Featured Clip - Steve Young Talks about Rex Grossman's Mistakes, Super Bowl XLI
The final unknown track from the Super Bowl XLI episode of NFL Primetime, "Unknown Song #62" accompanied Steve Young's roasting of Chicago QB Rex Grossman's "flippant" turnovers in his team's loss to the Indianapolis Colts. The song isn't as clear to hear as US #60 or US #61, but you can tell it has a bit of a bass-heavy blues rock motif going on. If you can identify this piece, don't hesitate to comment here or on YouTube.
Featured Clip - Inside the Numbers, Super Bowl XLI
Unknown Song #61, which is from a little bit later in the Super Bowl XLI Primetime episode than Unknown Song #60, is also clear and easy to recognize (please comment if you can ID it). It was used for the Inside the Numbers segment that highlighted Colts running back Joseph Addai's rookie exploits. Fun fact!: because Addai backed up Dominic Rhodes throughout the 2006 season, he became the first running back to ever rush for 1000 yards without starting a single game. Thanks Wikipedia!
Featured Clip - "Won Super Bowl in 1st. Appearance, QB Drafted 1st. Overall" Segment, Super Bowl XLI
It's back to the Purgatory Primetime era (2006-18) for another unknown non-highlight track! Unknown Song #60 has a simple & memorable repetitive hard-rock hook, so it should theoretically be easy to identify. It was used for the Super Bowl XLI episode of NFL Primetime where Chris Berman, Tom Jackson, and Steve Young highlighted Peyton Manning's first Super Bowl win. Also added as a bonus to the end of the video is the following return-from-commercial bump where US #60 is briefly used again. As usual: if you can identify this song, don't hesitate to comment here or on YouTube. Thanks!
Contained on - Valentino V-CD 23 (Medium Tempo) Featured Highlight - Patriots @ Dolphins SNF Preview, 1988
I've been aware of this song/clip for a while, but I was reluctant to post it because I'm not sure it really qualifies as NFL Primetime music. "Veil," one of many Primetime tracks by then-ESPN music director John Colby, was attached to a small segment of the Sunday Night Football preview that aired early in the Week 12 episode. Despite being housed on an album titled Medium Tempo, the song is actually quite energetic and up tempo. I wouldn't be surprised if Veil was used for a highlight or perhaps other clips on NFL Primetime, especially since it was composed by Colby, but I haven't seen any evidence of that thus far. Special thanks to GodzFire for rediscovering the album this track is on (I stumbled on it a long time ago somewhere, but I forgot about it).
I decided to post the entire preview segment with Mike Patrick & Joe Theismann even though the song is only played for about 20 seconds of it. Hope you enjoy it!
Two weeks ago, I profiled the use of "Pure Glam" for the AFC Divisional Preview from the 2006 Sunday Wild Card episode. The NFC Divisional Preview from earlier in that same episode also used a new song. This song has not been identified, however. It sounds like a generic grunge instrumental with some loud, punctuating drums. I'm not sure what more to say about it than that, but please reply or contact me if you know what this track is.
Song - Pure Glam Artist(s) - Eric Cunningham, Chris Lang Released - 1999 Primetime Usage - 2006 Contained on - Chronic Trax CM014 (Chronic Rocks, Vol. 1) Featured Highlight - AFC Divisional Round Preview (from Wild Card Sunday Episode), 2006
After ESPN traded Sunday Night Football for Monday Night Football following the 2005 season, they lost the exclusive long-form highlight rights to the Sunday NFL day games that led to the launch of the show in the first place. What followed (until ESPN+ New Primetime began in 2019) was what I like to call the "Purgatory Primetime" era. During this era (2006-18), almost all of the real NFL Primetime broadcasts aired during the postseason. There was still a show called "NFL Primetime," but it was a bastardized version that aired Monday afternoons without Chris Berman or Tom Jackson. The closest thing left for NFL Primetime junkies was The Blitz, a Primetime-like segment hosted by Berman & TJ (& others like Trent Dilfer) during Sunday evening SportsCenter that featured shorter highlights and longer talking segments. The Blitz was passable—and both it and the Monday NFL Primetime used the classic music everyone reading this blog is more than familiar with—but things still weren't the same compared to the pre-2006 NFL world.
