In 2022, DJ Marshmello put his spin on the classic four notes of the Monday Night Football (MNF) theme song “Heavy Action,” which was played throughout the season. The following year, ESPN switched things up and wanted to introduce a new song and a touch of nostalgia, and invited Chris Stapleton, Snoop Dogg, and drummer Cindy Blackman Santana to take on Phil Collins‘ 1981 hit “In the Air Tonight” for the 2023-2024 season.
Before playing on Monday Night Football, the Collins classic was never linked to any sports and is most widely remembered for its placement nearly four decades earlier on the premiere of the TV police drama Miami Vice in 1984.
“In the Air Tonight” was chosen by ESPN after focus-group research found that there was a deep nostalgia among Monday Night Football fans for the earlier eras of Howard Cosell, throughout the 1980s and ’90s, and wanted to find something different from the traditional background theme “Heavy Action,” which was composed by Johnny Pearson in 1970 and premiered on MNF in 1976.
“We just wanted to make sure we heard everybody’s voices, whether it was the fans’ voices, whether it was the artists’ voices, whether it was staying true to the ‘Monday Night Football’ brand over the years,” said ESPN/NFL creative director Rico Labbe. “We just wanted to make sure we meshed all that together. It could be a challenge. But we think we hit the sweet spot.”
At the time, Stapleton was already on their radar after performing his moving rendition of the national anthem during Super Bowl LVII in February 2023. “We really felt that he had this soulful feel to him,” added Labbe, “that incorporated everybody.”
‘Rivals, Us Versus Them’
In their moody reimagining of the new Monday Night anthem, announcers Troy Aikman and Joe Buck’s play-by-play reactions and the original version by Collins echo in the background of the video, directed by Rico Labbe and Mike Sciallis and produced by Amanda Paschal and Julie Fitz.
Stapleton is seen watching the game in a dark room before walking through the stadium, while Snoop Dogg enters driving a lowrider and cuts in with his own rhymes:
Rivals, us verse them
Survival, we must win
It’s trivial, my team like king
By any means necessary
Went head-to-head with adversaries
Weapons given so we gotta take it
It’s fourteen inches, so we gotta make it
The moody rendition swells around Stapleton on guitar and carries the chorus growling I can feel it comin’ in the air tonight, oh Lord / I’ve been waitin’ for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
“In the Air Tonight” 2024
Ahead of the Philadelphia Eagles v. Tampa Bay Buccaneers game during the playoff games in January 2024, the Stapleton and Snoop Dogg version of “In the Air Tonight” returned to fan’s delight.
“I never really had a Chris Stapleton phase but him doing the [‘In the Air Tonight’] song is perfect,” wrote one fan. Another added, “Does Chris Stapleton do ‘In the Air Tonight’ at his live shows?”
[RELATED: Joan Jett, P!nk, Faith Hill, and the Evolution of Carrie Underwood’s “Waiting All Day” Sunday Night Football Theme Song]
Monday to Sunday Night Theme Songs Traditions
In 2013, Carrie Underwood also took over as the resident country performer during Sunday Night Football with her version of the theme song, “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night,” a reworking of Joan Jett‘s 1988 hit “I Hate Myself for Loving You” with lyrics themed to the teams and football.
The song had been performed in several iterations for nearly two decades since P!nk covered “I Hate Myself For Loving You” and reworded the song for the Sunday night games in 2006. A year later, Faith Hill took over the song through 2012, with the newly drawn “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night” theme song and also shared different versions of it throughout her six-year run.
Underwood did the same, and even switched up the song for the 2016 season with “Oh, Sunday Night,” pulling from her 2014 duet with Miranda Miranda Lambert, “Somethin’ Bad” and again in 2018 with her song, “Game On,” which she co-wrote with Brett James and Chris DeStefano, before she returned to “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night” during the 2019 through 2023 seasons.
Photo: Chris Stapleton performs onstage during the 57th Annual CMA Awards at Bridgestone Arena on November 08, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Terry Wyatt/Getty Images)
Local News
Comments / 0