– Downstait’s Zach Call recently joined Insight with Chris Van Vliet to discuss creating Cody Rhodes’ iconic entrance music, Cody nearly not being able to use the “Kingdom” song for his WWE return at WrestleMania 38, and much more. Below are some highlights sent to us by the show:
On creating Cody Rhodes’ entrance theme that’s still used in WWE: “So that was the end of our WWE run in about 2015, 2016. There was a few more, can you do it? Will you do it? Are you the right fit? And it for one reason or another didn’t work. And then we went over and just started doing independent stuff. And that’s actually Cody, right when he broke away, he put out this Twitter thing. And we were kind of a sinking ship, to be honest and really kind of gave us a lifeline. I mean, we had some success, and we get a little bit of notoriety just from being involved with WWE, but we hadn’t put an album out since 2013. And we weren’t really thinking about writing. I’m an administrator at a school. Sean’s a lawyer, and my brother runs a body shop And we got old and living in a van or on a tour bus is kind of tough on older guys, especially guys with families like my brother. So, I just was on Twitter and I was in my feels a little bit. I’m like, Dude, we’re not done yet. Like something’s going on. We just got on SmackDown two weeks ago with the radio cover. Like if we did that in a bedroom, we didn’t have any, like WWE didn’t fly us out. We did that on our own. Like we could still do this. Cody put out a tweet saying what entrance music should I use on the Indies. Yeah. And he said something about Throne by Bring Me the Horizon. And I was wearing that album out at the time. I knew one by being such a big fan of his since he showed up with Bob Holly. Like I knew this dude’s character, I’m a wrestling historian, I know what he wants to sing about. And I know what he’s going through a little bit just because dirt sheets, sometimes they’re right. But at the same time, like this dude should be getting a better opportunity. So, we sent him a tweet just through whomever we had already worked for him. We said hey, man, can we give this song a shot? And we sent him a snippet of what we were thinking about and I sent him my words over in that hard times breathe better men it’s straight from his dad’s promo. Yeah, like it was like how can I not without being like patronising the situation and being a dummy how can I just sell this character a little bit to the guy that is doing it? So, Sean and I sat down and went on a little bit of a write binger and set something back in within like four hours and he highlighted the lyrics that everybody’s singing now, and it’s just like, Okay, we still got it. We went and recorded and sent it back to him. He took it to Wrestle Kingdom to Battleground. What’s that? That’s the TNA one, right? Slammiversary. Like he took it everywhere with him.”
On big “Woah” used in the song: “So that’s planned, by the way, us being as big of fans as we are. Smoke and Mirrors does have that woah in some form or fashion, we didn’t do that on accident. That’s a call back joke. Like it’s all the way like let’s bring this all the way together. For wrestling fans to be so easter egg hunting, like to catch on when it gets to WWE. It’s like, it’s so cool. And I guess I guess Kevin Dunn is a humongous fan of the tune. So, he’s put the emphasis on it.”
When wrestlers ask them to create a theme: “It never gets old. I can tell you that. It’s the coolest thing in the world, especially when like our guys come to us like Buddy is one of them, like Britt, you can see coming from a mile away. So, when we got to do her song, I was like, oh, man, we’re riding her coattails forever. We’re super lucky with all these people that we ended up doing the music for that they are so good at their craft, that we just kind of, you know, ride in the wave for a while. Buddy, though, I thought he was so underutilised. And when we got when he reached out and said, Hey, you guys want to? I was like, yeah, do whatever you want. Let’s go.”
On Cody coming close to not using “Kingdom” at WrestleMania 38: “It was pretty close to it. And then Cody, we held our silence for a little bit and I’d said my piece and I’m, my heart is in my throat and not ready to give up the song. You know, I’ve worked so hard on the song, we worked so hard on the song. And Cody just basically breaks the silence and he goes, Well, you don’t get me without Kingdom on this conference call, all right! And he swore up and down right when he started using it that if I go back to WWE, I am taking Kingdom with me. And I mean, he’s been nothing but truthful with us the whole time. But you never know when you know, when it comes down to the moment you never know what’s going to happen. And about two weeks before we have this big make or break moment. It might have been 2 seconds of silence [on the conference call]. It might not have been the 10 that’s in my brain right now, it might have been 2 hours.”
Cody Rhodes made his WWE return in April 2022 at WrestleMania 38, with his Downstait entrance song “Kingdom” left intact.
