunch of famous tracks that have come out of the pipeline. And I don't think we've ever talked about it on the show before, which is an oversight because we've been getting lots and lots of emails asking us to share our thoughts on these FIFA World Cup anthems, including one from a listener Grant, who was kind enough to send us a voice memo.

Specifically, Grant wants us to talk about some of the classic songs, I guess, you know, the ones that have, like, reached the pantheon of World Cup anthems and compare them to this year's crop of FIFA songs. Like, why has Waka Waka Waka? Like, why has Waka Waka by Shikara? Why is Ricky Martin So Copa de la Vida still a banger? And kind of most vastnessy and Dr. Bacheli and Dr. Bacheli and Mikaa Bacheli and E.J. and Degu and Ghetto work so well together on DNA more than... Whoa, whoa. Yeah, I know. Take that in for a second.

You've done the research here. I am stunned. Did not know about that co-lab. Yeah, four names you never expected to hear together. No. We'll get into all that, but I want to play one other question that Grant had, because this is pretty interesting as well. And I think most importantly in this conversation are kind of undergoing this conversation, is can the World Cup and the music from it being antidote, the nationalism, isolationism and jingolism that are continuing to build and bubble in our politics?

I love this question. I did study international relations in college. And though I'm not a giant sports fan, I love the global gatherings of the Olympics of the World Cup because I do see how powerful they are, both in helping strengthen maybe good nationalism, you know, pride of who we are. Yeah. But also getting the world together in a way that is. a healthy kind of conflict. And I'd like to think that maybe music can help heal the world a little bit. I love your do-eyed naivete, Charlie.

Let's see if it will be born out. First of all, I need to explain something to you. There are two categories of official World Cup music. There are songs. Okay. And there are anthems. Ooh. And despite Googling this for about two hours yesterday,

I cannot tell you what the difference is. Okay. I feel like categorically an anthem is a subset of a song, but please continue. Yeah. The reason FIFA does this is to essentially strengthen their brand, get more people interested in this event. But they don't have like a monopoly on the World Cup anthem. Sometimes a non-F FIFA song will slide into the collective consciousness. And probably the most notable example of this.

This is Waven Flag by the Somali Canadian artist Canaan, which was a Coca-Cola promotional anthem for the 2010 World Cup and then became like this massive track in its own right. Is that familiar, Chuck? Do you remember that one? Sorry. I definitely remember this from 2010. But for the most part, the songs that we remember or forget as related. to this World Cup event are the official FIFA songs. There is a notable exception this year that we'll talk about as well. This year, they've actually kind of gone overboard. They've commissioned so many songs that they've created a whole album of them. Take, for instance, a track from Jelly Roll and Carine Leon, the Mexican country singer. They have a track called Lighter. And then we've got to go.

And then we've got Lisa, formerly of Black Pink, Anita, the Brazilian pop singer, and Rima, Afrobeats artist, collaborating on goals. Is there a double-beats? meaning there? We'll never know. Now, FIFA is building on an approach that they really intensified during the last World Cup in Qatar. They also made this compilation album and created this template of, like, bizarre globe-spanning collaborations. Like, Tears for Fears did a song with Little Baby.

But the big track from that cycle was, was Jon Cook from BTS and his song Dreamers. I think this song created a formula that FIFA is still using. We can find a lot of the same tropes throughout the crop of songs from the 26 World Cup. Okay, first, multiple languages. Yep, that would be global. So many of these songs have multiple languages, dialects within the track. Like this song, Dreamers, has English and Arabic vocals from the Qatari singer Fahad al-Kubaisi.

All these songs are these polyglot linguistic creations. Okay, second, we've got gang vocals. Yep. There's like always a big chorus of people shouting the lyrics together. It's got to rouse the stadium to sing along. Exactly. Multicultural instrumentation, that's number three. Yep.

You'll always hear some kind of identifiable traditional instrument for the most part. And finally, number four, so much repetition. Yeah, it's almost like this music is inspired by football chants. Chants are something that have to be repeated over and over and over together in order to get a large crowd to be able to do it together. And so the chorus has probably mimic the chant culture of football. All right, Charlie, let's dig into some more of these 2026 songs. And we have to start with the one I know you're. dying to hear ever since you heard that Andrea Bachele, David Geda, Megan the Stalian,

and E.J. of Huntrix fame. We're going up, bup, up, up. Oh, yeah. Release a song called DNA, parentheses, more than a game. It's more than just a game. It's our DNA. Okay, let's pause this and break down what's happening so far. What's happening so far is that this song was clearly demoed in 2013. And then a decade or more later, they're like, let's revive this old progressive house track that would have been cool with elder millennials. I mean, isn't that just David Gettah in general? Oh, yeah.

