The 10 best songs from the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games, ranked!

When the original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater first arrived just over 25 years ago, nobody could have known how important it would go on to be, not only for skateboarding video games, but for the popularity of the real-life sport as well. And while there have been countless other skating games since, many of them brilliant, the Birdman remains the poster boy of the genre.

While a big part of the Tony Hawk’s games’ appeal lies in their gloriously over-the-top, physics-defying approach to recreating skateboarding on your console, and the moreish nature of combo-chasing, you also can’t talk about this series without talking about the music.

When someone mentions a Tony Hawk’s game you have a history with, you’ll immediately think of your favourite level or objective, sure. But before any of that you’ll probably recall the song from the soundtrack that you were always waiting for the game to line up next. It’s just that kind of game.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 - Reveal Trailer | PS5 & PS4 Games - YouTube

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As this week sees the launch of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, a ground-up remake of the much-loved third and fourth entries of the classic original series (and incidentally one that remixes their soundtracks to incorporate modern tracks, too), we decided to look back at more than two decades of Tony Hawk’s soundtracks by remembering the songs that hit the hardest.

Here are the 10 most iconic songs from the Tony Hawk’s series.

10. Jimmy Eat World - “Pain” (Tony Hawk’s Underground 2)

You could argue that no song title in history is better suited to the oh-so painful sport of skateboarding than “Pain”, so of course Jimmy Eat World’s hit single was going to make it onto the Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 soundtrack.

THUG2 came around when the new story-focused Tony Hawk’s games hit peak silliness, but if that side of things had understandably started to turn you away from the series, the game also added a new classic mode that reintroduced the goals and time limit from the original entries.

Jimmy Eat World’s song, then, ended up being one that is associated with Tony Hawk’s in all its guises, and it helps that it’s just a really good rock song.

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9. Dead Kennedys - “Police Truck” (Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater)

“And ride, ride, how we ride.” The first line of the chorus to Dead Kennedys’ “Police Truck” is actually, like the rest of the song, a satirical commentary on rampant police corruption in the late ‘70s. But rightly or wrongly, the blistering bassline and rebellious energy that drives the song also made it a perfect fit for the original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game.

There’s no shortage of hard-edged punk on that soundtrack, but for obvious reasons, “Police Truck” is the song that immediately comes to mind when we think about incurring the wrath of Officer Dick in the School level.

8. Johnny Cash - “Ring of Fire” (Tony Hawk’s Underground 2)

Whatever your view on the extreme Jackassifcation (real word) that took hold in Tony Hawk’s Underground 2, there’s no denying that it features one of the most diverse and wide–reaching soundtracks in the whole series, throwing together classic and modern tracks from many different genres - a number of which might have seemed out of place in the hip-hop and punk rock-heavy soundtracks in Tony Hawk’s games of old.

The inclusion of country music legend Johnny Cash’s 1963 single “Ring of Fire” was on nobody’s bingo card, for example, but ask anyone who played THUG2 and they’ll probably remember skating around to this as much as the likes of Less Than Jake and Rancid. It probably shouldn’t have worked, but it really did. It’s just a shame Mr Cash wasn’t a playable skater too.

7. Jurassic 5 ft. Percee P & Big Daddy Kane - “A Day At the Races” (Tony Hawk’s Underground)

There’s arguably no hip-hop group more synonymous with noughties skate culture than Jurassic 5, who regularly featured in both pro skate videos and the iPod playlists of the countless amateurs who aspired to one day make it into one. No surprise, then, that J5 ft. Percee P & Big Daddy Kane’s hugely fun “A Day At the Races” was the lead song on the Tony Hawk’s Underground soundtrack.

THUG is one of the more divisive entries in the series, and how fondly you remember it depends a lot on the nostalgia you have for the series’ first story mode. One thing’s for sure, though: the newfound freedom given to the player - you could get off your board for the first time in this game - in the fifth mainline entry meant you had hours to learn all the words to this song.

