What Makes the World Cup Hit Different? Ask the Music Industry

It’s 1998. The World Cup is in France. But a new era of globalization and international trade has created a rising demand for Latin music, and the world’s biggest soccer tournament needs anthem.

Enter Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin. A global sex symbol. A man blessed with a divine voice and the charisma to sell it anywhere. He is asked to write that year’s official song of the tournament, and boy does he deliver. 

“La Copa de la Vida,” or “The Cup of Life,” immediately defined both a generation of music and the musical impact of the biggest sporting event on earth. The World Cup had been tied to songs before – in 1962, Chilean rock band Los Ramblers released “El Rock del Mundial” in advance of their country hosting the tournament – but not until Martin had a song truly crossed over from a stadium jam to a bona fide chart-topping hit.

“That song was pivotal in changing the way that we see the relationship between football and the World Cup,” says Panos Panay, President of the Recording Academy and the Grammys, told Rolling Stone. 

Now, however, what Martin did in 1998 is far more common. On Thursday night, FIFA and Rolling Stone came together for a panel discussion on the cultural impact of the World Cup on global music. The panel came shortly after an exclusive performance by Ava Max as part of the opening night celebrations for the FIFA House in New York, a unique venue for celebrating World Cup Finals Week in collaboration with Rolling Stone, the Grammys, and Def Jam Recordings that brings together FIFA legends, creators, industry leaders and other guests. FIFA House is also the temporary home for the World Cup trophy, which visitors got to glimpse in the lobby downstairs.

Onstage, I talked with Marco Nazarri, a Director of Marketing at FIFA, Panos A. Panay, President of the Recording Academy and the Grammys, and Rodney Alejandro, the Dean of Berklee College of Music’s Music and Technology division. The three men have been football fans for years, and spoke with me about what goes into making the World Cup sound different than any other sporting event on earth.

“Football has a way of making this really deep emotional connection with fans,” Panay says. “There’s only three things that do this without any translation: football, music and food.”

But not every song can make that immediate connection between sports and music. Sonically, there are specific elements that an arena-bursting, chart-topping song needs. “It comes down to having some simple, catchy phrase. But the next thing is capturing the emotion of what the moment is,” Alejandro says. “The human experience of the moment — all of that is captured in various ways. 

Think of FIFA’s other major hit, the 2010 Shakira hit “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa).” The hook there is simple and right in the title: “This time for Af-ri-ca,” Shakira sings. “Waka Waka” was such a simple, funny song that it almost became a meme online when it was released ahead of the South African World Cup. But like Alejandro says, the hook was undeniable, and it captured the emotion of a football mad continent finally being placed at the epicenter of the global game, not at its periphery. 

What these songs do, Panay says, is foster the connection both between fans and between supporters and the team themselves. Fans joining in a shared chant, a stadium song, get an immediate sense of “these are my people,” Panay says. “To me, that’s magic.”

The best example of this, in my personally biased opinion, was the moment at the end of England’s round of 16 match against Mexico in the famous Azteca stadium. With only 10 men after a red card, England held on to a lead for 60 minutes to outlast Mexico 3-2, in the rain, at 7300 feet above sea level. After the win, their players were exhausted, but captain Harry Kane and young star Jude Bellingham led the team out, arm-in-arm to sing Oasis’s famous ballad “Wonderwall” with thousands of traveling England fans.  Related Content Ava Max Scores: The Pop Star on the World Cup, Her Favorite ABBA Song, and More Annie Leibovitz Sues Observer Over Justin and Hailey Bieber Photo: ‘Exploitation’ Post Malone to Perform at the World Cup Closing Ceremony Timothée Chalamet Gets ‘Starstruck’ Meeting Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders at World Cup

Those moments arise through the organic connection between fans and songs of their country, but are facilitated by a massive internal operation at FIFA. It’s not just one audio engineer at the stadium who has the vision to hit play on “Wonderwall,” Nazzari says, but a team of people who want to create the best possible experience for the fans. 

Nazzari grew up as a fan of Inter Milan, listening to its rich history of songs and stadium anthems. Every four years, FIFA tries to replicate that magic at the World Cup – not for one club team, but for every country that qualifies. 

Panay says that the Recording Academy’s mission is similar – but with the added priority of introducing new audiences to the work of musical artists they may not have encountered. 

“I do believe that music is convincing audiences in different ways to tune in to a sport that they otherwise wouldn’t have watched,”  Panay says. 

This year, FIFA released a full album of official World Cup songs,the Official FIFA World Cup 2026 Album. The artist list, like the tournament, touches every corner of the world, from K-pop to modern American country music to Nigerian rap to Ava Max. This year’s World Cup has brought even more of music’s top flight to the table as well. The final, on Sunday, will have a star-studded halftime show featuring Shakira, Madonna, BTS, Justin Bieber and other acts. The official closing ceremony will be headlined by Post Malone, 90 minutes before the final kicks off. 

“It’s not music for one particular culture, it’s music for the entire world, whether you speak the language or not,” Alejandro says.  Trending Stories BTS Invite Fans to Look Beyond the Spotlight in ‘Normal’ Video Willie Nelson Reflects on Marriage and Late-Life Artistry in New Book ‘The Last Leaf’ Trump Tried to Appease MAHA’s Fury Over Weed Killer. It Backfired Trump Releases Evidence Debunking His Own Claims of Foreign Election Interference

That theme, Nazzari says, contributed to his favorite moment of this world cup. Legendary Italian singer Andrew Bocelli collaborated with EJAE, a South Korean pop star, to perform their song “DNA,” during the opening ceremony of the tournament, just days after they’d met for the first time. “They’d never met before,” Nazzari says. “They meet for the first time, and in two days, they created magic.”

Chance meetings and magic — what else can you ask for in a World Cup?