This is just a David Gettah smash from a long time ago. We heard Andrea Bacheli, the iconic Italian tenor giving us a little bit of English and then immediately going into Italian, followed by E.J. singing in Korean. This feels like language maxing and feature maxing. How many recognizable people singing in different? languages, can we get them on the same track? And were they ever in a room together? Almost certainly not. This is the United Nations over Zoom of songs. Yes. And fittingly, when we continue with this song, we get vague platitudes about standing together, waving flags, and the importance of the game.

We'll stand together. We'll stand the pressure with your flags up in the sky. Let fade to side. You know, honestly, vague Standing here today Because this morning just again You're starting here You know, honestly, vague platitudes And simple melodies Maybe the only things that we can agree upon

So I like it actually For what it has to do It's an impossible brief To serve everybody Because, you know, as much as I was kind of like Cheekly saying I would love for music To heal the world, the reality is that Any given kind of music,

Its job is both to tell you who this belongs to and also who's not in that in group. Like genres are scenes. They are groups of people. And this song has to actually serve everybody. And thus it limits its potential scope in many ways. Who haven't we heard from yet, Charlie? I know Ricky Martin's coming later, but I don't think he's on this one. No, no.

There's a Houston rapper who we're waiting to hear from. Oh, thank. with the grade, flowers at my feet taste. The hotties got to win. I got to give it to her for dropping in her fans specifically. The hotties are the Megan the Stahlian fan group. And so I did say that this has to serve everybody.

It turns out that we are now all hotties. And good job converting us. Yeah. I mean, you're right. We've got E.J. representing K. Pop and the Asian continent, Andrea Bachelli, representing, like, opera and Europe, Ming the Stali, hip hop, the United States, David Geta.

vague international EDM songs. Yeah. So we are missing South America, Africa, Australia and Oceania, Antarctica is not represented. But we do have representation from South America in Anita and Shakira and Africa with Burner Boy. Grant asked in his voice note, you know, how do these voices go together? How does this bizarre collaboration work so well? Do you have any thoughts, Charlie? Despite surely being recorded in an entirely different spaces, I highly doubt that these people.

ever met up. They are recorded in a very contemporary style. There's a fair amount of autotune. These are very forward compressed vocals. This is not a Botticelli vocal. Typically, when you're recording classical and opera, you want the clearest representation of the voice. You don't want it to be colored in any kind of way. Very little processing. That's not what's happening here. This is a very process, super compressed, tuned, perfect pop style vocal. And I think that's what probably unites all of them together is the production. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of been compressed and leveled and and shaved down a little bit. But that's also probably part of the goal of this is like you were saying to be accessible, to be relatable. Well, it has to work on a phone and it has to work in a stadium

over a PA. And so that's what you need to do in order for that to translate. So earlier, I mentioned that there have sometimes been these interlopers that have like crashed the official FIFA playlist And this year we have another gate-crasher. Yeah. It's a song by an artist. I'm not sure if you're familiar with I Show Speed. No, sorry. Okay.

I Show Speed is a YouTube internet personality. Okay. Who does these athletic feats, hence his name, and travels the world doing stunts. I think this would clearly take over my feet if I started watching. Yeah. And he is not known. as a singer, but he made a song for the World Cup on his own called Champions, and it racked up so many hundreds of millions of views on YouTube that I guess Feeful was like,

all right, we're just going to throw it on our playlist as well. What? And here's what he sounds like. Let's play football. It's catchy. I can see why people want to listen to this. It's got, you know, some of the. now familiar tropes of World Cup music like flag waving for instance we've got those gang

vocals that I mentioned earlier it alludes to we are the champions at the very beginning yes boom boom boom boom and check out what happens as we get a little further into the song we got a rise to the end we got a dream till we dream till we win give me the cup the championship total my break okay okay all right so Spanish guitar, followed by some West African jembe, and then a sort of like Marachi horn section. Yeah. Move into singing in Spanish. This is global World Cup musical bait.

