…and the Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group goes to…no, it wasn’t the Chicago Bears. It was Prince for “Kiss”, but the Chicago Bears and their song Super Bowl Shuffle was nominated. For Prince and the Chicago Bears to even share the same…anything is ridiculous. Here is how that unbelievable disparity in musical talent happened.
Philadelphia Eagles at Chicago Bears
Monday, September 28 at 8:15 on ABC/ESPN
at Soldier Field in Chicago, IL
Back in 1985, the Bears were not only good, but they were also kicking the shit out of teams. Washington got waxed 45-10, the defending Super Bowl champion 49ers were crushed at home 26-10, and it wasn’t until November 3rd, the 9th game of the season, that they were even involved in a 1-score game (16-10 win over the Packers in Green Bay). It was right around this time that Bears WR Willie Gault and local record producer Richard Meyer had an idea.
Gault was fast and flamboyant and thought that the Bears should show the world just how confident they were about their 1985 squad. The dominant Bears would sing and film a song and music video promoting the team for charity. Crazy as it sounds, he was not the first person to come up with an idea this silly. Earlier in the 1985 season, the Seattle Seahawks recorded a song internally and despite making the rounds locally was never made for purchase. Gault wanted to go much bigger than that and recruited his teammates.
Meyer was able to round up musicians to not only write the song, but compose the music. It would just be up to the players to sing it and film it. This was to go down on December 3rd, 1985. There are conflicting reports on whether the Bears and coach Mike Ditka had any idea of the song before it was recorded. Ditka says he okayed it because he knew the team had personality while Gault and others said that basically the plan was to not ask for permission, but rather for forgiveness after the fact.
The two games before the recording were won 44-0 over the Cowboys in Dallas and then 36-0 in Chicago over the Falcons. However, on December 2, the night before the recording, the Bears lost their only game of the season, 24-38 to the Dolphins in Miami. It was their only loss on the season and it just happened to come right before the most cocky thing a team has ever done.
Stars Walter Payton and QB Jim McMahon could not make the initial taping, but that didn’t stop half the team from showing up as singers, the band, and the chorus. The missing stars eventually sang and filmed their parts and were cut into the final product. What they ended up making is one of the best (?), worst (?), kitschiest things you will ever see.
I have no idea how it happened, the 80’s were wild, but the single ended up selling 1,000,000 copies, was certified gold by RIAA, hit #41 on the Billboard Hot 100, was nominated for the aforementioned Grammy, and raised $300,000 for the Chicago Community Trust charity. You would think something like this would also put a target on the back of the team. If it did, you wouldn’t know it. The Bears finished 15-1 then completely steamrolled through the playoffs with a 21-0 shutout of the Giants, a 24-0 shutout of the Rams, and then a 46-10 whooping of the Patriots in the Super Bowl (they even played the video at halftime of the big game).
Sadly, the Patriots made the unfortunate decision to record their own Super Bowl song and video in response, the oddly named “New England, The Patriots, and We.” Needless to say, it did not have the same gravitas as the Super Bowl Shuffle and was just about as cool and motivating as when they came out to Crazy Train in Super Bowl 52.
The question everybody has about this is, what if they lost? The thing is, upsets like that simply didn’t happen back in the 80s. The only two Super Bowls still in the mix at the end in the decade were both between the evenly matched 49ers and Bengals. There was just no chance the Bears were going to lose that year.
Source: The Chicago Bears and ‘The Super Bowl Shuffle’: 40 years later, still a talking point – The Athletic
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