by Penny Sautereau-Fife
Since the mid 80’s theme music has been an important factor in wrestling. Fans recognize a theme and will cheer or boo often before the wrestler actually even appears on the ramp.
A good theme song will get a crowd charged and ready for the match. And some theme songs become iconic. Themes can even show a company’s faith in a performer. If so and so spends more than two months coming out to, as Danielson called it, “Generic Rock Song #43”, chances are the office sees them in the midcard at absolute best. If they get a badass sounding song by an actual band hired to record it, such as Drew McIntyre’s “Broken Dreams” by Shaman’s Harvest, it suggests the company is hoping for great things from that performer.
A perfect example of the effectiveness of theme music in conveying the mood the audience is hoped to have is Doink the Clown. When Matt Bourne was Doink and a heel, he had what many fans call the best in-house WWE theme song EVER.
After Bourne left and Steve “Brooklyn Brawler” Lombardi was put in the costume as Doink II, (The version with the damn mini-me), the theme was changed to this.
It went from creepy and mood-setting to generic circus music, and the crowd’s love of Doink went with it. The happy Doink theme let the crowd know it was piss-break time.
But sometimes for whatever reasons, a wrestler isn’t content to just take the theme they’re given. Sometimes, for reasons ranging from a gimmick album, a promotional purpose, or a wrestler stretching their own creative legs, a performer will do their own theme song.
Now obviously results of this endeavor are very mixed. No one with actual taste in music will argue that R-Truth’s rythmless cookie-cutter rap themes were good for anything but getting kids and moms in the crowd to sing along. From way back in 2002 with “Gettin’ Rowdy” in his first WWE run as K-Kwik, (Derailed by Road Dog getting fired shortly after their tag-team debut), to “Get Krunk” which made so little sense even for Talentless Truth that they soon went back to “What’s Up” so the crowd could remember to pop for him, R-Truth is a good argument for NOT letting most wrestlers near a recording studio.
So let’s get started here. My criteria for compiling this list is as follows.
– Wrestler must at least be in tune. No one expects a wrestler to have Christina Aguilera’s pipes, but they need to at least sound better than Kei$ha. Sorry folks but this means sadly, Badstreet USA and BOTH versions of Sexy Boy are disqualified. On the bright side, no #$%#ing R-Truth.
– Theme must have been used regularly for minimum 6 months on TV, long enough to be recognizable to the fans.
So here we go.
#6; With My Baby Tonight (Sung by Brian “Road Dog” Armstrong)
Used at first to get Jeff Jarrett’s “aspiring country music star” gimmick over, the problem was that Jarrett wasn’t comfortable singing at the time and didn’t want to try to. Luckily someone had overheard Jarrett’s on-screen flunkie the Roadie sing in the shower, so Brian sang the sand and Jeff lipsynched it on TV and PPV. As far as the story goes, this was not originally intended to be revealed publicly, until Jeff had a falling out with management and made his first brief jump to WCW, leaving Brian adrift without a storyline. So it was decided that the “lipsynching scanal” would be revealed, giving Brian a storyline to get him off on his own as a singles wrestler. Not only did the song, which actually got some airplay on country music stations, become the entrance music of the rechristened “Road Dog Jesse James”, for the next year he actually sang it live every week as he entered. It faled to get him over though, and he eventually got paired with the struggling Billy Gunn following Bart Gunn leaving the company, forming one of the WWE’s most popular tag-teams. Ranked at #6 despite Road Dog having the best singing voice on this list only because the song itself really has no connection to wrestling or the man singing it lyrically.
Honorable mention here; When Jeff Jarrett’s first WCW stint ended and he came back to Vince, he had gotten sick of the bs he got from fans on the street about the lipsynching, and asked Vince for a favour, and got his friends in the country band Sawyer Brown to appear on the 1998 Unforgiven PPV and let him sing “First Class White Trash” with them live, just to prove he COULD sing. While I can’t find the clip on YouTube, I remember him not being half bad.
#5; Hardcore Country (Mickie James)
Passable. But in wrestling this is talented. No one expects Mickie James is going to be collecting a gold statue at the Country Music Awards. But the song isn’t horrible and it does it’s job. Hell, the night she debuted in TNA after seeing her backstage the fans knew the minute this song started it was her coming out. The TNA crowd pops huge whenever they hear the opening line. And while Mickie isn’t going to hive Reba McIntyre any restless nights, her voice isn’t grating or off-key.
Pausing from the list for a moment, if anyone thinks Road Dog or Mickie James aren’t all that good, let me include a counterpoint to show you just how bad a wrestler-performed country song could have been.
Counterpoint; I Hate Rap (Curt Hennig & the West Texas Rednecks)
The ONLY reason this song exists is because WCW needed an antagonist to diss Master P after they spent a few million to have the mediocre rap star come in and give some unused b-listers a reason to exist by forming the No-Limit Soldiers. This faction is memorable SOLELY for Brad Armstrong awkwardly trying to cop some heat off his kid brother Road Dog by blatantly ripping off his New Age Outlaws catchphrase.
