Jim Johnston WWE Entrance Music Creative Process Revealed

WWE

Legendary WWE composer Jim Johnston’s creative process for creating entrance themes has been revealed, with a member of Downstait discussing their collaborations.

The sound of Downstait will be familiar to many WWE fans, with the band collaborating with Johnston for entrance music for the likes of The Miz and Dolph Ziggler.

During a recent appearance on the Ropes N Riffs Podcast, Downstait guitarist Justin Call revealed some of the process the band undertook in collaboration with Johnston.

The process would start with a skeleton for the track, with Call explaining Johnston’s management of the process, saying:

“So he’ll send you a skeleton with some quick programmed drums and just his kind of one-take vocals, with all the lyrics written out. You take that and turn it into something all your own.

“It was work for hire, but he didn’t seem like he pulled the reins too tight on the music. The lyrics needed to stay where they were at, because they were part of his contribution to the character.

“Jim would help us get into his headspace too, ‘this is a real cerebral character, this guy’s a psycho’, things like that, we’d try to reflect that with the music.

“That was his process, and the reins were not pulled too tight when we were doing music.”

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Johnston crafted WWE entrance themes from the mid-1980s until his release in November 2017.

His work would continue to be heard through the WWE Uncaged series of unreleased entrance theme albums, with the last edition being in early 2021.

Downstait were the masterminds behind the Cody Rhodes theme “Kingdom”, with The American Nightmare returning to WWE with that theme in 2022.

Since 2019, WWE has employed the services of def rebel for entrance music, with a recent report noting a number of stars have requested a change to their themes.

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