The 2006 postseason marked the first real return of NFL Primetime since the end of ESPN's Sunday Night Football. Aside from ditching the 2005 title song and returning to the 1998-04 piece, the episodes looked and felt just like the ones from the previous year's playoffs. One quirk, however, was the addition of several new non-highlight tracks. The first, the most interesting, and the only one that's been identified as of this post, is "Pure Glam" by Chronic Trax co-founder Eric Cunningham and "Blow the Stack" co-composer Chris Lang (assuming it's the same Chris Lang). It was used one time for each Wild Card episode and also once in the Conference Championship show. Below is Pure Glam's accompaniment of the AFC Divisional Round preview late in the Sunday Wild Card episode. Special thanks to Godzfire for identifying this song.
Song - Tracking Heat Artist(s) - Daniel Holter, Rex Carroll Released - 2001 Primetime Usage - 2021 Contained on - Velocity VL017Q (Metal v2) Featured Highlight - "Largest Conf Champ Comeback Wins" Segment, 2021
Here, as promised last week, is the last unique non-highlight track from the 2021 Conference Championship episode of NFL Primetime. It accompanies a graphic showing the largest deficits overcome in conference-championship history (the 2021 Bengals tied the 18-point record set by the 2006 Colts), as well as a couple clips from the Cincinnati bar celebrations that occurred when the AFC Championship ended. The song is "Tracking Heat," by Daniel Holter & Rex Carroll. Holter is a producer who has composed/co-composed many songs that have shown up on TV, while Carroll is a songwriter who got his start as the lead guitar player & co-founder of the Christian metal group Whitecross in the 1980s. Tracking Heat is found on the Velocity production-music album Metal v2.
Again, special thanks to Godzfire for ID'ing this one.
A couple weeks ago, I noted that Unknown Song #58 (Here We Go) had been identified. That song was used during Keyshawn Johnson's analysis segment of the 2021 NFC Championship. Shortly after that, Booger McFarland did his own analysis piece for the same game. The accompanying clip for that section used a track called "Hardline," composed by Scott Patrick Anderson and contained on the 61st. release (not counting the old NFL LPs) of the NFL Films library. Hardline was actually identified by Godzfire (using the RecognizeSong bot on reddit) about 6 months ago, but—due to busyness and whatnot—I never got around to posting about it until now. Godzfire also ID'd another non-highlight track from the same NFL Primetime episode that I'll write about next week.
Jwasc92Wrestling comes through again by identifying yet another New Primetime song. Unknown Song #58, one of the non-highlight pieces from the 2021 conference-championship episode, is "Here We Go" from the West One Music label. It's contained on WOM 059, and it was composed by Jeff Coates & Billy Handsome. Aside from West One Music stuff, I couldn't find anything about Coates or Billy Handsome (no idea if that's his real name).
Song - Here We Go Artist(s) - Jeff Coates, Billy Handsome Released - 2005 Primetime Usage - 2021 Contained on -West One Music WOM 059 (Free-Running) Featured Highlight - Keyshawn Johnson NFC Championship Analysis, 2021
*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 11/10/23
Unknown Song #58 is a one-off piece used for a highlight clip that accompanied Keyshawn Johnson's analysis of the Rams/49ers NFC Championship game from 2021. It sounds like a generic & repetitive grunge-guitar track, so it's probably no loss that the highlight clip is only 20 seconds long. Anyway, this is the last Unknown Song post I can make at the moment. The only unknown stuff that I haven't posted are non-highlight songs from 2022, but nobody (to my knowledge) has posted 2022 episodes of NFL Primetime online anywhere so I can't cut any videos from them. There are at least a few more known songs that I haven't posted yet, however, so stay tuned for those.
Song - Combat Artist(s) - Devin Bronson Released - 2013 Primetime Usage - 2020 (non-highlight) Contained on -SLAM077 (Throttled) Featured Highlight - "Pressuring Mahomes" Segment, Super Bowl LV
*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 2/26/23
Now we're into the weeds of obscurity. Unknown Song #57 was only used for one non-highlight piece during the Super Bowl LV broadcast of NFL Primetime. During this segment, Steve Young & Anthony "Booger" McFarland (the COVID-era replacement for Tom Jackson) discuss how Tampa Bay's defensive front dominated Kansas City's offensive line and made life miserable for Patrick Mahomes. The included game clips are accompanied by US #57, a loud, industrial track that sounds like it should be in a factory-shootout scene from a modern action movie. The song isn't especially pleasant or melodic, but it actually works well for this segment. It's also easy to hear, which is unfortunately not the case for some of the non-highlight tracks from the last couple seasons of Primetime. If you can identify US #57, don't hesitate to comment here or on YouTube.
