Just like Duels’ ‘Potential Futures’ from a couple weeks back, ‘Promises, Promises’, a track by The Cooper Temple Clause is one that I came to know via its inclusion on a FIFA video game soundtrack. This time it was the series’ 2004 edition that introduced me to the song, a game that also opened my nine-year-old mind to Kasabian, The Stone Roses, Radiohead and, uh, lostprophets… (yeesh). I owe a debt of gratitude to all the FIFA games I owned growing up. A lot of the music you read about on this blog wouldn’t be on here if it weren’t for those soundtracks from 2003 up to about 2012. From the latter year onward, it truly dawned on me that EA Sports weren’t really changing the game up all that much, and I took myself out of that cycle of wanting the new issue every year. But man, some of the happiest times of my life were playing those earlier releases and just singing along to all this cool music that played in the menus.

However, unlike that whole story with ‘Potential Futures’ where I had to get the same game again to appreciate how good it was, ‘Promises, Promises’ was one that I grew to really enjoy through repeated listens on that first FIFA 2004 disc that I want to say I got for my ninth birthday. And through those repeated listens, I was able to absorb every element of the track inside-out, from those little guitar noises that open up the track before its killer riff to that screeching feedback that closes it out after it comes to an abrupt end. Looking up the lyrics in order to prepare myself for writing, I telling you that I was able to sing almost exactly what vocalist Ben Gautrey was delivering. What he was singing about, I had no idea and didn’t care about too much. I was having a good time playing games and being a dumb child. Family probably wondered what I was going on about though. To this day, I’m not even sure what this song’s deal is about other than the narrator’s disappointed that promises made to them by another party are usually broken. There must be something more to it. I haven’t made any large attempt to figure what it is. It’s the sinister tone of the music that keeps me returning to it after all these years.

Though this song is where my interest started with the Cooper Temple Clause, it’s always where it sort of ended too. FIFA 2005 was released the next year and, while I never forgot about the song, life in general just carried on – going from nine to 10 years old, starting a new year in primary school and all that jazz. The next time I would hear anything else by the band was in 2007 with a new single ‘Waiting Game’. Few things arose when I saw the music video for that song. I realised that it was the first time I’d actually seen what the band looked like. The person singing here definitely wasn’t the same as the one who sang ‘Promises…’, and I had no clue who else it would have been ’cause of the preceding statement I just made. I also didn’t like the song very much either. It turned out to be their last ever single, as the band broke up a few months after its release. Don’t want to end the note on such a disregarding note though. Am very thankful that they made this song and that it still resonates within me almost 20 years later. It’s not even a nostalgia thing when it comes to this one, it’s just a massive tune. I’ll give a Temple Clause album a listen one of these days.