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As the 2012 NRL season fast approaches, we prepare ourselves for another year of listening to Bon Jovi’s horribly try-hard ditty and theme song for the NRL, ‘This is our house’. But even though the NRL own the Australian rights to the song until the end of 2013, it’s got to go. Now.
Sorry Bon Jovi. You don’t cut it.
Of all the NRL theme songs and intros (and I’m including Vanessa Amorosi and Lee Kernaghan’s slaughtering of an Easybeats classic for a Friday Night Football promo in 2000) yours Bon Jovi, is the worst.
When Marketing Manager Paul Kind announced the acquisition of Jon Bon Jovi and his band to sing the NRL theme song last year, we all thought it was a godsend.
Mr Bon Jovi, 80s rock icon and sometimes actor, agreeing to sing for OUR national rugby league competition, all the way over in little ol’ Australia?! He’d put in clever lyrics, add a solid beat and maybe even put his face to the NRL?! What a deal!
Turned out it wasn’t a godsend. It was utter rubbish:
Based around the American sports terminology of ‘our house’ which refers to a team’s home ground, what we got was a try-hard anthem-esque tune that is more likely to make someone punch Bon Jovi, than the air.
But that was the song. Maybe the video would be better?
Wrong.
The clip accompanying the theme song featured inanimate stock footage of Jon Bon Jovi from a US concert, with his mug popping up on an unidentifiable stadium that appeared to be made of big LCD screens and surrounded by a rollercoaster – because THAT’S realistic.
The NRL highlights that were thrown in were okay, but proved there is such a thing as too much flame-effect.
Well surely we were the only sport that would be getting access to the song and video?
Wrong again.
It was a non-exclusive, commercial endeavour by the band. So rock’n’roll, right? By Bon Jovi’s own admission the song was especially written to be sold to sports association peoples (read: SAPs) for major sports promotions.
Sell it they did, too. Along with the NRL in Australia, the USA and Canada have each been playing the exact same thing to promote the NFL (just with their sports clips intertwined). Now that the NFL is becoming more and more popular in Australia, it’s not as if we can just ignore this fact either.
It’s just not the same is it?
There was something a lot more genuine about past NRL theme songs.
Whether it was Tom Jones changing the lyrics of En Vogue’s ‘Whatta man’ to ‘Whatta game’ in 2000, the Hoodoo Gurus doing something similar in 2007, or Tina Turner forming a scrum alongside the forward pack of the Brisbane Broncos in 1990, these efforts struck a chord with us in a way Bon Jovi doesn’t.
Shared by the band through their Facebook and Twitter when it was launched by the NRL, the idea was to spread the word of rugby league to the touring rockers’ huge fan base overseas. But this made the end product far too foreign, impersonal and commercially tacky.
We know we can do better, so what’s stopping us?
Let’s get rid of Bon Jovi and take a step back. Reconnect with what has worked well in previous attempts. The big names aren’t important. What’s important is producing something that truly captures the spirit of this great game.
Hot tip: it’s not close-ups of a washed-up old man in leather lip syncing a generic “rock” song.
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