Did Elias’ Song From Raw Sound Familiar?

Oct 3, 2017

Whether you know him as Elias, Elias Sampson or The Drifter, the wrestler is in a unique position by having to cut a musical promo each week on Raw. Sure, Aiden English sings his pre-match promos each week, but the lyrics do not vary much week from week. Elias, on the other hand, varies his lyrical content and melodies depending on the city he is in.

Presumably, it is a lot of pressure to have to write and perform an original song each week on live television beyond fulfilling wrestling obligations. Sometimes Elias is just talk-singing through his performances, but other times his musical promos come across as songs. This week’s performance for the Denver crowd was full of the expected barbs, yet it also had some familiar melody and structure to it.

As a refresher, here is what Elias played and sang before taking on Titus O’Neil on Raw tonight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygkWC8p2Htk

Let’s compare that to “Nutshell” from the 1994 Jar Of Flies EP by Alice In Chains:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBdXLRl2g2E

A little too similar, hence Corey Graves’ post-promo reaction of Layne Staley rolling around in his grave after hearing that. Technically legal if WWE were to call that a parody, but not legal if WWE were registering that as a new company-owned musical composition that should be yielding performance royalties.

Any way you slice it, it is great to see that active members of the WWE roster have great taste in music. On his Superstar Ink episode, Fandango revealed himself to have a Deftones-inspired tattoo. On a recent red carpet in which WWE Superstars were asked about their favorite hard rock bands, Dean Ambrose also revealed himself to be a Deftones fan. PeroxWhy?Gen is the name of a group fronted by Jeff Hardy. Mickie James has released country music. Chris Jericho has his band Fozzy. R-Truth has released singles…

My underlying point? Maybe WWE ought to be considering another edition of Piledriver: The Wrestling Album.