Imagine scrolling through your phone while watching football on a boring Sunday evening. Then you hear a song you freakin’ wrote playing on NBC.
Cody Christian, bassist of Milwaukee’s Tigera, was at his parents’ place alone watching the Kansas City Chiefs protect a 23-20 lead over the Aaron Rodgers-less New York Jets with 10:50 left in the fourth quarter on Oct. 1 when he recognized a certain poppy guitar lick: it was the riff played by his bandmate, Ben Koshick, in their single “Love Bound.” Previously unbeknownst to the band, about 10 seconds of their song had been picked up to be used as bumper music – the songs that play into and out of commercials – on the NBC broadcast.
“I was just watching the game at my folks’ house … chilling on the couch on my phone. And then they started going to commercial and I was, like, ‘Hey I know this song. Holy crap that’s my song!’
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While he was “going insane” on the phone with Koshick, letting his guitarist know what he’d just heard, friend Jake Brandt of Cozy Danger texted Christian a video he recorded of his TV with Tigera’s song playing. “Yes! There’s proof!” Christian remembers yelling. That proof is key, considering bumper music tracks are rarely used more than once per season by the “Sunday Night Football” audio team.
The bandmates still have no idea how their music was discovered by NBC. But, “Somebody, somewhere is a Tigera fan. (And now) millions of people, even without knowing, have heard us,” Christian says. “We’re so so thankful for whoever picked us, and thought: That’s a catchy enough riff.”
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With their music easily accessible through streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify, Christian figures that’s how NBC found “Love Bound” — considering the music video (partially filmed on public transit, which is cool) still has fewer than 2,000 views on YouTube nearly 10 months since its release; that’s a far cry from the approximately 25 million-29 million people who heard it Sunday, per Nielsen ratings.
The person who queued up “Love Bound” may have been Wendel Stevens, who’s been “SNF’s” chief audio engineer for well over a decade. According to a 2015 Wall Street Journal article that featured Stevens and dissected the art of football game bumper music, more than 390 songs were included in the playlist for the 15 “SNF” games played during the 2014 season alone. Artists ranging from Tony Bennett and Jefferson Starship to Cake and U2 had their music included in just the first broadcast of that year. But after the season kickoff, however, NBC tends to use more independent artists in the bumpers, per WSJ’s 2014 listing. That’s how less-well-known acts like Tigera can end up getting just a piece of their art heard by millions for the first time.
“The snippets are nearly always from the instrumental portions of the songs — no lyrics — which can make it more challenging to identify the artist and the title of the tune,” Stevens told WSJ. “I know the first 13 seconds of a lot of songs.”
Tigera likely won’t be getting a check signed by NBC for use of their song — known as a “sync placement” in the industry. Per WSJ: “NBC said use of the music [on “SNF”] is covered by licenses with performing-rights organizations that represent songwriters and music publishers.” Legal frameworks like this are what make it possible for artists’ work to get recognized by the masses without much of a payday. But, it also allows for more exposure, whereas NBC may be less willing to pay for sync placements from big-name artists like Taylor Swift more than a dozen times a game.
The Band and the Song
“Love Bound” is a super fun, somewhat teeny-boppy pop love song — reminiscent of Five Seconds of Summer or One Direction, with lyrics about staying out past curfew. The quintet has aimed for a little more alt-rock vibe in their 2023 Be My Light EP, referencing “a ketamine trip in a friend’s garage that sent you overboard” in the title track. You can hear Tigera — Milwaukee’s self-appointed “Local Handsome Boys” — on streaming platforms, Bandcamp or in person at The Cooperage in Walker’s Point on Oct. 20.
