Chris Stapleton and Snoop Dogg greatly improve Monday Night Football theme song
By Lee Vowell
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For years, ABC and ESPN used the same hideous song for Monday Night Football. That tune was a play on Hank Williams, Jr.'s "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight" and turned into "All My Rowdy Friends Are Here on Monday Night." Clever, right? Not really. Thankfully, for 2023, ESPN has turned to Chris Stapleton and Snoop Dogg to help create a new theme song for the NFL's Monday showcase.
Chris Stapleton and Snoop Dogg team up to do a pretty great cover of Phil Collins's "In the Air Tonight." The odd bit is that Collins' track seems like a natural for Monday Night Football. I am surprised no one has thought of using the song before.
There is obviously a slow build to the song but then an explosion of drums. Using the tune should definitely get American football fans psyched for the game at the beginning of the broadcast. And while Stapleton definitely sings his part of the song in an extremely high tenor, it works.
ESPN asked Chris Stapleton and Snoop Dogg to make their Monday Night Football intro better
About halfway through the song, Snoop Dogg enters for a bit of, well...Snoop Dogg stuff. And that works too. What doesn't work, as you can see in the Twitter post below, is the random dancers. I almost feel like I am watching a cover of Pat Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield" video for a few seconds.
Can you feel it? 🔥
— ESPN (@espn) September 19, 2023
The new Monday Night Football Anthem is HERE!@ChrisStapleton x @SnoopDogg x @Drumstress pic.twitter.com/hbuTMMHIT9
The next question is how quickly ESPN finds a way to release their theme song as a theme. Maybe they already have? I am far too lazy to actually check. Either way, Chris Stapleton and Snoop Dogg's cover of "In the Air Tonight" is a whole lot better than Hank Williams, Jr. yell-singing his awful tune.
To be fair, ESPN has toyed with the theme song to Monday Night Football for a few years now. Last year they used a Marshmello remix called "Heavy Action." It was meh. So was 2020's intro "Rip It Up" by Butcher Brown. That was a cover of Little Richard's original.
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