The National Football League is into their 2025-26 season, and that means it’s time to rock some serious tunes to get pumped up for the best plays in football. The NFL opened their season with a game featuring the reigning Super Bowl champions the Philadelphia Eagles hosting the Dallas Cowboys at Lincoln Financial Field. It was a closer game than many expected, with the Eagles pulling off the win.
So, it’s obvious that rock and metal music isn’t the favorite when it comes to Super Bowl halftime entertainment. But, that doesn’t mean rock and metal songs aren’t perfect to hype up an arena. Really, the opposite is the case.
Now, ESPN has named its top 10 sports songs to get a stadium or arena hyped up, and one classic rock mainstay tops the tally. It’s great to see rock and sports getting mentioned together.
The No. 1 Sports Song of All Time
As the story goes, 25 years ago, “ESPN released the first in series of popular compilation albums featuring songs played at sporting events across the world,” according to the sports outlet. “To celebrate the anniversary, the list has been updated for 2020, using a combination of streaming data, Billboard Hot 100 chart performance and voting by an ESPN panel.”
So, what’s No. 1? It’s Journey with “Don’t Stop Believin’.” That’s truly a great, inspirational song, especially when your team is down.
“‘Don’t Stop Believin’ was a standard at Joe Louis Arena during the Red Wings’ four championship runs in the 1990s and 2000s,” ESPN notes. “When it closed its doors on April 9, 2017, fans sang it goodbye with one last in-unison belt of ‘born and raised in south Detroit.'”
Other rock songs on the tally were Queen with “We Will Rock You,” The White Stripes with “Seven Nation Army” and Metallica with “Enter Sandman.”
“One of my favorites was when I went to see the Chicago Bulls versus the Lakers, and you had Michael Jordan going against Magic Johnson and that was outrageous to see,” Brian May of Queen stated about their song. “But then every time they stopped the game they played ‘We Will Rock You.’ I just smiled a lot.”
Of “Enter Sandman,” ESPN notes that “Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera began using ‘Enter Sandman’ as his walk-up music in 1999 and had an 89.7 save percentage in 15 seasons using it.”
It’s so great to see metal and rock getting the spotlight.
Audio Ink Radio’s Top Sports Song
Audio Ink Radio has our own tally of the best sports songs of all time and named Queen with “We Will Rock You” at the top. Queen, of course, is pictured above.
“Did you expect anything else to top our list of the best sports songs of all time? The answer should be ‘no,'” Anne Erickson states in the feature. “Of course Queen with ‘We Will Rock You’ is the best sports anthem ever. The track has been used time and time again in the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, NCAA and beyond.”
According to BMI, “We Will Rock You” is the performing rights organization’s most-played song at NHL, NFL and MLB games. Their stats say that the song has accumulated more than 9.5 million U.S. radio and TV feature performances from 1977 release through the third quarter of 2023.
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