New York, NY (Top40 Charts) As England prepares to contest the semi-final of the World Cup this Wednesday, reports can confirm that the song on everybody's lips, Three Lions, is leading the race to top the UK Singles Chart this Friday.
England's definitive football anthem, performed by Baddiel, Skinner & Lightning Seeds, zooms from 24 to Number 1 at the halfway stage on today's UK Chart Update and, according to UK Charts Company data, has so far accumulated 24,000 downloads and 2.6 million audio streams since last Friday.
Three Lions was originally written for Euro '96 - the last time England qualified for the semi-finals of a major football tournament - and hit the Number 1 spot twice. A re-worked version of the song with new lyrics for the 1998 World Cup, Three Lions '98, also spent three weeks at the summit. Look back at both songs' week-by-week chart runs.
The song is one of the UK's best-selling singles of all time, with both versions combined having sold 1.6 million.
Three Lions is currently ahead of reigning chart topper
George Ezra's Shotgun by 8,000 copies with four days of the chart week left to run, can Three Lions come all the way home?
The only place to find out where it finishes at the final whistle - and whether it will be the UK's No 1 single for the fourth time in its history - will be this Friday on BBC
Radio 1's UK Chart with Scott Mills.
Two more football classics are also on course to re-enter this week's UK Singles Chart: Fat Les' 1998 hit Vindaloo is at 28 and New Order's 1990 chart-topper World In Motion sits at 34.
New entries and high climbers
Elsewhere in the Top 10,
Years & Years are on track to climb into the Top 5 with If You're Over Me, currently up five places to 4, and
Jonas Blue is on the cusp of landing his fourth Top 10 hit with Rise, up five spots to Number 6. Australian band 5 Seconds of Summer are also up two places to 10 with Youngblood, potentially earning them their first top flight single in four years.
A Facebook campaign to get Green Day's American Idiot back into the UK Chart ahead of President Trump's visit to the UK this week sees the 2004 hit currently at 18 midweek, the track is less than 4,000 copies away from a Top 10 placing at this stage of the week.
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Little Mix's Only You is on course to hit a new peak at 27 while further down, Au/Ra & Camelphat's club his Panic Room is set to crack this week's Top 40, currently up four at 40.
And finally, an all-star cover of The Beatles' With A
Little Help From My
Friends by NHS Voices - featuring the likes of Nile Rodgers,
Alexandra Burke and the
Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Choir - is just outside the Top 40 at 47. All proceeds from downloads of the track go to over 130 NHS Charities.
