Another single that was only ever issued on CD.
1996 was a strange and life-changing year for Ian Broudie. He had long been part of the music scene, as a member of a number of bands in his native Liverpool, as a sought-after producer and, since 1989, as a pop star in his own right thanks to The Lightning Seeds, which was the name taken to launch his solo career.
He’d enjoyed seven Top 40 singles, but nothing had done better than #13 in the charts. He was due to release a new album, the fourth by The Lightning Seeds in early 1996, with the advance single, Ready or Not, coming out in February.
mp3: The Lightning Seeds – Ready or Not
It kind of was Lightning Seeds by numbers. A radio-friendly pop song which had a touch of the indie about it, but very much had an appeal to a wider audience. The fact that Ian Broudie was an old punk at heart could be seen from the fact that he chose to record cover versions on the 2xCDs which made up the release of Ready or Not. I’m sure he would never claim that he had bettered the originals, but at least he was bringing them to the attention of a wider audience, as well as delivering some royalties to the songwriters.
mp3 : Lightning Seeds – Another Girl, Another Planet (The Only Ones)
mp3 : Lightning Seeds – Whole Wide World (Wreckless Eric)
mp3 : Lightning Seeds – Outdoor Miner (Wire)
Ready or Not reached #20, which was about the average for most Lightning Seeds singles. In normal circumstances, a second single would be readied for April/May just a few days or weeks ahead of the next album/
The thing is, that album, (which was eventually called Dizzy Heights), didn’t see the light of day until November 1996, a full nine months after the advance single. That’s all down to the fact that Ian Broudie’s life was turned upside-down from him being asked by the English FA to write a song to mark the England football team’s participation in that year’s UEFA European Championship, which England was hosting.
He came up with Three Lions, with the lyrics being provided by Frank Skinner and David Baddiel, who at the time were hosts of a football-related comedy programme on BBC TV. Three Lions went on to sell 1.2 million copies, while a later re-recorded version for the 1998 World Cup sold 600,000. It has since undergone further recordings in 2010 and 2022, so I think it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that Ian Broudie would probably never have had to work again after 1996….but he’s still going strong, making and producing records as well as being a mainstay of the live nostalgia circuit that appears in parks and large outdoor venues across the UK every summer.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
he writes really well about three lions in his autobiography about his relationship with the song . The whole book is worth a read
friend of Rachel worth
Frank Skinner once said of the amount of re-releases of Three Lions, “I think it’s fair to say we milked it.”