0.43.1 - Now I'm watching wrestling, trying to be a tough guy*
Remember a few days ago when I talked about how Limp Bizkit's My Way was linked inseparably from the world of Professional Wrestling because of the Wrestlemania XVII promo package? Well, there's a symbiotic relationship between the world of fake grapple sports and the world of professional musicians. The power of a good entrance theme, a great entrance theme, and the way that can set a crowd on fire to see an incredibly fit man (and more recently, woman) walk through a curtain creates the kind of conditioned reaction Pavlov would be proud of.
It shouldn't be a surprise to you that I am no more immune to this kind of conditioning than anyone else. You could probably play me anything off WWF The Music Volume 4** and I'd be instictively psyched as hell. It wasn't until the 1990s that it really became a thing, but what started with simple guitar riffs and hair metal wails, often penned by wrestling manager Jimmy Hart, to introduce acts like Bret Hart, the tag team Demolition, or The Million Dollar Man down to the ring, soon evolved to be less like advertising jingles, and more like a proper song.
The first real wrestling song I remember, the one that stuck with me, was the DX Band (a kind of real band, actually the Chris Warren Band, working under contract for WWF at the time) performing the D-Generation X theme, which made me lose my mind as an impressionable 18 year old, followed by the Triple H theme 'My Time' which is my favourite song ever used in WWE before they started just commissioning or licensing songs from real bands***. I've definitely not tipsily walked through the streets of Chesterfield with a bottle of water, listening to My Time and practicing doing updraft spit takes like Triple H did, no sir.
God, there's already so many Youtube links in this post and I haven't even got to the albums yet. Time for a quick break to watch the Taskmaster final, brb.
In the mid 90's a small, scrappy renegade wrestling company called Extreme Championship Wrestling was created, and a part of their guerrilla appeal, along with less cartoonish figures and more sex and violence (this was wrestling in the 90s', it was not subtle) was the use of real, actual songs by real bands as wrestlers entrance music. This was made possible by a special arrangement ECW owner Paul Heyman had called "not caring about broadcast copyright that much and hoping I don't get sued", a tight rope to walk when one of his main attractions, a wrestler called The Sandman, used famously litigious band Metallica's 'Enter Sandman' as his theme, which is a bit route one in it's thinking but he made it work.
I loved ECW, it was exactly as niche and edgy as you can imagine, hard to find and incredibly low production value compared to it's competitors, but it had scrappy underdog energy and a soundtrack that introduced me to a bunch of songs from the mid to late 90's that I love to this day. "Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck" by Prong was Justin Credible's theme; Pantera's "Walk" heralded Rob Van Dam to the ring; add in songs from Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Beck, White Zombie, and AC/DC and you could see how their musical tastes and mine might find some close alignment. After getting away with it for a long time, the bigger wrestling companies took notice, and now wrestling and music are instrinically linked in a way that I can't see changing.
WWE, the big company on the block, hired in house musicians to pump out stock music for its various performers, the quality and appropriateness of which can vary wildly from performer to performer; but when it lands, it lands. Critically, if an established star arrives in the company, someone who has already built a musical brand, the company might just shell out the big bucks for the license to use that song for their wrestler; or they'll produce a sweded, legally distinct, not quite right version in house which just makes everyone angry (like Raven's WCW theme you can hear here). Sometimes, the wrestlers will end up meeting bands as part of them operating in the rarefied celebrity circles they move in as lots of bands have wrestling fans - did you know that Billy Corgan from The Smashing Pumpkins was once part owner of a whole wrestling company? - and sometimes, a wrestler and a band get friendly, and the band will say "we have a kickass song for you", or the wrestler will ask "this rocks, can I use it" and a match made in heaven is born. And sometimes, in very rare instances**** the wrestler themself is also a musician or in a band and they write their own song to come to the ring to.
In the interest in not just spending the entirety of this article just naming wrestlers and what entrance songs of theirs I like or work well or the crowd love*****, I've limited myself to one album from each category. Let's talk about Adam Copeland, known by his ring name Edge, first.
Edge came into the WWE in the mid to late 90's a brooding long haired trenchcoat wearing mysterious maybe vigilante? who might also be a vampire and definitely hung around with a vampire? If you wanted to convince me at 18 that someone was cool, you might just have to write that sentence down and show it to me and I'd be convinced. At this point, he's had a number of entrance themes, a near career-ending injury, a triumphant return, and a career which has spanned three decades, and multiple entrance themes. However, for probably more than a decade now, he's been most closely associated with Metallingus, a terribly-named but kickass high energy track from Alter Bridge's debut album, One Day Remains.