He's smart. He's following that musical playbook we established. And so I'm not totally surprised that he was able to crash this World Cup FIFA anthem party. I take it. All right. Let's circle back to the very first. song I played for you the official anthem. Okay, this is like, you know, number one on the call sheet. This is the Shakira Burnaboy one. Yes, it's called Dai, Dai, which is spelled D-A-I,

D-A-I, and it's an Italian phrase that essentially means like, let's go. And this one's cool because right off the bat, it really feels like Shakira and Burnaboy actually have a bit of a back and forth. It's cool. We've got a clave beat with the Amabiano log drum bass sound and a little bit, yeah, a little bit of interplay between the vocalists who, again, likely they live in different continents. Yeah. Probably weren't recording this together, but they were able to get a little duet vibe. Yeah, they're harmonizing at least. And when we move into the pre-chorus, we start to get that title phrase, let's go. in all these different languages, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, French, and English. Major Strong.

Dai, die, Iko, darling, Ale, let's go. Dai, die. Eco, darling, Alex. Let's go. Ooh. Production is pretty cool with that, like, high-life guitar solo. They didn't have to do that. No.

Ooh, that's surprisingly tasty. Okay. I just have to point something out, Nate. Yes. in trying to figure out who's playing guitar, I have realized something. You left out the songwriters. When you played the very first few notes of this song,

I was like, it's got a little bit of a shape of you vibe. No way. Ed Shearer. No way. Is a songwriter? Yes. Along with John Bellion,

Danny Adam, Alexander Castillo, Burnaboy, and Shakira. What? Okay, wait, wait. I mean, in this case, it's kind of like a marimba-ish sound in shape of you. it's like a columba, the thumb piano.

These are different instruments, but are they all related? They're melophones. They're melophones. Yeah. Okay. I think this is a really great addition to the World Cup FIFA anthem canon.

And that's kind of impressive because Shakira might be the World Cup kingmaker. Like she has a remarkable track record in producing hits for this international soccer competition. In fact, her relationship with FIFA goes back over 20 years. Really? In 2006, she reworked her track, Hips Don't Lie, for the World Cup in Germany. And in 2014, she released a song La La La in support of the World Cup in Brazil.

But I'm bearing the lead because between those two World Cups, Shakira released what is one of the all-time World Cup songs, the one that Grant mentioned in his voice note. Waka, which was composed for the 2010 South African Cup, the Vuvazela Cup, exactly, in collaboration with the South African group freshly ground. Let's hear that. I want to zoom in on this chorus a little bit because it actually contains an interpolation of the Cameroonian Makosa song, Zaminamina Mena, Zangala, by the band Zongalewa. So as a kid in Colombia, Shakira actually heard this song by Zangalewa on the radio. And that's what inspired her to incorporate it into this World Cup anthem. And it's brilliant because you don't have to really understand the language at all to be able to sing along. It's so like instantly catchy and familiar sounding.

Yeah. It establishes this idea that if you're going to use another language, that the phrase you choose almost needs to be chantable like a na-n-na or a la-l-l-la, die, die, waka. You don't need to know the language to be able to jump in. Yeah. This song transcended the World Cup. It went multi-platinum became one of Shakira's best-selling songs. Currently has over a billion plays on Spotify and made such an impact that when Pitbull released his official World Cup song for Brazil four years later,

the Brazilian people protested with the hashtag Volta Waka Waka, which is Portuguese for Bring Back Waka Waka. Now you may recall that Grant mentioned one other song that could possibly unseat Waka as the greatest World Cup song ever. You've been keeping me waiting this entire time. Basically the launch of the international star Ricky Martin, Yes. The Cup of Life. Yes. La Copa de la Vida. One of the just great pop songs of all time.

And this 1998 World Cup track starts with a bang. Do you really want it, Charlie? I really want it. Do you want the chorus of this song? I really, really want it. So this is a year before Live and Love You Deloka. This is the 1998 World Cup in France, right? Correct.

And yet we have a Spanish, language song, again with a repeatable phrase that you can be in any language, a lay, a lay, allay, allay. I don't know what to say other than I love it. I don't have much to add either. I mean, here are all these hallmarks, like you said, gang vocals, repetition, multiculturalism, maybe less so with this one. He releases a Spanish version and an English version, but it doesn't like meld languages as much. And yeah, it's kind of wild to think that the song precedes Live in La Vida Loca

there's certainly a lot of similarities between these tracks One of the stranger songs of all time which has like salsa It's salsa ska First written by Draco Rosa and Desmond Child

who also produced it They were also on the song The Cup of Life so it is the same team Ah, there you go. The success of it was very important for Latin music in general. When Ricky Martin performed this song at the 1999 Grammy Awards, it was a watershed moment for Latin music. With a 15-piece band and leather pants,

he brought the house down with this electrifying rendition. And a lot of people placed that as the moment when Latin music really took off globally. This was Despicito before Despacito. This was a huge, part of the 90s Latin crossover. It was an essential moment. And I have to say, I feel like some of the 2026 World Cup songs could use some of that

Ricky Martin Desmond Child, Loka energy. Honestly, that liveliness, you know, I think that is missing a little bit. And when we get back to the final part of Grant's question at the beginning of this episode, remember he said, can World Cup music be an antidote to the the nationalism, isolationism, and jingoism continuing to build in today's political landscape. I don't know if a maximally produced separately recorded song with a bunch of global superstars can really do that. It might need to be something that's a little more organic. Yeah.

