For generations of sports fans, the late BBC commentator John Motson represented the voice of English football. So it's fairly unsurprising, then, that when EA Canada and Electronic Arts decided to add commentary to FIFA, its successful series of football games, in the '90s, Motson was the first person the studio had in mind for the job.
Motson was the voice of FIFA from FIFA 96 to FIFA 05 and later briefly returned to the series to provide the commentary for FIFA Manager 08 in 2007. But what you might not know is that he is also behind one of FIFA's most famous Easter Eggs in the form of a hidden track referred to internally as "Motty's Rap", which can be accessed by entering the PlayStation or PC disc into a CD player or using the Sega Saturn's music player.
While online the musician Graeme Coleman is often credited for the entire FIFA 97 soundtrack, as we found out, this song is actually the work of the EA composer/audio designer Robert Bailey messing around in the recording studio and getting Motson to record a bunch of ridiculous phrases — including memorable lines such as "That is the fattest bottom end I've ever heard", "This reminds me of touring with the Sex Pistols", and "This guitar player really shreds".
In a recent interview for our "The Making Of: FIFA Road to World 98" article, Bailey spoke a bit about how the Easter Egg came to be and revealed himself as the track's creator:
"We recorded a whole bunch of Easter Egg stuff that most players never found and I gave him all these absolutely stupid things to say like, ‘Don’t you ever wash those socks?’ And stuff like that. I also wrote a song called “Motty’s rap” and it was this terribly cheesy beat with a bit of guitar happening and then we captured just all of the stupidest phrases that John said and put them in context to the music. God, I wish I had a copy of it now because it’s really, really fucking funny."
Given the history of EA employees sneaking Easter Eggs into their sports games (sometimes with unintended consequences), we asked if anybody inside the studio knew about the track before it was included or whether he snuck it on. Here's what he ended up telling us:
"Believe me, nothing gets “snuck” onto a product like FIFA! [Our executive producer] Bruce McMillan loves Easter eggs, and this one was definitely approved!"
Did you already know about this? If not, you can listen to the full 2-minute track below in all of its magnificent glory, courtesy of the YouTuber DRCstim!