Texas A&M dropped “Power” as its football walkout song following Kanye West’s controversial public behavior last fall. On Sept. 2, Texas A&M Athletics debuted its new walkout song at the 2023 season home opener against New Mexico.
Questions surfaced online during the offseason as to what hype song would replace the university’s previous one. A&M Athletics searched no further than A&M former student, Class of 2020 and band member of pop duo, Surfaces, Colin Padalecki to produce the new “Aggie Intro.”
History junior Jack Mull stood with his roommates, aerospace engineering junior John Hafele and economics junior Will Ward, on the second deck for the first game. There, the men and the rest of the 12th Man listened to the new walkout song for the first time. Hafele said the chant sounded reminiscent of A&M’s previous hype song.
“The song reminded me a lot of ‘Power,’” Hafele said. “I think that’s kind of what [Padalecki] was going for. I mean, we all really liked ‘Power,’ and then things happened … I think he still wanted that same sort of feel and he nailed it on the head. When it played, I looked around and a lot of people were nodding their heads to it, going along with it. I consider that positive feedback.”
In an interview with A&M Athletics, Padalecki said he believed A&M is the only university to use a song not found on the radio as its walkout song. Hafele said this makes the song stand out against other schools.
“You see other schools that will do ‘Enter Sandman,’ ‘Thunderstruck’ or other familiar songs as their hype songs, but are other schools making their own hype songs?” Hafele said. “I don’t know of any. This is a first for everybody. We are the only [school] who can say we’ve done this and I think that’s pretty amazing.”
Even if another school produced a hype song in-house, it doesn’t match the sheer magnitude of A&M, Ward said.
“If another school does happen to have another song to the level that we do, we still have one of the largest student bodies,” Ward said. “We’re a nationally accredited university with over 70,000 students. We’re the No. 1 school in Texas and it feels that way. The song makes it feel like this is our year.”
Mull said the song impressed him, giving credit to Padalecki’s well-timed beat drop.
“The first half of the song sort of built up and hyped us up for the players to come out, and then to start the second half of the song, the beat dropped perfectly with the players running out of the tunnel,” Mull said. “It was really cool.”
Ward said it’s understandable the university replaced the previous walkout song and that they made a smart decision to do so. “Power” missed out on one crucial component anyway, Hafele said.
“Kanye isn’t an Aggie, so ‘Power’ didn’t add anything to us,” Hafele said. “It was just a song. Having this new ‘Aggie Intro’ adds to us and holds a little more meaning for A&M.”