Joe Hendry has explained his Weezer-inspired songwriting process.
Even before arriving in WWE, Joe Hendry was well-known for his comedy songs. The star used the tracks to lampoon his opponents on the indies for years, and he continued that tradition when he joined WWE. His biggest hit in the promotion so far is likely ‘Fire Logan Paul,‘ which is set to be on his debut album, ‘Beyond Belief.’
During a new interview with Chris Van Vliet on Insight, Hendry revealed that the song came about by accident after his main roster debut was delayed by a week.
“We added Fire Logan Paul. That’s another interesting story because I was supposed to debut the night after WrestleMania, and the song I had was the same song, but it was ‘Raw, Raw, Joe Hendry signed to Raw.’
“Then what happened was they’d announced that I was going to be on Raw the next week. Because what I was going to say something that rhymed with SmackDown, I was going say something like back down because I have signed to Raw. That was what the gag was going to be. But I think Cole had said it, and there was like a graphic.
“I was like, we need to pivot here and then I found out that I was going to be working with The Vision. I’ve always learned in wrestling that you have to go after the biggest, baddest name. Well, the one name who’s got the most controversy and fame is Logan. So I’ll just go directly after Logan, and the words fit right in.
“So that’s how the Fire Logan Paul song came about, and then it just kind of blew up beyond what we had maybe expected, and then yeah, had to put it on the album.”
Joe Hendry Put Together ‘Beyond Belief’ In A Few Days
Joe Hendry went on to speak about his creative process, saying he tries to “reverse engineer” a song after coming up with a strong melody and verbal hook.
“So, I’m reading Rick Rubin’s book right now, and he talks about the creative process and how you have to engineer this situation where stuff just comes to you, and that’s kind of how it works for me.
“I just get these phases where I was very lucky that when it came to writing the album. I came up with the concepts for all the songs pretty much in like one or two days, and I just spent the other couple of days refining them.
“So I just, for whatever reason, had all the ideas just come to me. I’m a huge Weezer fan, and I think that’s how I learned music, was playing guitar alongside Weezer songs because their songs are so structurally simple. They’re almost like, kind of rock, sometimes grungy, nursery rhymes.
“So I’ve learned that if you keep the melody strong and you have a good verbal hook, you can kind of reverse engineer it from there. So it would be a rare situation that I would start with the verse or something like that.
“It has to be okay, we’ve got fire Logan Paul. Let’s reverse engineer the rest of the song around that hook. I have to start with a hook that I think is going to hit.”
Joe Hendry’s album, Beyond Belief, will be released on October 5th. As well as Fire Logan Paul, it will feature new tracks including ‘Give Joe Hendry Every Single Belt’, ‘If I Can’t Have Joe Hendry’, and ‘Everybody Else.’
