Primary Wave Music has agreed to buy a portion of the music catalog of singer/songwriter Joey Tempest. The purchase includes songs like “The Final Countdown,” which Bryan Danielson used in Ring of Honor before signing with WWE.
This could also be an opportunity for Tony Khan/AEW to license the song’s rights. There was an attempt to obtain the rights to use the song when Danielson signed with AEW in 2021, but the price was too high. Danielson discussed this in an interview with BleacherReport.com.
“Tony and I talked about a couple of things. We had talked about ‘The Final Countdown,’ but that was way too expensive,” he said. “I hate talking business stuff when I don’t exactly know what it was, but it wasn’t just the amount of money. They would only let [AEW] play it like 20 times a year or something like that. For several $100,000 you can play ‘Final Countdown’ 20 times a year. That doesn’t work for us.”
“I had kind of wanted something a bit different, so I reached out to my friend, Elliott Taylor, and said ‘Hey, here’s an idea. But I don’t know if it’s any good. Could you do something like this?’ He dropped everything. I think he’s done 72 hours in the studio and made the song that I come out to now, which I think he’s also going to do a full-length release because it actually has like two chorus lyrics,” Bryan said. “I really, really liked it. And it also incorporates a chant that people would do when I was on the independents. I kind of wanted to get it in there. I would love for people to start chanting it again.”
The purchase of Primary Wave Music could mean that the cost of using the song will be reduced, allowing AEW and Danielson to use it. We’ll see if this comes to pass.
