Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 14, 2025
I’m a huge fan of James Gunn, not just his superhero work but his earlier projects like Slither, PG Porn, and Super. But I’m even more impressed with his musical taste, particularly his obsession with glam metal. That’s most evident in Peacemaker, where he built the show’s entire musical identity around hair metal and glam rock.
I’m a child of the late ’80s and early ’90s, so I grew up steeped in glam metal, although like most of the world, I moved on to grunge when Nirvana and Pearl Jam essentially obliterated the existing music scene. I’m familiar with all the pre-1991 metal songs Gunn uses in his work even a lot of the more obscure bands: Danger Danger, Kix, The Quireboys, Dangerous Toys, Enuff Z’Nuff, etc.
What’s both impressive and baffling about Gunn, though, is that while the rest of us moved on, he not only stuck with ’80s glam metal but dug deep enough to unearth modern glam metal, a genre most of us didn’t even know still existed. Norwegian glam band Wig Wam’s ‘Do Ya Wanna Taste It’ is the theme song for the first season of Peacemaker, and though it sounds like it was ripped straight from 1987, it’s actually from 2010. Likewise, the season two theme comes from Foxy Shazam, and it’s also a 2010 glam rock song. These aren’t popular tracks. Until Peacemaker, Wig Wam’s biggest hit was its Eurovision entry, which charted in Norway. Foxy Shazam peaked at #115 on the Billboard charts back in 2012.
The music video for Wig Wam’s ‘Do Ya Wanna Taste It’ looks like it was filmed in 1985, but it’s actually from 2010. They’re not just devoted to the sound; they’re committed to the entire aesthetic.
And the reason Foxy Shazam didn’t look as old as most glam rockers in the Peacemaker finale is … because they aren’t.
But I’m mostly here to talk about Nelson, and what an odd choice it was to feature them in the Peacemaker finale. Nelson is a band fronted by Matthew and Gunnar Nelson, sons of the late Ricky Nelson, and grandsons of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, who created a radio show and then a TV series in the 1950s portraying themselves as the archetypal mid-century suburban family — wholesome, aspirational postwar America personified.
Needless to say, Nelson was not cool, even at the height of their popularity. To wit — and I love this story — I grew up in a rough neighborhood, and my car was robbed frequently. One night, I accidentally left my tape collection inside. The next morning, every cassette was gone … except my Nelson tape. The burglars had stolen everything but that one, which they pulled out of the box of tapes and specifically left on my car seat. “No, thank you.”
I didn’t blame them. Nelson was basically a boy-band duo, but with long hair and guitars, so they got to label themselves glam rock during a period when anyone calling themselves glam rock could sell half a million albums. They weren’t cool, but they were big enough that one of my high school girlfriends named her dogs Gunnar and Matthew. Most people don’t know this, but before they were “Nelson,” they wrote a song with Dweezil Zappa that became the theme for the original Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, under the name Power Tool. That doesn’t make them cool, either.
It took a brave man to admit his love for Nelson in 1990. It takes an even braver one to admit it in 2025. But that’s James Gunn for you. What’s almost insane is that when he had Nelson perform in the Peacemaker finale, he didn’t ask them to play one of their huge hits from After the Rain. Instead, they performed ‘To Get Back to You,’ a song from a 2010 album no one has ever heard of. For comparison, two of their biggest hits — ‘(Can’t Live Without Your) Love and Affection’ and ‘After the Rain’ — have 15 million and 9 million streams on Spotify, respectively, mostly from Gen Xers who had too much to drink one night and started dialing up songs from their childhoods. ‘To Get Back to You,’ on the other hand, has about 100,000 plays, and 90,000 of those probably came after the Peacemaker finale aired.
The fact that James Gunn is still pushing has-beens from 35 years ago who weren’t even cool in their heyday kind of makes me love him even more.
