The Simpsons Funday Football: ESPN Records Unique Twist on Monday Night Football Theme for Animated Alternative Broadcast
The recording, with members of Louisiana Philharmonic, was coordinated through APM Music
Story Highlights
Monday night’s The Simpsons Funday Football alternative broadcast on ESPN will unite two of the most iconic brands in U.S. television history, not only visually but also musically.
ESPN partnered with APM Music to produce a bespoke theme for The Simpsons Funday Football.
Two of the more culturally relevant pieces of music in the TV medium have been blended into a special custom theme. Through a partnership with music-licensing agency APM Music, ESPN recorded a new song for tonight’s altcast. It combines the Monday Night Football theme (or as it’s known by its more formal name, “Heavy Action”) with the main title theme of the biggest animated show in history.
SVG goes behind the scenes in Springfield (and Bristol) with in-depth coverage of every aspect of the production:
- TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW: Inside the Tech That ESPN and the NFL Use To Bring Springfield to Life
- PRODUCTION OPERATIONS: The Game May Be Set in Springfield, but the Production Team Is in Bristol
- CREATIVE PHILOSOPHY: ESPN Creative Studio’s Michael ‘Spike’ Szykowny Pulls Back the Curtain on Creative Process
- TRACKING TECHNOLOGY: Sony’s Beyond Sports CEO Sander Shouten Analyzes How Tracking Tech Enables Real-Time Animated Altcasts
- MUSIC & THEME SONG: ESPN Records Unique Twist on Monday Night Football Theme for Animated Alternative Broadcast
Creatively, this wasn’t a simple mashup. The two pieces of music are significantly different and required an orchestra combining abilities in both classical music and jazz. “The pieces are in different keys, they have different tempos, the pacing is different, and they require different-size orchestras,” explains Robert Navarro, creative director, APM Music.
“The challenge,” adds producer Jeff Rona, “was to figure out how to bring these two worlds together without its sounding like a complete collision.”
To pull it off, ESPN — led by Music Operations Supervisor Joanne Strange and Coordinating Director, Music, Claude Mitchell — and APM Music gathered an orchestra largely made up of members of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra for a recording that took place at Esplanade Studios in New Orleans on Nov. 13.
“Heavy Action” was composed in 1970 by legendary British composer Johnny Pearson. It might come as a surprise that, although “Heavy Action” is indelibly linked with Monday Night Football, it was not composed specifically for the NFL property and is, in fact, not owned by ESPN or The Walt Disney Co. It was originally produced for the 1970s sports-TV reality competition show Superstars in the United Kingdom. The rights to the theme are owned by APM Music.
Meanwhile, the theme song for The Simpsons, also referred to as “The Simpsons Main Title Theme,” was composed in 1989 by another musical icon: American film composer Danny Elfman, whose work lives in entertainment lore on many Tim Burton projects — Edward Scissorhands, Batman, Beetlejuice — as well as A Nightmare Before Christmas, the first two Spider-Man films, Dick Tracy, the first Mission: Impossible, and all the Men in Black films. Even with that résumé, Elfman has called The Simpsons theme his most popular piece of music.
The rise of alternative broadcasts increasingly offers the media and entertainment industry unique opportunities to bring together prominent pieces of intellectual property that would normally never occupy the same space. Already, ESPN alternative broadcasts have united diverse IP: Toy Story with the NFL, the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the NBA, and Disney Channel cartoon Big City Greens with the NHL. In the eyes of APM Music brass, the industry is just scratching the surface for what this might mean for music rights in the future.
“We are the keepers of the ‘Heavy Action’ flame,” says Matthew Gutknecht, VP, sports entertainment, APM Music. “The possibilities within the Disney multiverse alone are really exciting. This is not just the ESPN or the NFL calendar anymore; it’s also the Disney calendar. I mean, if we can do Star Wars, it would be nuts. It’s wild to think of the possibilities.”
This is not the first time that ESPN has partnered with APM to re-imagine “Heavy Action” for Monday Night Football. After helping bring back the theme’s original Pearson arrangement to MNF in 2018, APM also helped produce an EDM remix of the song two years ago with Grammy-nominated artist Marshmello.