But the song Curt and his cronies made to insult Master P was just awful. Curt can’t sing for his life (irony!), the song itself is off-key, and sounds like what aliens listening to old radio signals in space must think country music is.
Anyway, back to the list.
#4; Jive Soul Bro (Kenneth Johnson AKA Slick)
First of all, the amount of racism and stereotypes in the video for this somg, hell the song itself, are an example of why Vince is ashamed to still call his product wrestling. Crap like this was not only commonplace in wrestling even up to the mid-nineties, (Men on a Mission anyone?), but also, NOBODY questioned it. It’s easy to look back in hindsight and say “Jesus Bloody Christ who greenlit this shit and why didn’t Al Sharpton have kittens over it?”. But any of us who WERE wrestling fans in this time period, can you look back and say this made you anywhere near so uncomfortable back then as it (hopefully) does now?
That aside, the song itself is sadly actually pretty good. It sounds like a 70’s Motown funk song. Slick has an actually good voice for the song, and the song itself is catchy and gets stuck in your head. Take the borderline racism out of the equation and you’re left with a pretty decent song you can dance to. Still, I could’ve done without the close-ups of Slick eating greasy chicken.
#3 Basic Thuganomics (John Cena)
Would rank higher if he did the entire song himself instead of throwing his cousin the nightclub DJ a bone and letting him rap the second half. And yes I know Cena haters are going to bitch that this is on the list and HBK won’ be, but remember, we’re judging by quality of song here, not by a popularity contest. (Which means you folks are going to just bloody HATE #2). Doctor BY GOD Dre himself said Cena gas flow. And the bitchiest Cena hater can’t deny that. He writes competent lyrics and he spits them evenly. He has rhythm and he keeps a tone. He’s better than “rap legends” like Biz Markie, whose voice sounds like 3 cats and an inbred chicken in a printing press. He’s not in the league of guys like Eminem or Maestro, but he’s better than average.
This makes the list over “My time is Now” because the laterr was written to pander to the fan-base post face-turn, whereas this one really suited and matched his character better. As a heel Cena was rebelling and mouthy, a thuggish song reflects that. Cena barely resembles that character now, so a generic rock theme could work for him just as well as what he’s using. If you need proof the song still resonates, check his Wrestlemania 24 Entrance wherein a few dozen Cena clones entered to it, getting a bigger pop than Cena himself did following them.
#2; Modest (PeroxWhy?Gen Featuring Jeff Hardy)
Wait for the 2011 Remic where the main lyric is changed from “The top of Mount Profession” to “The Time of My Probation”. That aside, no, he’s not going to steal fans from Micheal Buble`. And if he tried to sing anything more complex that required a versatile voice his throat would probably implode, but Jeff probably knows that, which is why every song he’s sung with his driving buddies Helms and Moore all stay in this mold. It’s sort of like beat poetry set to new age rock. Jeff may have no clue when to say no with his recreational vegetation, but give the lil bastard credit, he does indeed know his limits vocally. The song is catchy, and his pseudo-singing is at least in key and carries with the tune.
And now, sure to ignite fevered debate and rampant accusations of opiate abuse for days to come, my #1.
#1; Don’t Go Messin’ With A Country Boy (“Hillbilly” Jim Morris
I’m sorry. I know some of you, even those who might’ve grudgingly understood including Cena and Jeffikins over Freebirds and HBK are probably asking yourselves what I’m smoking. But this is actually a very good song. And I don’t even LIKE Country. Which makes this actually a very depressing list for me when my least favorite genre produced more decent songs from wrestlers. Maybe Country is just a really hard style of music to f**k up.
Whatever’s in the moonshine though, on quality alone it’s hard to argue that most of the time, when wrestlers try a country song it works. Jim has a good hearty country voice, he’s in tune and on key, and the song is catchy. And DAMNED memorable. Near 3 decades later and this song STILL gets a huge pop if they drag Jim out of mothballs for a cheap nostaligia moment. Face it, as far as quality, this is sadly the best wrestler-sung theme ever.
Honorable Unmentionables
Just because so many folks kept insisting they should be on the list, even though by my criteria they didn’t qualify, here are the top three commenter’s requested themes, just because I’m nice like that.
Badstreet USA by Michael PS Hayes and the Fabulous Freebirds
Sexy Boy by Sherri Martel
And by HBK Shawn Micheals himself
And no bitching about Shawn not being on the ACTUAL list, HE HIMSELF said he can’t sing for shit folks.
Oh and…. while I won’t be cruel enough to torture you with any of R-Truth’s three themes, (Four? Did he do one in TNA for 3 Live Krew?), the past few weeks HAVE given me enough of a mean streak to do………. THIS!!! BWA HA HA!!!
You can thank me for the traumatizing flashbacks with birthday cards. I’m 37 on May 13th. Your suffering is all the present I need.
