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Chicago Bears players during filming of the Super Bowl Shuffle in Chicago, Illinois in 1985Virginia ChamleeTue, December 2, 2025 at 9:48 PM UTC·5 min readNEED TO KNOW
A new documentary is recounting the viral phenomenon that was "The Super Bowl Shuffle"
The rap song and accompanying music video were released in 1985 and starred The Chicago Bears, weeks before they won the Super Bowl
As the documentary notes, many of the players felt superstitious about recording the song before they even knew whether they'd play in the game at all.
It was an unlikely success: a rap song and music video starring NFL football players singing about the biggest game of the year — one they hadn't even won yet. Yet "The Super Bowl Shuffle," released in 1985 and starring The Chicago Bears, weeks before they won the Super Bowl, went viral before going viral was even a thing.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementA new HBO Original documentary short —The Shuffle — explores the makings of the song and accompanying music video and how it came despite numerous challenges.
As recounted in the documentary (directed by Jeff Cameron of HBO’s Hard Knocks and featuring former Chicago Bears players Willie Gault, Mike Singletary, Jim McMahon, and Gary Fencik) the song was recorded for charity, with proceeds going to the Chicago Community Trust to support local charities fighting hunger and poverty.
But even with the charitable angle, convincing professional football players to rap and dance about a game they weren't even sure they'd be playing was a mountain to climb.
The song was set to be recorded with four games left in the regular season, just after the Bears headed to Miami to play the Dolphins in the Orange Bowl. As the players recount in in the film, whatever could go wrong, did.
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The Shuffle“It just was one of those nights where you couldn’t imagine we could play that bad,” says Gary Fencik in the documentary.
Chicago lost 38 to 24 — then flew back to Chicago to record “The Super Bowl Shuffle."
As former linebacker Mike Singletary says in the doc, filming and recording the song meant the team “had to win the Super Bowl.”
The pressure was on — both to perform on the field, and in the music video, which was filmed weeks after the song was recorded.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAs coordinated as they may have been on the field, many of the players couldn't quite cut it on the dance floor.
“The fact that these guys couldn’t dance together actually became a post-production problem, because we had to create the illusion that they had some talent,” Mike Fayette, who was in charge of the video crew, says in the documentary.
That’s why, he adds, the end result consists mostly of wide shots, and very short takes.
“When you watch the video itself, you seldom had a take that’s more than two seconds long,” says Fayette. “That’s as long as they could keep their hands moving to the left, and their hands moving to the right.”
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementSome players did a better job than others, Fayette adds, noting that Mike Singletary took a leadership role in the video shoot. The Fridge, he adds, was “astonishing,” and got it in one take.
But there were other players who didn't want to participate at all — like running back Walter Peyton and quarterback Jim McMahon, who opted out at the last minute and ultimately didn’t show on the day of, largely out of superstition.
Later, they acquiesced, and were superimposed into the final video after filming their parts on their own.
HBO
The Shuffle“Walter and I had to do our parts in the racquetball courts at Hallis Hall after practice one day,” McMahon says in the documentary.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHe adds: "Very awkward to just pretend like you’re with a group of people, lip-syncing to the music. You’re pissed off anyway at having to be there. I told them, ‘You better get this in the first take or two, it’s only gonna get worse.' "
Neither McMahon nor any of the other players could imagine what would happen once the song and video were released to the public.
As videos and records came out just before Christmas, they flew off the shelves — and as the Bears performed well on the field, the song began taking on a life of its own.“The better the Bears did, the more momentum it got,” Singletary says in the film.
The song became so popular, in fact, that it peaked at number 41 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and earned a Grammy nomination in 1987 for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals (it ultimately lost to Prince).
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdditionally, within months of its release, home video sales of “The Super Bowl Shuffle” made it the second-highest selling music video of all time, behind Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”
What's even more is that the success of the song seemingly propelled the success of the team, which would go on to both play in — and win — the Super Bowl XX championship.
As Singletary notes in the trailer, “We brought a city together.”
The Shuffle debuts Tuesday, November 25 at 9:00PM ET/PT on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max.
Read the original article on People
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