Freed From Desire by Gala

Freed From Desire is a Eurodance single by the Italian singer Gala, released in 1996 as the lead single from her debut album, Come into My Life. Gala wrote it with Maurizio Molella and Filippo Andrea Carmeni. DJ Molella and Phil Jay produced it. It went to number one in France and Belgium and reached number two in the UK in 1997. Football fans across Europe have sung it as a chant since the 2010s.

Gala Rizzatto grew up in Milan wanting to be a dancer. A doctor there told her that a problem with her spine meant she would never dance. As a teenager she moved to New York and picked up a camera instead. She photographed dancers, clubbers and DJs. She made a trade with a DJ on a summer trip back to Italy: free photos for his album covers in exchange for a chance to sing on a record. That deal produced her first single, Everyone Has Inside. It went to number one in Italy.

The song came out of her life in New York. Gala has said it draws on falling in love for the first time, going back to the dance classes she had given up, and the gap she saw between rich and poor. Her partner at the time was a Senegalese dancer. She spent a lot of time with his community in Harlem. She has described them as people who seemed content while owning very little. The lyric centers on a Buddhist idea: endless craving keeps people trapped, and freedom comes from wanting less. She has called it a fight the power song. The words are loose and repetitive. The chorus hook has no words at all.

Musically it is mid-90s Italian dance production, with a driving bassline and a simple synth riff under Gala's low, steady vocal. The single edit runs about three and a half minutes. The album version runs a little under four. Music Week gave it four out of five. The review compared it to Crystal Waters and her hit Gypsy Woman. Melody Maker praised its relentless Europop pull.

The record spread across the continent through late 1996. It held the top spot in France for 13 weeks and finished the year as the country's third biggest single. In Belgium it topped both the Flemish and the Walloon charts. It climbed to number four on the Eurochart Hot 100 that December. It made the top 10 in Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands. The UK release followed in July 1997. By August 3 it sat at number two. It later went diamond in France and triple platinum in the UK. Come into My Life, the album it opened, went on to sell millions of copies worldwide.

The German director Nina Bittel shot the video in sepia in Hamburg's Speicherstadt warehouse district. It shows Gala being pursued by a series of men. Other scenes show her at the wheel of a 1962 Austin-Healey 3000.

Gala has said she regrets the contract she signed in 1995 with producer Max Moroldo. She had no manager when she started. Her parents never read what she signed. She has called the deal very unfair. She says she stayed a struggling independent artist for years while other people earned money from the song. She later won the right to re-record it. In 2024 she released Freed From Desire (2024 Version), with a remix by Diplo, to take back ownership and royalties. She has compared the move to Taylor Swift's re-recordings of her early albums.

Football fans had been singing the song for years by then. Bohemian FC fans in Dublin were singing a reworked version as early as 2011. Stevenage supporters adapted it for Luke Freeman in 2012. Newcastle fans used it for Aleksandar Mitrović. Wigan Athletic fan Sean Kennedy posted a video in May 2016 of a chant about striker Will Grigg set to the tune. It went viral within weeks. A recording credited to DJ Kenno reached number 76 on the UK chart. The Wigan chairman gave Kennedy a free season ticket. Northern Ireland fans carried the chant to France for Euro 2016 that summer. It became the unofficial song of the tournament. England fans soon swapped in Jamie Vardy. French fans used it for Antoine Griezmann.

The tune has stayed in football ever since. England's women's team sang it while celebrating their Euro 2022 title. West Ham fans used it in 2023 after Jarrod Bowen scored the late winner in the Europa Conference League final. Switzerland reportedly used it as a goal song at the 2026 World Cup. It has also played at the Paris 2024 Olympics, at darts events and at the walkouts of Scottish MMA fighter Chris Duncan.

Its reach goes beyond sport. The song is a fixture at LGBTQ events. Gala has said her proudest moment was hearing it sung at women's marches. Striking teachers in the UK took it up in 2023. Students in Serbia sang it through their 2024 and 2025 anti-corruption protests. Gala posted her support in April 2025. She opened that year's Exit festival in Novi Sad with a message for the students. She also cut a quiet acoustic version in 2016 for the French film Un homme à la hauteur, starring Jean Dujardin. A 2018 cover by Drenchill featuring Indiiana went four times platinum in Poland.

Gala has said she never pushed the song's revival herself. The public brought it back. She sees each new use as the song doing what she wrote it to do: getting people together and pushing them to break loose. The key and BPM of Freed From Desire are listed on its Song IQ page.