I have always had a huge love of music and as I mentioned in earlier in both The Music Of Bristol Part 1 and The Music of Bristol Part 2- I have fairly eclectic tastes in music. For that reason alone I really wish they had played driver introductions in their entirety during the prerace show. I think that the choice of songs really helps highlight one of the best things about NASCAR and that is the personalities of the different drivers.
I admit that the whole twitter deal between Brian Vickers and Jimmie Johnson made the choice of introduction songs even more intriguing to me. Jimmie Johnson recently started tweeting (@JimmieJohnson) and to welcome him to the tweeting world Brian Vickers (@BrianLVickers) and he decided it would be fun to let each other and their twitter followers pick each others introduction songs. That alone right there should have made introductions more TV worthy. Apparently there was some legal reason that they couldn’t show intros (that and the time constraint on the pre-race show, I suspect). Anyway- in case you were wondering Brian Vicker’s got introduced to Shania Twain’s Man, I Feel Like A Woman and Jimmie Johnson got introduced to Sisqo’s The Thong Song.
Some songs choices that interested me were: Paul Menard picking Black Label Society’s Concrete Jungle. I don’t know if he actually likes BLS or if he just picked it because that is exactly what Bristol is…but I liked that choice. I also loved that two drivers picked Avenge Sevenfold songs (Matt Kenseth picked Nightmare and Regan Smith picked Welcome To The Family). Clint Bowyer’s choice of the Theme to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly cracked me up. And how fitting was Bill Elliott’s song choice of Devil Went Down To Georgia by The Charlie Daniels Band and Bobby Labonte’s choice of God Bless Texas by Little Texas. The only driver who’s song didn’t seem to match the driver was Kasey Kahne’s choice of A Country Boy Can Survive by Hank Williams Jr. It’s not that I don’t like that song- I do. But I don’t hear Hank Williams Jr and immediately think Kasey Kahne- it just didn’t fit Kasey in my mind. If you are interested in the complete list of driver introduction songs check out this article over on sbnation. Honestly I could probably go down the entire list and muse on for a paragraph per driver- but I won’t bore you there.
Now onto Tony:
Gratuitous Tony Picture. Tony Stewart before the race at Bristol. (photo credit: borrowed without asking from the Official Tony Stewart facebook page)
Tony Stewart was introduced to his standard Bawitaba by Kid Rock. Which I guess he must REALLY like it since he always uses it. I still stand by my assertion that Tony needs to pick a new introduction song. If he needs help all he needs to do is come here (or poll his fans) because we got some great suggestions for Tony when I called for suggestions on the first post of this series! Those would be (in no particular order): Real Good Man by Tim McGraw (which happen to be suggested by winner Claudia), Rough N Ready by Trace Adkins (I love Trace Adkins), When You’re Hot You’re Hot by Jerry Reed, Sound of Madness by Shinedown, Smoke On The Water by Deep Purple (hey Tony does like classic rock), Dirt Road Anthem by Brantley Gilbert and Colt Ford (suggested by our other winner Dudley- which is funny because I have been on a Colt Ford kick lately), #1 by Nelly, and Gasoline by Kicking Harold (which I had never heard before but I really like this song now that I have). All great songs to be used as introduction songs for Tony Stewart…but I still like my choice of I Don’t Want To Stop by Ozzy Osbourne best (see The Music of Bristol Part 2) even though Tony told me in our second interview with him that he isn’t a big heavy metal guy. Now if only we convince him to pick one of our songs just to mix things up a little bit! I mean seriously Tony- I like Kid Rock too, but we have some great suggestions for you to pick from here.
Anyway congratulations go out to Claudia and Dudley who were the winners of the contest I held as part of the Music of Bristol posts. Their Goodyear Racing prizes are on their way to them!
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I just wanted you all to know that the winners were picked randomly and not based on how many comments each entrant made (some people made multiple comments and that was totally fine- but they still only got one entry into the contest) or what song you picked. Basically I put your name on a post-it note (pink for the girls and white for the guys) and picked one of each out of my old 20 knit cap.