Going Viral: Johnny Cleveland (Wreck This League)

Let me take you back to Draft Day 2014. I'm at a Draft party at my brother-in-laws house in Chardon, Ohio, decked out from head to toe in Orange and Brown. (the colors we bleed) You see, we take this time off every year from work to watch every waking second of the draft. We can't get enough of the stuff. 

When the Browns selected Johnny Manziel, QB (Texas A&M) with the 22nd overall pick, he shouted like a school girl at the top of his lungs, leaping in to my arms, screaming... "FINALLY! FINALLY! Johnny (Expletive) Football BOYS!!!" I'll never forget this moment. 

Now, we've drafted our fair share of QB’s in the past, but NEVER have I seen a reaction like this from him or any of the guys (who are ALL major Browns fans) after any selection the Browns have made in the 9 years we've been getting together. It was around this time I started to realize what kind of a polarizing player Johnny Manziel really is. Don’t get wrong, I watched him play in college plenty and felt like he could be great but I had NO IDEA just how polarizing he was… until now. 

Here is a first-hand account of the last 3 days of my life after writing a hip-hop homage song called ‘Johnny Cleveland (Wreck This League)’ with my best friend (best man at my wedding) Jonathan Porostosky. 

Saturday 4/17 (10am) – I invite Jon over to my house in Twinsburg to grill up some brats, have a few beers, and catch up on life. (aka Talk about Sports and Music) We’ve also been working on a song for a while and plan on finishing it up today.

Saturday 4/17 (2pm) – Jon gets to my house and we head to the studio in my basement to listen to what we've recorded thus far and plan the lyrics for the end of the song. We record a few tracks and decide to take a break to grill up some food and have a couple beers. As we hit the patio, I look Jon and said… “We need to make a song about Johnny Manziel.” Jon says, "Like right now?" I said, "Yes, this is gonna be a song that is gonna stick.. it's gonna mean something Browns fans. The fans need something fresh to play in the Muni." Jon looked at me like I had to be kidding because we had poured hours into the song we had been working on previously and wanted to get it across the finish line. As we started talking more about Manziel and all the hype surrounding him, we almost instantaneously had a direction we wanted to go with key phrases/concepts that we would look to incorporate. (ie. Wreck This League, Johnny Cleveland, Money Signs, Muni Lot, etc)

Saturday 4/17 (3pm) – We head back inside and fire the studio back up. For the next 6 hours, we will piece the song together… line by line, phrase by phrase.

Saturday 4/17 (9pm) – Jon heads back up to Painesville for the night and I start to mix the song down and put the finishing touches on it.

Sunday 4/18 (12am) – The song is finished now, I decide to host it on Soundcloud.com. I post the link to our Soundcloud on Facebook and Twitter and head off to bed.

Sunday 4/18 (11am) – I receive an inbound call from Jon saying a friend of ours, who listened to the song on Facebook, heard that they were going to play the song on the local sports talk radio station, 92.3 (The Fan) here in Cleveland. As fast I could get to a radio, I turn the radio on and sure enough, the song is playing. The local show host, Vic Travigliante is talking about how he liked the song and wished whoever wrote it would call into the station… So I Did. I turns out, a friend of Vic’s texted him a link to song only 10 minutes prior to his show airing. He liked what heard, so he played it on the air.

Sunday 4/18 (3pm) – I’m sitting out on the back porch, enjoying the weather and check into our Soundcloud. The song now has over 10k plays in less than 24 hours of it’s inception.

Sunday 4/18 (5pm) – ESPN Analyst, Darren Rovell tweets about the song to his Twitter followers. (~500,000) Plays now escalating on Soundcloud at a 10-15 plays per second clip.

Sunday 4/18 (6pm) – WKYC Channel 3 contacts me via Facebook and asks if they can play the song on the 11pm news. Permission granted.

Monday 4/19 (10am) – I’m being told by friends that our song is being played all over Cleveland Radio. (100.7, 92.3, ESPN850) Plays on Soundcloud now totaling near 30k plays.

Monday 4/19 (1pm) – I receive a message on our Facebook page from a contact at NFL.com seeking permission to use our song in a video they would like to put together. (and perhaps future use). Permission granted.

Monday 4/19 (3pm) – I receive a message that the video is done NFL.com provides me with a link. The video is posted to our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Monday 4/19 (5pm) – NFL.com video is being re-tweeted at an alarming rate. 

Monday 4/19 (6pm) – Message received from WOIO Channel 19 in Cleveland. They are interested in doing a full segment on the story of the song and its creators. Story runs at 10p and 11p and again the following morning at 7a.

Tuesday 4/20 (8am) – Song is gaining more attention on Facebook and Twitter, local and national print/blogs are posting stories about the song.

Tuesday 4/20 (6pm) – SportsCenter tweets about the song to it’s 7.4 MILLION followers.

The song currently has over 63,500 plays on Soundcloud and over 26,000 plays on YouTube. We now hope Johnny Manziel (Johnny Cleveland) takes off as fast as the song did! 

You can listen to the song and watch the video from NFL.com here:
http://www.nfl.com/videos/cleveland-browns/0ap2000000351710/Browns-fans-rap-about-Johnny-Manziel

You can download the full version of the song FREE here:
https://soundcloud.com/dubblin-sessions/aubrey-taylor-experiment-johnny-cleveland-wreck-this-league

On Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/theaubreytaylorexperiment

On Twitter:
https://twitter.com/SirDubblin