Joe Hendry on Origin of His “Beyond Belief” Being From Misunderstanding Over His Main Roster Brand Call-Up Status, Original Plans For His “Fire Logan Paul” Song, A.I. Was Not Used For Shot Of Him Holding All The WWE Titles In His “Give Joe Hendry Every Single Belt (Right Now)” Song, & More

A recent episode of the Insight with Chris Van Vliet podcast featured Joe Hendry as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Hendry’s thoughts about the origin and creation of his “Beyond Belief” album being from a misunderstanding he had about the main roster call-up plans for him and a song he performed about The Miz on SmackDown this past December.

“So the album kind of came together by accident. So there was a period of time where I was on NXT, and I thought I was getting called up to SmackDown. So I went up to it, but I didn’t know. So I remember it was when I did the song at Christmas about The Miz, and I went up to SmackDown,” said Hendry. “I remember Becky Lynch asked me, ‘Are you up now?’ I was like, ‘I think so?’ ‘It turns out I wasn’t, but I thought I was at that time. So I remember it was Neil, who is the head of WWE Music, said to me, ‘Hey, we want to put out this single, the audio of your live performance from SmackDown.’ And I was thinking maybe if we recorded it professionally rather than using live audio, it might be a better way to do that.

And he was like, ‘Alright, cool. Well, yeah, let’s record it.’ Then he was like, ‘What if we did an EP?’ Then I was like, ‘Well, actually, the same week I’ve done a song for NXT.’ So I was like, there’s two. He was like, ‘Can you do one more?’ And then I remember, again, I thought I was going up to SmackDown, so I did a song called ‘Going Up to SmackDown.’ So I made that one, and we got about four or five songs, and we just both thought, you know what, we’re almost there, let’s just do an album. So I wrote 10 tracks in either three or four days.”

Hendry also gave his thoughts about the origin of his “Fire Logan Paul” song and how it was originally planned to be a varied concept. Hendry also gave his thoughts about how he was originally planned to make his official main roster debut the night after WrestleMania 42.

“We added Fire Logan Paul. That’s another interesting story because I was supposed to debut the night after WrestleMania, and the song I had was the same song, but it was ‘Raw, Raw, Joe Hendry signed to Raw.’ Then what happened was they’d announced that I was going to be on Raw the next week. Because what I was going to say something that rhymed with SmackDown, I was going to say something like ‘back down because I have signed to Raw.’ That was what the gag was going to be.

But I think (Michael) Cole had said it, and there was like a graphic. I was like, ‘We need to pivot here’,  and then I found out that I was going to be working with The Vision. I’ve always learned in wrestling that you have to go after the biggest, baddest name. Well, the one name who’s got the most controversy and fame is Logan. I’ll just go directly after Logan, and the words fit right in. That’s how the ‘Fire Logan Paul song’ came about, and then it just kind of blew up beyond what we had maybe expected, and then yeah, had to put it on the album.”

Hendry also gave his thoughts about his song writing and music production process.

“I’m reading Rick Rubin’s book right now, and he talks about the creative process and how you have to engineer this situation where stuff just comes to you, and that’s kind of how it works for me. I just get these phases where I was very lucky that when it came to writing the album. I came up with the concepts for all the songs pretty much in like one or two days, and I just spent the other couple of days refining them.

I’m a huge Weezer fan, and I think that’s how I learned music, was playing guitar alongside Weezer songs because their songs are so structurally simple. They’re almost like, kind of rock, sometimes grungy, nursery rhymes. So I’ve learned that if you keep the melody strong and you have a good verbal hook, you can kind of reverse engineer it from there. So it would be a rare situation that I would start with the verse or something like that. It has to be okay, we’ve got fire Logan Paul. Let’s reverse engineer the rest of the song around that hook. I have to start with a hook that I think is going to hit.” 

Hendry also gave his thoughts about the shot of him holding all of the WWE championships in his “Give Joe Hendry Every Single Belt (Right Now)” and denied A.I. being used for it.

“So, believe it or not, that is not AI. I’m holding all the belts. I am holding all the belts, we don’t know the exact combined weight, but it’s somewhere between two and 300 pounds, because they’re heavy belts, and I’ve been wearing 15 of them or something like that. Every belt that we had available on that you can buy. So I’ve got my arms stretched out like this and I’m like [groans]. So when you see the footage, I’m dying. I had all those belts on for probably like 15-20 minutes. That was tough, man. I burned some calories that day.”

Hendry also gave his thoughts about how he had forgot to pack a blue shirt and white pants for his signature look when WWE traveled to Mexico and how Penta took care of him in Mexico by getting him the clothes he needed.

“It’s funny you mention that, because I remember I had an unfortunate situation where, for whatever reason. If you’re me, what’s the couple of things you don’t want to leave home without? It’s the blue shirt and the white trousers, which for some reason didn’t make it into my case. I’m panicking, and it turns out Argentina is the only stop where I’m going to be able to go out and perhaps get a blue shirt and white trousers. I’ve gone out there, and at this time, this [the black eyes] was way worse. So I haven’t shaved at this point. I’m just with two black eyes wandering around Argentina, can’t speak the language. I was like, this is probably going to be pretty strange for people speaking to me. But I do want to mention that actually, one of the things that I have really appreciated in the last couple of weeks is the camaraderie that we have in the locker room, and the reason I mention that I want to put somebody over, and that’s Penta. Because I was on the tour, I was trying to find a blue shirt and white pants, and I just couldn’t do it. So I knew Penta was my guy. So I knew we were going to Mexico, and I just said, ‘I am stuck. Can you help me? Where can I go in Mexico?’ He says, ‘It’s taken care of.’

I’m telling you, I got to that venue, and he had this. It’s better than the ones I’m using on TV. Had this beautiful blue shirt, perfect. He’s a fashionable guy. Beautiful white trousers. He actually went out of his way, his daughter, she went out and got the stuff for me. Then I said, ‘How much did it cost?’ And he went, ‘No, it’s a gift from my family.’ I just wanted to mention that because that’s just like one example of some of the great people that we have in our locker room. They just had that unbelievable match on Raw, him and Roman. I just wanted to take a second to say that about Penta. Fantastic performer, great human being, much like a lot of people in her locker room.”

Transcript h/t: F4WOnline.com 1 & 2, Fightful.com