From Bridgerton to College Football 25: the Emmy-winning composer behind EA Sports’ theme song

They gathered in a 100-year-old Gothic church-turned-recording studio a few blocks from Vanderbilt’s campus in Nashville. Eighty-five musicians cycled through the sanctuary with their brass, wind and percussion instruments to contribute to a unique task: recording a song that matched the grandeur of a college football video game return.

Outside the thunder of a spring storm sounded and a group of crickets chirped relentlessly. Inside, the orchestra created “Campus Clash,” the theme song for EA Sports College Football 25, perhaps the most highly anticipated sports video game of the past decade.

Steve Schnur, the global director and president of music for Electronic Arts, felt the game’s revival deserved a song that was unique yet true to the sport’s traditional sound. He recruited Emmy-winning composer Kris Bowers to create an arrangement and assembled the orchestra to produce an original song that stands out among the game’s extensive library of fight songs and rousers.

A video game soundtrack can quickly become an earworm if players get stuck in the game for hours. It should not only be bearable, but also enjoyable on repeat. That could be especially true for College Football 25, which was released this week after an eleven-year hiatus since the last NCAA Football game.

“Campus Clash” features a strong brass melody and a funky drumline beat with a swagger. It wouldn’t be out of place as a hype-building theme opening a prime-time game broadcast, but Schnur is adamant that nostalgia isn’t the only ingredient.

“This isn’t going to sound like the band you heard on the marching band field in 1985 or 2005,” he said.

More than 2,000 miles away from Nashville, Bowers listened to the recording while working from his studio in Los Angeles. Bowers is best known for composing the soundtracks for films such as “Green Book” and “The Color Purple” and Netflix’s hit show “Bridgerton.” He is also a video game veteran. He composed for two previous versions of Madden and also wrote the main themes for the upcoming Madden 25 and NHL 25 games.

Bowers is a two-time graduate of Juilliard and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in jazz performance. As a student, he didn’t have much exposure to the sounds of college sports because the prestigious performing arts school doesn’t have athletic teams. To write something that would fit the gameday vibe, he studied the sound of marching bands in college. Schnur sent him the fight songs in the game to “get an idea of ​​little drumline phrases that might be interesting to borrow” for the original composition, Bowers said.

“It’s definitely a fusion of sounds, but the most important thing for us was that it had a balance between a classic football theme that we’ve heard before, but at the same time had a modern look that feels a little different to what you’ve had on TV for decades heard,” Bowers said.

To achieve that, Bowers drew from contemporary tracks featuring brass bands, focusing on hip-hop songs that use brass melodies. Beyoncé’s 2018 Coachella performance, a tribute to HBCUs, and Mystikal’s “Bouncin’ Back (Bumpin’ Me Against The Wall)” were two major inspirations.

Bowers begins his composition process by capturing the emotion of the scene (or, in this case, the game). He wants the piece to give him the same feeling. Composing for video games can be challenging because there are no narrative beats to guide a shifting sound or punctuating note like there are in shows and movies. For this release, it was all about creating something that gamers would get excited about.

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The goal is for the theme to transcend the game and become embedded in college football culture.

“Hopefully in the future we can record other bands doing their version of it,” Bowers said. “Now that we have this version of it, even though we want the melody and the main melodic aspect of the theme to be something that sticks, we want it to take on a life of its own from now on in terms of how it’s played and performed. out. If people really embrace that, ideally we could celebrate other schools doing their versions.”

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(Photo by Kris Bowers: Unique Nicole/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)