Oh, hey! Let’s talk about my favorite band, The Mountain Goats. Let’s talk about the time that John Darnielle announced that he was going to write an album about Pro Wrestling. Let’s talk about how I thought it was 100% a joke. Let’s talk about how when the album came out I was like, “This probably isn’t going to be for me, since I never really watched wrestling growing up the way that John did.” Let’s talk about how this is a fantastic album and probably one of my top 5 favorite Mountain Goats albums.
Let’s talk about Beat the Champ (2015) by the Mountain Goats!
First of all, let me say that I don’t have fond childhood memories of professional wrestling. The few times I got exposed to it as a child, I was definitely very interested, but my parents definitely wanted me to have nothing to do with it and that was that. But the beauty of this album, to me, was that while it’s all about pro wrestling, it is more than that. It’s an expression of what that meant to John. It’s an exploration of the universal themes that were expressed through that medium, not only in its performance, but also its production.
The album opens with the melancholy track Southwestern Territory, a song from the perspective of a wrestler who is very clearly not a headliner. Just a working man trying to live his life, Missing his family, missing “what life was like long ago.” Feeling very isolated and distant. This was this album’s “had me from ‘hello'” moment for me. The human experience expressed in this song is universal. The backdrop of wrestling gives it theme, character and substance, but the working man on the road is recognizable. Familiar. Personal.
The next track, The Legend of Chavo Guerrero is clearly very personal to Darnielle. Like much of his music, it talks about his turbulent relationship with his stepfather and how “you let me down, but Chavo never once did.” This song about having heroes is relatable, even if you don’t imagine that you would have personally ever found your hero, your symbol of justice, in a Spanish-language telecast you only kind of understood.
Foreign object is an upbeat track about the tongue-in-cheek “rules breaking” that is common and prevalent in professional wrestling. The lighthearted tone of the music brings attention to the nature of this faux violence. No one is really going to get their eye gouged out with something shaped like an astrolabe (and what an object to reference!), but the illusion that someone might is what makes that aspect of the fight interesting.
Animal Mask, a song about camaraderie and friendship forged in the violence of a wrestling ring. The country twang of this song showcases the unexpected diversity of this album. Followed immediately by the bombastic Choked Out and it is now very clear that while the album does has a pleasing flow in its track listing, this album is about wrestling – not musical themes or consistency, not the tone of the Mountain Goats, but professional wrestling.
Heel Turn 2 is another one of Darnielle’s fascinating “Part 2” songs, where the first song never made the cut. In the I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats podcast, Darnielle mentioned that every time there’s a 2 in one of his songs, he absolutely wrote a 1, even if it didn’t make the cut. But this song, about frustration and tenacity, reminds us that villains are made, not born.
The bombastic piano of Fire Editorial welcomes us back to the album. The Sheik, a famous wrestling heel, is the focus of much of this song. I don’t have much more commentary apart from the interesting anecdote that in the small town where I grew up, the barber had worked as a wrestling announcer briefly, and once recounted a story to me about how the Sheik had thrown him – which was not scripted, and apparently had frightened him a great deal. “And here I thought it was all fake,” he told me.
Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan guides us into a two-track descent into death and anxiety. Recounting the murder of Bruiser Brody, this track soars into the incident with a shrill violin cadence, followed by the vicious manic hate-frenzy that is Werewolf Gimmick. The interesting contrast between these songs is that the first is about a very real death, while the second fantasizes about “nameless bodies in unremembered rooms.”
Luna, however, eases us back into the album, followed by the surprisingly tender Unmasked!, which seems to style the career-ending unmasking of a masked wrestler as an intimate moment. Following this, The Ballad of Bull Ramos reminds us that people keep existing after their careers. The song is neither a triumph or a dirge – just a “life goes on.”
The closing track of the album, Hair Match, carries a sort of signature Mountain Goats solemnity, seeing us off with a reminder that this all extends back into the real world. The hair match was a sort of wager where the loser was shorn, and in this song, this is painted as a mournful event, and even the spectators seem to recognize the ghastly nature, some leaving before it ends, some hiding behind their programs.
This track-by-track breakdown is all good, but what I really want to talk about is how astounding it is to me that this album is about professional wrestling. Despite the seemingly frivolous subject matter, the album walks through such an astounding array of emotions, not only in the lyrics content, but in the musical qualities. It is an album about pro wrestling, but more than that, it is an album about the human experience as encapsulated in the medium of professional wrestling.
Anyway, Darnielle needs to stop joking about writing an “I’m Divorcing You for Christmas” album because goddam it, we all want to hear it!