(The Customs, possibly available to fill in for Katy Perry if anyone asks)
Following an impossible to ignore Twitter backlash, Cincinnati Bengals management tells the Wall Street Journal’s Kevin Clark that they’ll deemphasize the playing of Katy Perry’s “Roar” over the Paul Brown Stadium tannoy. It seems the Bengals are the last people to figure out the pop stylings of Ms. Perry were unlikely appeal to blatant rockists adult NFL fans.
“I think some fans proved that there’s an expectation that when the team takes the field, there should be more of a hard-rock, classic-rock song and I know that’s what we’re going to do this game,” said Jeff Berding, the Bengals’ director of sales and public affairs. “Katy Perry is not going to be the last song you hear before the team takes the field.”
When Mitchell Morgan, a 23-year-old business student in Cincinnati, tried to get pumped up in the stadium’s upper bowl before the game Monday, he braced to bang his head to classic stadium rock fare—Guns N’ Roses, maybe AC/DC. Instead, he heard “Roar,” which—while having some Bengals-oriented lyrics (“I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar”)—is far softer than what he expected.
“I mean, I know what they are going for but it’s not going to work. How can you think you can do something like that without any backlash?” Morgan said. “There were Steelers fans next to me laughing.”
Andrew Watson, a 31-year-old insurance broker who was in section 102 on Monday, looked at his cousin when the song began. “We both kind of looked at each other like, ‘Is that the song they are really playing?’ ” he said. “I would hope they aren’t trying to make it an anthem.”
Jason Patrick, a 34-year-old in sales in section 312, said it was “the running joke of the night.”
“You expect to hear certain things at a football game: ‘Crazy Train’ and basically ‘Jock Jams volume one,’ ” he said, referring to the compilation of stadium staples released in the 1990s. “So we hear this and we’re saying, ‘Uh, is this our new theme song?'”
Look, I dig Is She Sore as much as the next guy who had to Bing “The Customs Real Long Gone” to remember any of the track names outside of “Long Gone.” I truly believe that.
I gotta say though, if the Bengals management was to look in their own back yard for their new anthem, their search should began and end with “CIncinnati Nites.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS_fVGPv6tI