And there's one more wrinkle to the 2026 World Cup discussion, which is the opposite of that. It's AI. Oh. Some of the biggest songs for this tournament are fan-generated AI songs for their respective countries. If you go on YouTube, you can find fan edits and sometimes AI-generated edits that have millions of views. Check out the unofficial AI World Cup anthem for Brazil. They're shouting out different Brazilian players over this relentless kind of by a funk beat. Check out what happens when I pull up a fan-made AI video for the Portugal national team.

Basically the same thing with different players. How about France? I mean, maybe the silver lining is that the same boring AI thing is bringing us all together. It's certainly possible. I mean, there's been a lot of online vitriol around these tracks. The Guardian called it AI Hellscape's. I mean, on one hand, I agree. On the other hand, like you said, you know, these songs are being embraced.

They're being sung. They're being played. They are bringing people together. It's definitely good or bad, the first AI World Cup that we're encountering. And it's kind of fascinating. Music, which is trained on previously human composed music without permission and license, I'm assuming, because that is how the vast majority of AI music is currently being made. One more before we go.

If you go to YouTube and search for World Cup Anthem, 2026, you actually get a unofficial song that is a scathing parody of FIFA and the unequal politics of this tournament. It's called We Are One. And if you're not looking too closely, you might think, oh, this is like another official FIFA song. It's got almost 800,000 views. But then you see the parentheses, it says, if you can pay. We are one if you can pay. And what happens when we hit play? Yeah, I have heard about enormous price gouging of public transit in New York City to get out to the games.

It's incredibly challenging to afford. This was another AI song you're saying? This is another AI song, entirely. AI video where a deranged American Eagle, like, terrorizes all the other countries' mascots. If you're going to make a critique of capitalism and price gouging, doing so with AI using a Rihanna sound-alike voice, probably not the way to do it. So I agree. I do like how this song takes all these tropes we've heard, like the gang vocals, the multiculturalism. Later we'll have a Spanish verse and it kind of throws it back in FIFA's face, which is, you know, a nasty, corrupt organization. Like pretty much every sporting event, you know, has just the blood-soaked capitalist regime just like right under the surface of all the joy and pleasure.

That is certainly the case with the World Cup as well. But to bring it all back to Grant's question, like, are these songs going to bring us together? I mean, time will tell. I would say Shakira's Waka Waka, Ricky Martin's, The Cup of Life, like these songs were significant. They made a difference in many ways. Will DNA by Andrea Bichelli and Megha the Stallion, like, achieve that? Hard to say, but you never know, Chuck.

Just like in sports, you know, you have to play the games. That's what they say, right? Oh, so-and-so is going to win. Like, no, you never know. You have to play the game. And in the World Cup, anyone can win. You know, the smallest nation potentially could upset. And music's kind of similar.

Yeah. These random AI songs can crash the official FIFA playlist and even throw back some of their rhetoric in their faces. YouTube streamers can get in the mix. You never know what's going to happen, despite the oligarchic corporate control of these events. And that's ultimately, I think, what is so riveting about them. In a time when the United States is both hosting the World Cup and retreating as a world superpower, I think maybe music is the site of our global get-together. I hope that there is a song that comes out of here that we remember in the next World Cup in four years.

Switched on Pop is produced by Raina Cruz, edited by Alyssa Soap, engineered by Brandon McFarlane, video by Nick Gryps, illustrations by Arras Gottlieb, theme music by Jossi Adams, and Zach Tenario of Arc Iris, remember with the Vox Media Podcast, Network, kind of production of Vulture. It's part of New York Magazine. You can subscribe to mymag.com slash pod. Find us on social media at Switch on Pop and tell us what your favorite tracks are

from the World Cup, both present and past. Are you here for the jelly roll, Carine Leone collab? Or are you a DNA truther or do you prefer the classics, Canaan, Shakira, et cetera? We want to hear from you. We're going to be taking a break for one week.

When we come back, we have a huge, exciting announcement to make for you all. Oh yeah. But you're going to have to wait. Until then. Thanks for listening. Hey, y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair.

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