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6. NOFX - “The Separation of Church and Skate” (Tony Hawk’s Underground)

Given NOFX’s influence on the 90s skate punk scene, it’s kind of surprising that it took until 2003’s Tony Hawk’s Underground for the LA band to turn up on one of the series’ soundtracks.

While their song “The Separation of Church and Skate” is clearly about the band’s disillusionment with the state of punk music at the time ("The kids who used to live for beer and speed, now want their fries and coke"), a lot of Tony Hawk’s players probably didn’t think about it much beyond the punny title.

And that’s fine.

It’s a sonic assault that made for the perfect pairing with whatever nonsense you were getting up to in THUG’s open world-lite story mode.

Intro Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 [HD] - YouTube

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5. Rage Against the Machine - “Guerilla Radio” (Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2)

Rage Against the Machine’s one-of-a-kind brand of rap metal was always going to make them a perfect fit for the THPS series, and of all the great music in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, it was “Guerilla Radio” that was picked for the game’s iconic opening sequence, which is a compilation of real-life footage of the professional skaters featured in the game.

It’s the kind of thing that seems a bit quaint these days, if anything involving Zack de la Rocha’s punch-you-in-the-face vocals can ever be described as such. So good that we rarely skipped that montage when booting up the game.

4. Gang Starr - “Mass Appeal” (Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4)

Jazz-rap pioneers Gang Starr’s “Mass Appeal” is an all-timer beat (even if the group themselves have described the track as “almost a joke”) but ironically, the very thing they were making fun of was what the song gained when it was picked for the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 soundtrack.

In typical fashion, the game’s music selection was full of ska, classic punk and metal, but leisurely tricking around the game’s San Francisco level with no time limit to worry about - THPS4 was the first game in the series to do away with the traditional timer in career mode - to the sounds of Gang Starr just felt perfect. And we’re very much looking forward to doing that all over again in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 in the coming weeks.

96 Quite Bitter Beings - CKY - YouTube

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3. CKY - “96 Quite Bitter Beings” (Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3)

You can’t talk about early 2000s skate culture without talking about Jackass, which would eventually make its mark on the Tony Hawk’s series too.

CKY (whose drummer Jess Margera is the brother of professional skater and recurring Tony Hawk’s character Bam) are strongly associated with both, and their debut single “96 Quite Bitter Beings” is one of the standout tracks in the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 soundtrack.

There’s just something about the chaotic energy of the song’s guitar riff that chimes perfectly with skateboarding, particularly the extremely over-the-top brand of it portrayed in these games.

2. Anthrax & Public Enemy - “Bring The Noise” (Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2)

Bass! How low can you go? This unlikely collaboration between thrash metal band Anthrax and the self-proclaimed Rolling Stones of the rap game, Public Enemy, played a big part in birthing a whole new genre of music, but it’s also one of the greatest songs to ever feature in a Tony Hawk’s game.

As good as Public Enemy's original is, the way Anthrax’s take on the song punches you in the nose from the beginning, teeing up Chuck D for his big entrance, is something to behold. And there’s a good chance that a lot of people heard this version in THPS2 before they even knew where it had originated.

Whatever you prefer, there’s only one “Bring The Noise” in our heads when we’re thinking about landing an Indy Frontflip in The Bullring.

1. Goldfinger - “Superman” (Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater)

As we’ve hopefully made clear throughout this piece, a lot of songs are synonymous with the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, but none more so than Goldfinger’s “Superman”, which featured in the very first game.

Skateboarding is something a lot of people associate closely with their youth, so the verse, “so here I am, growing older all the time, looking older all the time, feeling younger in my mind” couldn’t really be more apt. And as for Tony Hawk himself, if landing a 900 successfully for the first time in recorded history isn’t a superheroic feat then what is?

The Goldfinger hit is the ultimate THPS song (there’s even a very good documentary about the series named after it) and we can’t listen to more than a few seconds without being immediately transported back to the legendary Warehouse level all over again.

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