EA exec on 'Madden' soundtrack: 'We didn't want Madden NFL to sound like your parent's sport'

When it's time to party, we will party hard.

It is only fitting that some of the first words heard when a player booted up Madden NFL 2003 expressed celebration.

Football is experienced by many as a weekly celebration of sport, competition and passion. Extending that feeling to the virtual gridiron made sense.

And what's a party without music?

That line begins Andrew W.K.'s hit Party Hard, No. 89 on VH1's list of the greatest hard-rock songs of all time. It peaked at No. 19 on the UK singles chart. It never charted in the United States -- but to a certain segment of the population, it did come to be synonymous with Madden NFL 2003, the first installment of EA Sports' annual series to boast a soundtrack on the musical cutting edge.

As surely as any avid Madden gamer from that year can recall the player on the cover (Marshall Faulk) and gameplay elements, they can also name Party Hard as the opening track of the top sports title of 2002. Madden NFL 2003 kicked off an era of incredible success known informally as "Madden Mania." It introduced a generation of gamers to the sport (and to the game's namesake, Pro Football Hall of Fame coach John Madden).

It also showed the potential of EA Sports to become something beyond purveyors of sports simulations: musical tastemakers.

"We didn't want Madden NFL to sound like your parent's sport," Steve Schnur, worldwide executive and president of music for EA, said in an August phone interview. "My odd objective was to have your parents yell to you in your bedroom on the second floor: Turn the game down! I didn't want them to get it. I wanted only you, the player in 2003, 2005, 2009, to get the music, the sound of the sport. I wanted the NFL in the years ahead to sound more like Madden than