EA Sports: it's in the music, actually

The lasting legacy of FIFA soundtracks

I remember the first time I heard the song as if it was yesterday. The intro is evocative: a feverish right hand scrubbing away at the strings of an electric guitar; Caleb’s voice — a sleepy, southern drawl swaddling the lyrics like a loose-fitting Rizla.

The opening to Red Morning Light doesn’t need to be shrouded in metaphors and similes (as ever, I can’t help myself). For me, and no doubt hundreds of thousands of others, the song has come to define more than just the Kings of Leon’s first remark. It has come to define something else, something much more important than that ­– the indisputable brilliance of FIFA soundtracks.

All dodgy photoshops are my own

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For those who have never heard of FIFA, shame on you.¹ FIFA was a football video game that first came out in 1993 and was released annually until its discontinuation 30 years later. It allowed you to take control of your favourite club (providing they were big enough) or to challenge your real life friends/some random stranger online. There was even the option of spaffing away your parents’ money on what was, by all intents and purposes, a rigged game. Above all though, it was an incubator for nurturing immature taste buds, a gateway to new (and sometimes old) artists.

Red Morning Light is FIFA 04. And vice versa. Video game and song are not mutually exclusive. Just as Caesar’s Jerk It Out and Kasabian’s L.S.F are an essential part of FIFA 04 folklore. These three songs (as well as the others I haven’t mentioned) go hand in hand with the game. Whenever I hear the songs now, the image of that game’s cover immediately springs to mind: a trident of Alessandro Del Piero, Thierry Henry, and Ronaldinho; an attacking line-up as threatening and iconic as Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli — the three hunters of post-millennium football.

That’s because the soundtrack was as much a part of FIFA and its appeal as the actual gameplay was – there was no game without its soundtrack. Even when in-play development stalled,² the strength of its song selection still shone through.

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Bellwether of musical tastes

In the game’s early configuration, the soundtracks were somewhat lopsided. There was a tilt towards indie rock, reflective of a music industry that, at the time, was inundated with drainpipe jeans and winklepickers. Over the years, however, there was a gradual shift away from what was merely big in the charts. FIFA became a cultural trendsetter, championing a wider range of music and mirroring a growing fanbase that was no longer confined to the bedrooms of lads from Leeds, Leicester, and Luton. With each release, the soundtrack evolved, becoming more eclectic, more exploratory. By EA’s own admission, they wanted to change how football sounded. The sport doesn’t have to be all We Are the Champions and Sweet Caroline. Why can’t it be Fuego as well?

Eventually, there was no particular bias towards one genre. Indie remained for the fila-jacketed purists, but now you could just as easily find examples of grime, Latin hip hop, Norwegian synthpop… the list goes on. You could argue that the all-embracing selections of later editions were just as formulaic as the guitar-group-to-suit-all sounds of the early noughties. But once they’d honed that winning formula, why was there any need to meddle with it – remember when Cadbury’s changed the recipe for Dairy Milk? (If you don’t then give your taste buds a good talking-to.)

In spite of evolution and expansion, at the heart of every release there remained a ‘FIFA sound’. What that is, is tricky to define. They were just cool. Not cool in some academic way, nor in a way that can be lazily signed off with the sunglasses emoji. Rather, it’s the sort of coolness that can only be understood instinctively – you just know that it’s cool. You feel it in your marrow.

The soundtracks’ coolness came from their variety. They were a pick ‘n’ mix bag of classic flavours and wildcard tastes. Former world-beaters were wheeled out of retirement and given a new lease of life (see The Stone Roses) to sit alongside unknown artists who had been ferreted out from the underground, the sour feijoas so to speak. Whatever you think of EA as a company, at least they always took their playlists seriously. A dedicated team of sound production experts and former musicians formed an elaborate scouting network to rival those of Benifca and Brighton & Hove Albion. For us players, the rare occasion that you had unearthed the next wunderkind musician before they did filled you with a terrific feeling of accomplishment. More so than any match win against your smug mate ever could.

Such was the cultural impact of FIFA on a global scale, many artists deemed inclusion on the game as being more important than any award or acknowledgment otherwise. It was a point of honour. After all, FIFA helped propel the careers of the likes of Kasabian and Bastille (I’ll let you decide if we should be thankful for that). And for those who crash-landed in the ocean not long after being launched to stardom — artists who eventually succumbed to the cruel reality of the music industry — they are still immortalised in those games. Surely that is the pinncale of success.

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We are the children of FIFA

The game also introduced younger fans to more established artists. Take FIFA 11 for example. In a single sitting, you could listen to Gorillaz, LCD Soundsystem, and Massive Attack – artists known by gamers at the older end of the spectrum. While at the same time, everyone, young and not so young, was discovering the music of Tulipa Ruiz and Jónsi. Together. As one big happy FIFA family.

