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The Super Bowl Shuffle disappeared for years— Here's why!
The song nearly shuffled off this mortal coil!
Has a more perfect pairing of pop music and American sports ever existed? Sure, there's that one time Shaq made a rap album, but the less said about that, the better. Then, there's always the Hulk Hogan diss track that Macho Man Randy Savage recorded, titled "Be a Man," but that's only marginally better.
"The Super Bowl Shuffle" was perhaps the greatest meeting of pro sports and music ever recorded. The 1985 Chicago Bears were a phenomenon, and the song they recorded immortalized the team forever. The accompanying video skyrocketed the track to a cultural phenomenon. Why, then, was it so hard to see for so long?
The answer, like many, comes down to money.
Julia Meyer was interviewed in 2010 by ESPN for the song's 25th anniversary. Meyer, by then, had built a reputation as a litigious thorn in the side of anyone trying to use "The Super Bowl Shuffle" without her permission. That's because, as the widow of Richard "Dick" Meyer (the song's producer), Julia is the sole copyright holder for all things "Shuffle."
"Have you ever gotten a stone in your shoe? Well, that's me," she said. "That tiny little stone. And I'm going to be there until you stop, take off your shoe, deal with that stone by hand. Because otherwise, I'm not going away."
Julia Meyer was a tiny David taking on the Goliaths of big business. Companies like AOL, Viacom, and YouTube regularly used the song or clips of the video illegally. It was only right that these titans of industry cough up the fees to the rightful owner.
"Most of the time, these are huge corporations that will take something because I'm too little, or because I'm a woman," said Meyer. "Sometimes they'll claim that the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing. Or they didn't realize there was a copyright issue. I'm OK with that— whatever. Just pay me."
While a Chicago advertising firm advised her to charge violators anywhere between $1,000 and $10,000 per second, Meyer insisted that her goal wasn't to profit, but instead to preserve her husband's legacy.
"My husband died in my arms," said Meyer, "and the more I think about that, the more I feel like stealing this song is an affront to him. One guy told me, 'I knew Dick. He wouldn't charge me for this.' And I told him, 'No, you didn't know Dick, because he wasn't somebody you could ever steal from.'"
None of this is to say "The Super Bowl Shuffle" is locked away forever in some vault, never to again see the light of day. Instead, Julia Meyer insists that should someone want to use it, they need only ask.
"Just ask me. That's all I want," she said. "I may say, 'Sure, go ahead.' I may charge you $1,000 for the whole song. But I need you to respect me and my late husband by not stealing from me. That's what this is all about— protecting the legacy of something that he created."
