Jim Johnston Thinks Using Licensed Music For Wrestling Themes Okay But With Caveats

While the use of licensed music has always been around in wrestling, in recent years it seems to have resurfaced in a big way. In particular, AEW stars such as AEW International Champion Orange Cassidy, Jungle Boy, CM Punk, and several others have used popular songs as they make their way to the ring, with Chris Jericho going as far as to use the song "Judas" from his band, Fozzy.

During an appearance on "Conversations with Conrad," Jim Johnston, the former WWE composer who created many iconic wrestling themes, was asked about the trend of licensed music being used more in more in wrestling. And unsurprisingly, Johnston has some mixed thoughts.

"For show themes, I think it's great," Johnston said. "Or it can be great. But you really have to pick very carefully. The difficulty with outside music is people already have association, emotional associations with it. So if you hear a song and it takes you back to, 'Oh, that's when I first kissed my wife in the car that night after dinner.' That's great, but that's not what you want people in an arena to be thinking about, when you're most important guy is coming out.

"You want them thinking about your most important guy. When Undertaker's music plays, you only were thinking about Undertaker. You weren't thinking about when you kissed your wife for the first time. Using outside music as an entrance theme I think can make the wrestler feel good about himself maybe, but that's the end of positives in my opinion. Now it's misleading."

He feels that theme music for wrestlers has to be unique to that character, much like a music score for a film.

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "Conversations with Conrad" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription