After reviewing 1992's WCW Slam Jam 1 and 1999's WCW Mayhem: The Music as part of WCW Wednesdays, a few people asked me whether I was planning to review the lost edition of the WCW music trilogy - WCW Christmas Brawl.
It's a fair question - I'd certainly heard of the collection before, but unlike the other two, I'd never owned it. Part of the reason why is because it was only released in Germany, thus the otherwise-inexplicable decision to put f'ng Alex Wright on the front cover. I believe most of the tracks on the album were composed by Jimmy Hart and his writing partner JJ Maguire.
To become a WCW music completist, I recently listened track by track to the album thanks to the magic of YouTube and here are my thoughts:
American Males
The theme song for Scotty Riggs and Marcus Alexander Bagwell (The American Males) sounds like a reject from WCW Slam Jam 1, with Jimmy Hart holding his singing "American Males" ad nauseum as a chorus. But much more troublesome are the sketchy lyrics, warning young women "If they try to talk to you, you might not want to listen/You might end up in critical condition." Wait, WHAT? Way to put over your babyface tag team as rapists.
Overall rating: American Males? Or America's Most Wanted?
Disco Fever
This is, of course, the theme song for WCW superstar Sting.... er, I mean, Disco Inferno. It's actually perfect for what it's meant to accomplish - a spoof of Saturday Night Fever-era music, managing to rhyme "shake that booty" with "boogie oogie oogie."
Overall rating: The Bee Gees would be proud.
We Like To Party
This was the... memorable theme song of The Public Enemy in WCW, which was catchy enough but never really fit the concept of two Philly street toughs. Unless said street toughs use lyrics like "Loddie Doddie Doddie, we likes to party" and count to seven back and forth. Fine lyrics for Ernie and Bert, but not really for Flyboy Rocco Rock and Johnny Grunge.
Overall rating: Loddie Doddie Doddie, this song is shoddy.
We're Still Rocking
I remember in the late 1980s, my baby sister having a record of Mickie Mouse and Minnie Mouse singing squeaky-clean 1950s songs. And yet, We're Still Rocking (a song about Jimmy Hart's glory days singing on American Bandstand or some shit) is even more saccharine sweet than Mickie and Minnie On A Moonlit Night.
Overall rating: Sorry, why does Jimmy Hart even need a theme song in the first place?
Hartbeat Away
The "title track" for this album is a Europop song straight out of the era's club scene, with Germany's own Alex Wright rapping over the track with lyrics that may or may entirely be in English. It's not even Das Wunderkind's accent so much as the terrible mixing job someone did on the vocals. Oh, and as evidenced by the cover art, the song is "Hartbeat," as in Jimmy Hart, instead of "heartbeat." Weird.
Overall rating: It's not good, but if Falco had released it in 1991, I feel it would have hit the charts.
We're The Boys
The original theme song of The Nasty Boys in the WWF was records scratching over a drum machine beat. That would have been WAAAAAY better than We're The Boys, in which Knobs and Sags attempt to "sing" over the WWF track in their gravelly voices with such thought-provoking lyrics as "We're the boys/We're the boys/We're The Na-sty Boys."
Overall rating: Nasty.
California Sun
Leave it to WCW's music department to feature the least popular incarnation of Brian Pillman on their album. This was when Pillman was going through his "California Brian" phase, and this basically something right off the Baywatch soundtrack, with just a bit of the "I'm An Ass Man" spirit thrown in for good measure.
Overall rating: The best music to come out of California since them singing raisins.
Self High Five
Picture a poor man's Smells Like Teen Spirit and... well, that's pretty much it. Self High Five, the well-known theme song for Diamond Dallas Page, is more of a ripoff of the Nirvana song than Weird Al's version was. Like, the same chords and everything!
Overall rating: Kurt Cobain is doing DDP Yoga in his grave right now listening to this tune.
Konnan's Theme
Konnan has recorded some incredible entrance music over the years. Unfortunately, this track does not fall under that category. The background music is, at absolute best, headache-inducing and at worst, not actually music in any sense. Plus, similar to Alex Wright's Bret Hart Beat song, the awful tune all but drowns out K-Dawg's rapping abilities.
Overall rating: Yo, let me speak on this! Konnan's Theme isn't Bowdy Bowdy or Rowdy Rowdy.
Taskmaster
Remember those cassettes you used to buy for Hallowe'en to play vaguely scary music and background noise when kids came trick or treating at your house? This is essentially the same thing - the Dollar General equivalent of Haunted Mansion music combined with Kevin Sullivan (and possibly Hulk Hogan) laughing repeatedly.
Overall rating: Between the Hallowe'en mood music, Europop and 50s diner music, this is easily the shittiest Christmas album ever.
Overall Analysis: Despite my insults throughout the album, this isn't terrible. Unlike its predecessor Slam Jam 1, this album actually had a handful of actual WCW theme songs that were used on WCW television. Are they my favorite tunes? No, not at all. But there's nothing incredibly offensive on here (okay, fine - We're The Boys and Taskmaster aside) and it's worth a quick listen if you're a WCW completist.