A few weeks ago on Melody Monday, I went back to WWF Full Metal, the cassette I practically wore out as a wrestling-obsessed kid. It still ruled thirty years later, King Mabel notwithstanding, and revisiting it reminded me just how important entrance music used to be to making wrestlers feel larger than life.
So naturally, we’re going back to the well.
This week it’s WWF The Music, Vol. 2, released in 1997, and if Full Metal captured the colorful, cartoonish mid-’90s WWF I grew up loving, Volume 2 catches the company right in the middle of becoming something else entirely.
Stone Cold was exploding. Rocky Maivia was still figuring out that smiling and wearing tassels wasn’t going to cut it. Mankind was wandering around being completely fucking insane. Shawn Michaels was Shawn Michaels. Bret Hart was reaching the end of his WWF run. The Undertaker was becoming darker, the Nation of Domination was taking shape, and the Attitude Era was basically standing outside knocking on the door.
And Jim Johnston was still making everybody sound like somebody.
The album opens with Dark Side for The Undertaker. It’s a good Undertaker theme, heavier and more aggressive than the classic funeral-march sound, and it fits where the character was headed. Do I like it more than Graveyard Symphony? No. That bell-and-organ combination is about as close to perfect wrestling music as anyone has ever gotten. But Dark Side works because, like so much of Johnston’s music, you don’t need somebody to tell you whose theme you’re listening to.
Then the glass breaks.
Hell Frozen Over is Stone Cold Steve Austin, and there really isn’t much that needs explaining. The second you hear that sound, you know exactly who’s coming through the curtain. That’s what I was complaining about when we covered Full Metal. Great wrestling themes don’t require you to wait until somebody walks onto the stage to figure out who the hell it is.
Glass shatters. Crowd loses its mind.
That’s wrestling music. Or at least what it used to be—and what it would be again if we were living in a sane world.
Pearl River Rip for Ahmed Johnson is another one I’ve always thought fit its wrestler perfectly. It’s heavy, aggressive, and sounds like somebody is about to come down the aisle and beat the shit out of somebody, which was basically Ahmed Johnson’s entire presentation. Whether everything always went according to plan after the bell rang is another matter, but the entrance worked.
Wild Cat for Marc Mero and Sable is pure 1997 WWF. It’s cheesy, a little ridiculous, and somehow appropriate for the duo. I’m not putting it on a workout playlist, but put it over footage of Marc and Sable walking down the aisle and suddenly it makes perfect sense.
Then there’s You Start the Fire, the Bret Hart track, which has always felt like a weird inclusion because when I think Bret Hart, I hear that guitar squeal and the classic Hart theme immediately. This isn’t what my brain identifies as Bret Hart music. It’s not terrible, but on an album that’s supposed to make me picture the wrestler as soon as the music starts, this one doesn’t quite do that for me.
Mastodon, on the other hand? That’s Vader. Big, heavy, pounding, and no subtlety whatsoever. Exactly as it should be for Vader.
You didn’t need a delicate orchestral arrangement for Vader. You needed music that sounded like a 450-pound man was about to walk through your wall and Vadersault you to oblivion.
Ode to Freud is where things get wonderfully strange, because of course Mankind couldn’t just have a normal entrance theme. The whole thing feels unsettling and wrong, which means it’s absolutely right. That’s what I love about the best of Jim Johnston’s work. He wasn’t trying to write a song that would chart. He was trying to turn a character into sound. And Ode to Freud fit the original incarnation of Mankind to an absolute T.
And then WWF somehow went from Mankind to Dude Love. Same Mick Foley. Completely different universe.
The Dude Love theme sounds like someone found a forgotten 1970s television show about a guy with a waterbed, incense, and entirely too much confidence. It’s ridiculous. It’s perfect. There is absolutely no way that song should accompany the same human being who was pulling his hair out as Mankind a few tracks earlier, and that’s exactly why it works.
Nation of Domination is another strong one. That beat immediately gives the group an identity. It’s menacing without trying too hard, and like the best wrestling music, the first few seconds do all the work. “We Are the Nation of Domination…” Oh, that’s the Nation of Domination. It ain’t rocket science.
Then we get Destiny for Rocky Maivia, and this one is hilarious to listen to with the benefit of hindsight. That guy becomes The Rock. Not some decent midcard guy. Not somebody who had a respectable career. The damn Rock. But listening to Destiny, you can hear just how far away from that character he still was. It’s not necessarily a bad track. It’s just music for Rocky Maivia, smiling blue-chip prospect, rather than the guy who would eventually walk through the curtain with an arena chanting his name.
That’s part of what makes Volume 2 such a great little time capsule. Everybody isn’t finished yet.
Then there’s Snap for Sycho Sid. Here’s my problem; I already had Psycho Dance, and I love Psycho Dance. Snap isn’t bad at all, but you’re asking it to follow one of my favorite wrestling themes from Full Metal, and that’s an unfair fight. Psycho Dance wins. Sorry, Sid.
Dangerous for Ken Shamrock works exactly like it should. Intense, urgent, aggressive. Shamrock looked like he might lose his mind and start suplexing furniture at any moment, and his music needed to reflect that.
Can’t Get Enough for Flash Funk is just fun. Bright, funky, completely over the top, and another reminder that wrestling used to be perfectly comfortable saying, “This guy dances, so give him the funkiest damn music we can make.”
Subtlety was overrated.
Then we get I Know You Want Me for Sunny, which may be one of the most late-’90s WWF things ever put onto a CD. Is it great music No, but who cares? It’s Sunny, and yes, of course I did. To me, ’90s Sunny rivaled ’90s Pamela Anderson.
It’s flirtatious, cheesy, and completely on-brand. Wrestling music doesn’t always need to survive outside wrestling. Sometimes its job is simply to make you think of the person it belongs to. Mission accomplished.
And then Volume 2 closes with Sexy Boy. Again. Yes, it was already on Full Metal, and no, I don’t care.
Shawn Michaels was my favorite wrestler around this period and remains second only to Curt Hennig for me, and Sexy Boy is immortal. It’s arrogant, ridiculous, cheesy as hell, and absolutely perfect for Shawn Michaels. You could play that opening today and an arena would immediately know who’s coming.
That’s the recurring theme here.
Recognition.
Personality.
Character.
Volume 2 isn’t perfect, and I don’t have quite the same attachment to it that I have to Full Metal. Full Metal was something I wore out. That’s different. But in some ways Volume 2 is an even more interesting snapshot because WWF itself was changing so quickly in 1997.
Rocky Maivia hadn’t become The Rock yet.
Stone Cold was becoming Stone Cold.
Mankind could somehow also be Dude Love.
Bret was nearing the end.
Shawn was at the center of everything.
And the music reflected all of it.
That’s why I keep praising Jim Johnston whenever we talk about wrestling themes. The guy understood that entrance music wasn’t background noise. It was part of the character.
Vader sounded like Vader. Dude Love sounded like Dude Love. Austin sounded like Austin.
Today, far too often, somebody’s entrance music starts, and the entire audience sits there waiting for the name to appear on the screen.
That shouldn’t happen. And I’m going to end this before I turn this column into something it isn’t meant to be and start fussing about modern-day WWE trash “music.”
WWF The Music, Vol. 2 isn’t just fifteen wrestling themes. It’s about 48 minutes of the World Wrestling Federation in 1997, right when the company was shedding one identity and discovering the one that would make it explode.
And nearly thirty years later, the glass still breaks and you immediately know somebody’s about to get their ass kicked.
What WWF entrance theme from this era still gets an immediate reaction out of you? Sound off in the comments.
