You know the feeling. It’s 1999. You’re sitting on a basement floor that probably smells like old carpet and stale snacks. The PlayStation hums. Then, those four iconic brass notes from Goldfinger’s "Superman" kick in, and suddenly, you aren't just a kid with a controller—you're a god on four wheels. Honestly, the tony hawk pro soundtrack didn't just provide background noise for a video game. It fundamentally rewired the musical DNA of an entire generation.
Before this, video game music was mostly bleeps, bloops, or maybe a sweeping orchestral score if the developers were feeling fancy. But Neversoft and Tony Hawk did something different. They handed us a curated mixtape of rebellion.
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Why those first chords changed everything
Most people think of the first game as just a "skating game," but it was actually a Trojan Horse for punk rock. Tony Hawk himself has talked about how he wanted the music to reflect what he actually heard at skate parks growing up. He wasn't looking for Top 40 hits. He wanted the stuff that felt like asphalt and scraped knees.
Take Goldfinger. John Feldmann, the lead singer, has said "Superman" wasn't even a radio single. It was just a song his label tossed at the game developers because they asked for something "odd." Now? It’s basically the national anthem for anyone who grew up between 1990 and 2005. You hear that guitar scratch and you're instantly ready to find a hidden tape in a warehouse.
The licensing wasn't some corporate strategy. It was more like an accident. Brian Bright, the music supervisor, and the team at Neversoft basically spent money on licensing "cool shit" because they were tired of the orchestral stuff. They didn't realize they were building a bridge for bands like Bad Religion and The Vandals to reach kids in the suburbs who had never even heard of a "skate punk" scene.
It wasn’t just punk (even if it felt like it)
If you look back at the tracklist for THPS2, the scope actually widened a lot. You had Rage Against the Machine’s "Guerrilla Radio" and the Anthrax/Public Enemy collab "Bring the Noise." It was this weird, beautiful collision of nu-metal, underground hip-hop, and hardcore punk.
- The Ska Revival: Goldfinger, Less Than Jake, and The Suicide Machines became household names because of these games.
- The Industrial Shift: Songs like Powerman 5000’s "When Worlds Collide" captured that weird Y2K energy that was everywhere in the late 90s.
- The Underground Hip-Hop Gateway: You had High & Mighty featuring Mos Def. For a lot of kids, this was their first taste of anything outside of what MTV was spoon-feeding them.
Bands like Bad Religion have openly admitted that being on the THPS2 soundtrack with the song "You" probably did more for their career than years of touring. It gave them "cool factor" with a younger demographic that didn't read fanzines.
The 2020 Remaster and the New Guard
When Activision dropped the 1+2 remake a few years back, everyone was terrified they’d mess up the playlist. Licensing music from 20 years ago is a nightmare—contracts expire, bands break up, or they just get too expensive. But they managed to keep almost all the original bangers while sliding in new artists like Machine Gun Kelly, FIDLAR, and Skepta.
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It was a risky move. Purists wanted the 1999 experience, but the remake showed that the "Tony Hawk vibe" is a living thing. Adding Baker Boy’s "In Control" or Billy Talent’s "Afraid of Heights" didn't ruin the nostalgia; it just updated the culture. It's funny because now you have 40-year-olds and 14-year-olds arguing about which track is the best "line-making" song.
What most people get wrong about the music
There's this idea that the soundtrack was just about "energy." That's sorta true, but it's deeper. The music was timed to the gameplay loop. Most levels lasted two minutes. Most punk songs? Also about two minutes. It was a perfect marriage of pacing.
If you were trying to land a 900, the frantic pace of Suicidal Tendencies’ "Cyco Vision" kept your heart rate up. If you were just exploring the school level for gaps, maybe something like Millencolin’s "No Cigar" gave you that laid-back, sun-drenched California feel.
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The tony hawk pro soundtrack taught us that music is more than just something you listen to; it’s an atmosphere you inhabit. It validated the counter-culture. It told us that it was okay to be a little loud, a little messy, and a lot rebellious.
Actionable next steps for the nostalgia-starved
If you're looking to dive back into that sound without just hitting "shuffle" on a random playlist, here’s how to do it right:
- Check the "Birdman" documentary: It actually gets into the nitty-gritty of how they picked the music and the pushback they got from labels.
- Search for "THPS Full Soundtracks" on Spotify: Most of the original master lists are preserved there by fans. Listen to the THPS3 and THPS4 lists too—people sleep on the later games, but they had CKY and Flogging Molly.
- Look up the band "Downhill Jam": They are a real-life cover band that literally only plays songs from the Tony Hawk soundtracks. They even opened for Bad Religion once. It’s the ultimate tribute to how much this music stuck.
Go grab your old board—or just the controller. The music is still as loud as it ever was.