Few words in games journalism carry as much quiet menace as "might." In the first days of January 2016, that single syllable was enough to send Sonic fans into a happy frenzy, because it came from Johnny Gioeli, one half of Crush 40, and it concerned new music for whatever Sega was preparing to mark twenty-five years of its hedgehog. Our original stub, published on 2 January 2016, treated the hint as close to a promise. A decade on, the honest way to retell the story is as a look back at a tease that pointed in completely the wrong direction — and at what the band actually did instead, which turned out to be far stranger and, arguably, far better.
Crush 40 on stage: guitarist Jun Senoue and singer Johnny Gioeli, the duo behind Sonic’s best-known rock anthems. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
What was known then: a Facebook answer and a loaded "might"
The whole episode began in the most unglamorous place imaginable: a question-and-answer exchange with fans on Facebook. Asked when there might be news of another Crush 40 record, Gioeli replied that the pair were lining up some live appearances during 2016 in honour of Sonic’s anniversary, and that they "might" be involved in writing fresh material for the anniversary game. Stay tuned, he added. That was the entire substance of it — no title, no confirmation, no contract announcement — yet in the hungry information vacuum of an anniversary year, it landed like a headline.
It is easy to understand why readers believed something was brewing. Crush 40 were not some hired guns who had passed briefly through the series. Senoue, a Sega composer since 1993, had brought in Gioeli — frontman of Hardline and a singer with Axel Rudi Pell — to record "Open Your Heart" for Sonic Adventure in 1998. The partnership, first billed as Sons of Angels before a name clash forced a rethink (Senoue liked the word "crush"; Gioeli, approaching forty, added the number), went on to define an era: "Live and Learn" for Sonic Adventure 2, the title song of Sonic Heroes, "What I’m Made Of…", "I Am… All of Me" for Shadow the Hedgehog, and a clutch of songs for Sonic and the Black Knight. For a generation of players, that earnest, sky-high hard rock simply was the sound of modern Sonic.
Sonic Adventure 2, home of "Live and Learn" — the Crush 40 song that came to define the Dreamcast era of the series. Cover art: Sega.
There was, however, a quieter context that hopeful fans tended to skip. After 2010’s Sonic Free Riders, for which the band covered the theme "Free", Crush 40’s contributions to new games had dried up almost completely. Senoue was no longer the series’ lead composer after Sonic Generations in 2011, and Sega had begun rotating other voices through the big vocal themes: Jaret Reddick of Bowling for Soup, Jean Paul Makhlouf of Cash Cash, and others. The band had pivoted towards live work and its own releases — the Rise Again EP, the concert album Live!, and 2015’s 2 Nights 2 Remember, which mixed a Tokyo performance with four fresh studio tracks. None of those songs were for a game. The anniversary "might" was real, but it was floating on several years of evidence that Sega had moved on.
Hindsight: the anniversary party, and two games with no Crush 40 theme
Everything in this section is hindsight — none of it was knowable when the stub was written. Sega’s anniversary celebrations peaked on 22 July 2016 at the House of Blues in San Diego, during Comic-Con, where Crush 40 did indeed perform, exactly as Gioeli had trailed. The party also delivered the "future of Sonic" reveal: not one anniversary game but two, both arriving in 2017. Sonic Mania was a lovingly built 2D revival from Christian Whitehead, Headcannon and PagodaWest. The second, codenamed Project Sonic 2017, was Sonic Team’s big 3D title, later named Sonic Forces.
Studiopolis Zone in Sonic Mania (2017) — the first of the two anniversary games. Its soundtrack came from Tee Lopes, not Crush 40. Screenshot: Sega / Wikimedia.
Neither game carried a new Crush 40 song. Mania‘s music was composed by Tee Lopes, whose funky, CD-era-inspired score was one of the most praised parts of the package; its vocal-free approach suited a game deliberately styled after the Mega Drive and Saturn years, before Crush 40 existed. Forces, meanwhile, was scored under sound director Tomoya Ohtani, and its main theme, "Fist Bump", was written and sung by Doug Robb of Hoobastank — another slice of early-2000s rock royalty, but not Gioeli. Interviews around the game’s unveiling did place Senoue nearby, coordinating vocal tracks, yet coordinating is not fronting: the anniversary game that fans had imagined opening with a brand-new Crush 40 anthem opened with somebody else’s.
Read generously, Gioeli’s "might" was probably accurate at the moment he typed it. Discussions may genuinely have happened; anniversary concerts certainly did. Read strictly, though, the speculation in our 2016 stub — that the decision was likely already made and the songs were surely coming — was wrong. No new Crush 40 material appeared in either anniversary title, and correcting that record plainly matters more than preserving the stub’s optimism.
Hindsight: what Crush 40 actually did next
The comeback, when it arrived, came from an unexpected garage. In 2018 Senoue was named lead composer on Team Sonic Racing, and he was specifically asked to make its theme a Crush 40 number. The result, "Green Light Ride", premiered at E3 2018 and reached players with the game in May 2019 — the band’s first Sonic game theme in the best part of a decade. Senoue later said the strength of the reaction surprised him, and spoke warmly about recording a game theme with Gioeli again, twenty years after they had started. A career-spanning compilation, Driving Through Forever, followed the same year.
Team Sonic Racing (2019), the game that finally brought Crush 40 back — its theme, "Green Light Ride", was their first new Sonic game song in years. Screenshot: Sega / Wikimedia.
After that, the old songs refused to stay old. Crush 40 performed as part of Sega’s Sonic 30th Anniversary Symphony on 23 June 2021, streamed worldwide. Then, in December 2024, "Live and Learn" turned up in the climax of the third Sonic film, its riff woven through the score as Shadow’s motif — the 2001 anthem suddenly playing to cinema audiences who were not born when it was recorded. A less cheerful footnote arrived in parallel: Gioeli sued Sega of America in December 2024 over ownership connected to "Live and Learn", a case that was dismissed in Sega’s favour in August 2025. The band’s catalogue, it turns out, remained valuable enough to fight over nearly a quarter of a century later.
Crush 40 performing in Tokyo in 2012, during the live-focused years between their Sonic game themes. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
The verdict on a "might"
So the stub was wrong about the destination and right about the journey. There were no new Crush 40 songs for Sonic’s twenty-fifth anniversary games — that hope, stated fairly plainly in January 2016, did not survive contact with 2017. But the performances Gioeli promised did happen, the band’s return to a Sonic theme did happen, just three years late and attached to a kart racer, and the songs everyone actually wanted to hear again ended up in a symphony concert and a Hollywood film. Sometimes "might" is a tease that expires. This one, unusually, was a promise that simply took the long way round.