Song - Field of Courage Artist(s) - Ron Klein, Udi Harpaz Released - 2006 Primetime Usage - 2020-21 (non-highlight) Contained on -EVO062 (Gridiron Glory) Featured Highlight - Game Balls: Week 13, 2020
*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 10/10/22
This is technically a post for Unknown Song #56, but you could probably think of it as "Unknown Song #52-B." It's marcato orchestral style is similar to US #52, and its tempo is only a little slower. US #56 doesn't sound quite as "piratey" as US #52, but they are still difficult to tell apart. The fact they were both used for NFL Primetime's Game Balls segment in 2021 doesn't help distinguish them, either. At any rate, I wouldn't be surprised if US #52 and US #56 were on the same album… assuming either one of them is even on an album.
As an example, here is US #56's lone Game Balls use for 2020:
Unknown Song #55 is one of those songs that has a solid, punchy core, but comes off incomplete. In other words, it feels like the composer could have done more with the track than they did. I suppose it could be an underscore. NFL Primetime did previously choose the underscore instead of the base track at least a couple other times (Race to Midnight, Take Care), so that wouldn't be surprising. Anyway, the ESPN sound people put this song on one 2019 highlight (that I know of), and split it between highlights & non-highlight stuff in 2020. It was used exclusively as a non-highlight track last year. As an example of US #55's use on NFL Primetime, here's a video of the Denver Broncos inflicting a lot of pain on Tua Tagovailoa.
Back to new songs from New Primetime. Unknown Song #52, which I guess could be called the "Pirate Song," was the second piece to debut on the Week 3, 2019, episode. Unlike US #51, however, US #52 would still be used into the current decade… at least as a non-highlight track. It was used as a rare auxiliary track in 2020, and it was the primary Game Balls theme for 2021. US #52 sounds like it could be a Sam Spence composition, but I don't believe it is—it might be a deliberate knock-off.
As with US #51, I had to post the accompanying clip as audio-only because of a Disney/ESPN copyright block. I don't know if this will happen with episodes from 2020 or 2021, but this was the only highlight clip of US #52 I currently possess. Anyway… if you happen to know this song's identity and/or where to find it, don't hesitate to comment here or on YouTube or wherever to let me know. Thanks!
Featured Highlight - Wild Card Preview: Week 17, 1999
Song 2 - Very News
Artist(s) - Jean-Yves Rigo
Released - 1998
Primetime Usage - 1999-04
Contained on - Kosinus KOS 47 (Very News) Featured Highlight - Sunday Wild Card Preview: Wild Card Saturday, 1999
Song 3 - Network News
Artist(s) - Christian Poulet
Released - 1998
Primetime Usage - 2000
Contained on - Kosinus KOS 47 (Very News - original album release only)
Featured Highlight - Inside the Numbers: Wild Card Saturday, 2000
In addition to Industrial News, there were three other "News" tracks from the same Kosinus album to get non-highlight duty on NFL Primetime. "Action News" & "Very News," both by Jean-Yves Rigo, were disproportionately used in playoff episodes and, more specifically, for playoff matchup/game-time previews. "Network News," on the other hand, was only used one time that I'm aware of: the secondary Inside the Numbers segment that followed the Saints/Rams Wild Card Game in 2000 (NO's first-ever playoff win). It's a weaker song than the other "News" tracks, though, so that was no big loss.
With four songs used on the show, that puts the album Very News in a tie for second for most Primetime tracks along with David Reilly's Success album from Bruton (Sonoton's Automotion 3 has five). Action News & Very News are currently available on APM's streaming service (linked above). Unfortunately, Network News is by Christian Poulet and has therefore been purged from streaming for whatever reason (just as with Industrial News).
Special thanks to Dopethrone for pointing Action News out to me, and to Tom Bombadil for posting the playoff episodes on YouTube that contain the Very News & Network News clips.