Therein lies the true magic of FIFA soundtracks. They had (and arguably still have) a way of connecting people, whether they were aware of such a connection or not. The average length of a soundtrack is around two and a half hours. In that time you could hear the same song at least twice. That means it only took one moderately heavy gaming binge to become intimate with each song. But by becoming acquainted with them, you formed an unwitting association with every other gamer on the planet. FIFA was a silent disco; revellers might be listening to different tracks but they were all unified by a shared experience.

FIFA soundtracks weren’t a one-off playlist that you once created hastily for a last-minute Eurovision party never to be played again. They are some of the most refined collections of background noise ever assembled. Perhaps the closest thing to them is a film’s soundtrack. But, unless it’s Bridget Jones's Diary: Music from the Motion Picture, no one is playing it on a monthly, weekly, or daily basis. Besides, songs from films are often more deliberate, they are sequenced and follow a structure, they are strictly associated with a single scene or a fleeting moment.

That’s what made them special. Questions such as ‘where were you when you heard so-and-so for the first time?’ don’t apply here. It doesn’t matter where you were but that you were there. I talked about how past experiences can be triggered by music here. However, music-evoked autobiographical memory can sometimes have its limits. By contrast, FIFA soundtracks provide varying levels of nostalgia. It’s the orb-weaver that sits in the centre of our shared memories. Out of its original context, a listen can take you back to numerous moments and milestones, both in-game and in real life, all of which differ. For example, Fall Into Place by Apartment. One listen might take me back to signing a sponsorship deal with Wave F508 as I took Darlington FC to European glory on FIFA 08. Another listen and I’m creating an in-game version of myself, complete with over-inflated physical stats and a hairline restored to its former glory.

Above all, it reminds me of the first time I was given an Xbox 360 at the age of thirteen – previous exposure came from playing at mates’ houses and in-store in HMV. It’s a reminder of the days when I would take advantage of any moment when the TV was free to play the game or stay up late after Match of the Day to create my own highlights reels of ‘worldies’.³

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The FIFA franchise under its original name may have died a deserved death in 2023 but its legacy lives on. Perhaps not in the way that we thought it would. Sure, a part of its legend is still tied to overpowered finesse shots and free-kick glitches, to unhappy recollections of scripted gameplay and rage quits. But it’s the music that has proved eternal.

Nostalgia is often a way of glorifying a misspent youth. But if discovering new music and broadening our earscope was a waste of time then I don’t want to hear it. If adding to the safety deposit box of happy memories was less important than revising for exams or falling out of a tree and breaking your fingers then I don’t want to know.

My own journey may have begun with Kings of Leon, a band who in their original form⁴ were exactly the type of group I was listening to anyway. But it ended up with Mexican Institute of Sound, with Bantu and Dr Chaii, and Childish Gambino. For others, voyaging through the ‘FIFA sound’ may have taken a differnt path. But at the end of it all, we are all part of the same cohort.

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What I’ve been drinking this week

My coffee consumption far exceeds anything else (even time spent on Reddit). On the topic of things that are ‘instictively cool’, earlier this week I stopped by a super hip roastery. I spent minutes poring over the various bean options and brewing methods before choosing. Sadly what arrived wasn’t anywhere near as remarkable as I’d hoped for. Instead, I was given what the French would call jus de chaussette — sock juice.

The coffee was more than fine really but the experience taught me one thing. When in Bali, it’s best to stick to the traditional Kopi Bali. Dank in every sense of the word, there is a dusty richness to the coffee that can only be found in vintage claret for at least 1000x the price (but still cheaper than 2024, I hear, 8.3% reduction on 2023 notwithstanding).

Sometimes, I’m not looking for ‘touches of mango, cashew top notes, and a basil brightness’. Instead, Balinese coffee has a moreish earthiness to it. Depth and fullness precede nuance. Texture over intricacy — a line of black silt sits around the cup’s rim like volcanic sand. The tide recedes in a flash. Battery charged. The morning gone. What were we talking about again?

Kopi Bali ft. Amed’s cheekiest guardian statues

1. You probably had a miserable childhood playing PES.

2. EA Sports repeatedly ignored gamer’s grievances, prioritising profit over player, releasing what was essentially last year’s game but with a new lick of paint. They still expected people to fork out over £40 for the privilege every time – and of course we did.

3. I was a Manager Mode addict – five years clean – an obsession which resulted in producing expansive excel spreadsheets and mocking up Wikipedia profiles for homegrown talent – skills, it turns out, that come in pretty handy if you want to work as a Wine Buyer.

4. I’m talking the guys with bad fringes and handlebar moustaches, not the imposters who replaced them in 2008 with tepid tales of STIs.