“Step Up” by Drowning Pool

"Step Up" is the song that introduced Drowning Pool's new frontman, Jason "Gong" Jones, in 2004. It surfaced first on the soundtrack to The Punisher, rolling over the film's end credits, then landed a month later on the band's second album, Desensitized. It's a nu-metal grudge match: Jones aimed it at someone who crossed him and paid for it, and while legal reasons keep him from naming names, he has called it the best therapy on the whole album.

The video swapped the aggression for excess, the band living large around a mansion pool with former Evanescence guitarist Ben Moody dropping by, and Headbangers Ball played it hard. Then the song went looking for a fight elsewhere: WWE made it the main theme of WrestleMania XX, and it turned up on the NFL Street 2 soundtrack as well.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.