There's an unfair and denigrating term used for the type of growly rock metal Alter Bridge produce, so I'll say the typical appellation someone less upstanding than me might apply to it is Butt Rock. Personally, I don't have a problem with a little Butt Rock applied in the correct circumstances and it's a solid gold fact that Metallingus is a high energy pump up jam of the highest calibre. The rest of the album isn't far off the pace either, really it's only the familiarity I have with what is by far their best known song (by all accounts, Edge and Alter Bridge guitarist Mark Tremonti are friends, Tremonti played him a demo of the track before it was even fully recorded, and Edge said "can I have that for my entrance?" and the rest is history).
Let's now talk about Chris Jericho.
I don't want to sound harsh or dismissive here but it's past midnight and I'm trying to get this finished because I'm away most of the weekend in Manchester to see Lorde, so I hope you don't consider me too harsh when I say the rest of the Judas album sounds a lot like the music a very talented hair metal cover band might write for themselves. Like Alter Bridge, I'm certain they're not out there looking to reinvent the wheel, so your enjoyment of them will depending entirely on whether you think there is already enough hair metal music in the world, and you're not really in the market for any more. Judas is a totally winning wrestling theme song though, aided no doubt by Jericho having had 25 years at the time to figure out exactly what works and doesn't work to bring the crowd to life.
Let's meet our final wrestler for the evening.
During that 7 year gap, with the fans fully aware he was gone, probably retired, they continued to chant his name. It became a sign of protest, a call for someone they loved to be brought back instead of whatever was happening at the moment. Putting on a bad match, fumbling your way through a tedious segment, declaiming a boring promotional segment on TV? The crowd would let you know by chanting relentless, mercilessly, and with great and increasing volume... C M Punk, C M Punk, C M Punk.
He's not Canadian though, so I have dodged the allegations there.
His schtick, his gimmick, his persona had, even before his initial departure, been something of a cultlike figure, and with this persona came a new theme song - Living Colours 'Cult of Personality', a thematic fit and stadium-singalong anthem which has become his signature ever since. He's back in the wrestling business now, back with the old company, and to this day, the crowd continue to chant his name and sing his song whenever it is played.
I didn't know much about Living Colour, and listening to Vivid for this justified the whole thing for me. In a wonderful moment of kharmic reappropriation, this is alternative metal from the 1980's (something I'd generally consider to be the domain of the pastier-skinned musicians in the world) composed and performed by a group of Black men from New York City; with that background came a whole chest freezer full of additional musical influences, and while the majority of the styling on Vivid is of the hard rock variety, it's cut through with funk, soul, hip-hop, early sampling, and blues to make something which sounds layered, interesting, and entirely different.
Cult of Personality is a great song to hang your hat on, let me be clear, but I enjoyed listening to every other song on Vivid if anything a little more; I've heard Cult a thousand times by now, everything else was fun and different and they're another band which got the gold star which means I'll be back to listen to them again in 2026, once I have my 1,000 albums under my belt.
I didn't do a good job of sticking to my hour time limit for this one, but I feel good for getting it off my chest. I crested over 900 albums listened to last week so look out for another love letter to a significant album for me when we get back from Manchester. I should really go to bed now...once I've proofread this for mistakes.
Don't judge me.
* A Wheatus lyric title followed by a Bowling for Soup lyric title back to back? What is this, the skate-punk room at Corporation in 2003? Also I need to shout out Bowling for Soup for their excellent and timely cover of Taylor Swift's Actually Romantic from The Life of a Showgirl, it's very fun.
** A real album, which you can find here on Spotify.
*** Honourable mentions go to the Test theme, and the original Chris Jericho WWE theme as certified bangers also
**** Two, there are two instances I can think of, Chris Jericho and John Cena. I wasn't going to subject myself to the John Cena album though, I have enough self-respect to know better. And I say that having paid money to go to the cinema to see Now You See Me, Now You Don't tonight.
***** Here's a quick top 5 in no particular order and that will be the last set of YouTube videos for this article, honest.
Shinsuke Nakamura's "Rising Sun' entrance theme
Finn Balor's 'Catch Your Breath' theme
The Original Bray Wyatt song by Mark Crozer and The Rels
Brian Danielson using Europe's 'The Final Countdown'
Scottish Indie Wrestler and genuine musician Joe Hendry made himself famous with his self-penned entrance theme which the crowd love (as you can see)
****** If you don't know what a Chris Gaines Fugue State is, hopefully this Wikipedia Article will get you up to speed.
