Back at the beginning of December, word came out that Jim Johnston, the man who composed many of the most legendary and indispensable pro wrestling theme songs of the past … however long theme songs have been a thing, was let go by WWE after three decades with the company.
Over the past several years, wrestling fans have been seeing (hearing) more and more theme songs for new Superstars being composed by the duo CFO$. They’ve composed the themes for pretty much everyone who has come up through NXT over the past … however long NXT has been a thing, and legitimately have some bangers to their credit, including the themes for Finn Bálor and Enzo and Cass.
Not everyone is a fan of CFO$ and the new direction of WWE theme music, however. Perhaps not surprisingly, that “not everyone” appears to include Jim Johnston.
This month, Johnston has been doing quite a few interviews following his WWE release, and most recently he spoke to Newsweek. During the very informative interview, Johnston says that he doesn’t know CFO$, but he feels like the major problem with the new music they’re creating is that it all sounds the same.
I’m not working with them so I don’t know what their directives are. All I can react to is what I’m hearing. I’m sure they’re talented guys. But what’s being produced just feels too homogenous. It’s just music that plays—it doesn’t feel like each guy is really themed. All the women have a dance music kind of thing. And it’s lots and lots of loud sound effects.
What makes me the worst is not anything that happened to me, or any negativity towards those composers…I feel bad for the talent trying to build careers for themselves when I just don’t feel they’re being served well enough to become stars. Before “Stone Cold” was “Stone Cold” he was The Ringmaster. The Ringmaster’s theme was something I wrote for him. The music can make such a difference in the person and how they perform. That same guy who was dead-in-the-water as The Ringmaster, a couple of tweaks, different music, different attitude, and he becomes one of the most popular people in the history of the genre.
I’m wondering who is working currently at WWE who is an absolute superstar but, who, because they’re wrapped in a homogenous piece of clothing, they’re stuck and can’t break out? I would hope they would try to really brand each guy and each woman as an individual.
The “mix and match” argument would seem to have some merit, as even arguably CFO$’ most popular theme, “Glorious Domination,” wasn’t even intended for the Superstar who ended up using it. I’m personally a big fan of most of what CFO$ churns out, but there’s little argument that they aren’t churning these songs out. “Hey, we’re not using this one” is a much different beast than sitting down with a wrestler, understanding a character, and creating a whole new piece of music designed just for them.
