Jim Alan Johnston is an American composer who has worked for the largest and most popular professional wrestling company World Wrestling Entertainment since 1985. Despite his name being relatively unknown in the mainstream, his compositions can be heard weekly in six different major television programs, a dozen-plus monthly pay-per-view events a year, video games, several feature films, and in over 30 albums and countless iTunes releases. Johnston’s music is significant because it plays a vital role in the success of the WWE and its performers.

Early in his career, Johnston suffered from stage fright and was prompted to seek out a more studio oriented music career. His first job in the entertainment business was creating bumpers and commercial cues for VH1 and MTV. Johnston was hired by the WWE (then known as the World Wrestling Federation) in 1985. From this point on Johnston’s role in the company would be providing original entrance theme music for its performers, and various television programs, events, and vignettes.

Johnston is known for writing, composing and producing all his compositions alone, as well as playing all the instruments. Occasionally Johnston will recruit outside musicians and vocalists to contribute to a given piece when it’s required and often uses unsigned artists. Johnston has worked with artists such as Snoop Dogg, Motorhead, Rob Zombie, and Run D.M.C. Despite having worked with these high profile artists, Jim Johnston work with the WWE is still not respected by the music industry, of which he says: "One of my frustrations is getting the word out about just how much music is used in our product, The labels will stumble over themselves to get on MTV, but no one's watching MTV." Johnston has also said: "Radio won't play our stuff because their reasoning is that it's promotional, I'm like, 'Aren't singles a promotion for someone's album?" (Kamau High)

However Johnston’s work with the WWE should be respected because of how important it is to the success of this worldwide publicly traded corporation. It’s important to remember that the WWE would be nothing without its performers, and its performers would be nothing without their entrance music. In professional wrestling a performers entrance music is very important. It lets you experience what kind of character any given wrestler is portraying.

Johnston is remarkably good at this. He perfectly captures and conveys the essence of a character to the audience. This is significant to the business because music’s role in wrestling is to provoke certain responses from any given audience. When we hear a bad guy or heel’s music, we respond accordingly. The same is true for when we hear a good guy or Face’s music.

What this all boils down to is fan connection and music is a big part of that. Jim Johnston’s work reflects and enhances each performer’s character making them more lovable, dislikable, relatable, controversial, and memorable.

 

 

Work Cited

High, Kamau. Music: a key element in WWE brand profile. http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/06/15/industry-wwe-dc-idUSN1540044620080615