Song - Internet Artist(s) - Jimmy Kaleth Released - 1996 Primetime Usage - 2001 (miscellaneous), 2002-05 (TJ's Extra Point) Contained on -Dennis Music HDCD 1255 (Communicator)* Featured Highlight - TJ's Extra Point: Week 1, 2003 (Patriots @ Bills)
* - Search for the album "Communicator"
In the latter years of classic NFL Primetime, ESPN added even more emphasis to Tom Jackson's sage analysis by adding a weekly segment called "TJ's Extra Point." In this segment, Jackson would get video & music accompaniment to his usual postgame commentary. This was actually pretty similar to the end-episode analysis that was typical of NFL Primetime in the late '80s (most often with Pete Axthelm). For most every TJ's Extra Point bit, the included song was "Internet" by Jimmy Kaleth. Internet definitely feels like a neutral, summary, "Inside the Numbers" kind of track, so it was an appropriate choice by the producers. I couldn't find much info on Kaleth, but he did a good amount of work for various library-music companies. The included clip is the TJ's Extra Point segment from Week 1 of 2003 that followed the Bills' 31-0 pasting of the New England Patriots, the infamous "Lawyer Milloy" game. This was the last Buffalo win over New England until 2011.
Special thanks to Dopethrone (nirvanainstrumental on YouTube) for identifying this one and for pointing out that it was used for other non-highlight purposes in 2001 (the year before TJ's Extra Point started).
The segment known as Game Balls, or officially "Primetime Players," began on NFL Primetime in 1994. Well, to be technically accurate, there was a "Primetime Players" segment during the 1992 & 1993 seasons, but that one featured highlight clips with radio calls rather than players of the week. Anyway, three songs were primarily used for Game Balls during the original run of the show (some other songs, such as Old School Radio Bed, were infrequently substituted). Unknown Song #26 was used from 1994-97 after being used as a highlight track in 1992. Asphyxia was used for the last five seasons of classic Primetime (2001-05). And now, the one remaining Game Balls theme has been located. "Rock Me Pope," by Ruben Ayala, was used for Game Balls from 1998-2000. Ayala wrote songs for Access Music & FirstCom, but I couldn't find any other meaningful info about him.
Special thanks to Dopethrone (nirvanainstrumental on YouTube) for finding this one.
The last of the four non-highlight tracks I've ID'd thus far, "Strength" is a somewhat somber & moody piece that wasn't used very often on NFL Primetime. The clip included here, the Game Balls section from Week 2 of 2001 (the first post-9/11 week), is the first use of Strength I know of. I think it was used periodically until the end of classic Primetime, but I'm not really sure; I don't really want to sift through five seasons worth of NFL Primetime episodes just to log uses of a rare non-highlight song. If anyone does have better knowledge of Strength's exact usage, don't hesitate to comment.
Strength is the third NFL Primetime track I've found to be composed by Paul Foss. It's actually contained on the same album as New Order, which was used for the second-&-final time on the show in the same episode as the clip below. It's also the eighth song I've ID'd to come from the Atmosphere library, which I believe puts that library third behind FirstCom & Sonoton.
Primetime Usage - 1998-03 (primary Inside the Numbers theme) Contained on -ATMOS 95 (Shockwaves 2)
Featured Highlight - Inside the Numbers - Week 1, 1999
You'll be forgiven if you have trouble distinguishing "Mayhem" from Asphyxia. They both have a similarly heavy '90s techno-rock sound, they were both used for non-highlight music on NFL Primetime, and they were both composed by David Rogers & Paul Shaw. Even I've occasionally second-guessed which one I was listening to when sifting through Primetime clips. My advice for distinguishing them: Asphyxia was mainly used for Game Balls, while Mayhem was mainly used for Inside the Numbers. To help illustrate, here's the ItN segment from the first week of the 1999 season.
Primetime Usage - 2001-05 (regular Game Balls, secondary Inside the Numbers) Contained on -ATMOS 111 (Impact)
Featured Highlight - Game Balls - Week 10, 2001
In addition to Industrial News, I've found three more non-highlight tracks that were used on NFL Primetime. The first, "Asphyxia," was the primary Game Balls theme for the final five seasons of classic NFL Primetime. It was also occasionally used for Inside the Numbers during this period. The track is found on Atmosphere's Impact album and is available on the web at the Universal site (linked above). Unfortunately, info about Asphyxia's composers is scarce. David Rogers & Paul Shaw both wrote a bit for the Atmosphere & Carlin libraries, but I wasn't able to find anything else about them.
I will post the remaining two discovered non-highlight tracks in the near future.
