Now Playing | Gyro Zeppeli: 7 songs the ‘Steel Ball Run’ cowboy would have on repeat

Gyro in a still from ‘Steel Ball Run: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure’
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Netflix

Gyro is a strange custodian of the Zeppeli name. He has the family’s training, its knowledge of the Spin and the bearing of someone who takes both very seriously. But he also has this nonsensical ability to ruin his own solemnity. A flamboyant pose, a needless insult, an elaborate explanation of something that did not need explaining, and before you know it, the aristocratic executioner is singing the manga’s immortal ‘Cheese Song’ (I, for one, am a sucker for the “‘rella, ‘rella, ‘rella” part myself). This collision of uncanny discipline and sheer silliness makes Gyro a fitting steward to Araki’s storied legacy of absurdities.

Here are seven songs we think you would find on Gyro’s playlist:

1) ‘Ramble On’ by Led Zeppelin

‘Ramble On’ feels well suited for someone who voluntarily signed up to cross an entire continent on horseback. Released on Led Zeppelin II in 1969, the song marries folk-rock with heavier guitar work, while Robert Plant’s lyrics draw on The Lord of the Rings’ call to adventure. Its roaming grandeur suits Gyro’s own appetite for the open road, and better yet, his tendency to treat every stretch of it as yet another stage to show-off his considerable talents. 

2) ‘Sweet Thang’ by Shuggie Otis

Shuggie Otis’ ‘Sweet Thang’, from his 1971 album Freedom Flight, adds a little velvet to a playlist otherwise calibrated to Gyro’s more boisterous frequencies. Otis’ supple guitar lines glide are cushioned by a teasing organ, giving the song a bluesy soulfulness. It catches a gentler current beneath Gyro and Johnny’s bickering and suits that blossoming bromance that neither man would ever admit out loud.

3) ‘Highway Star’ by Deep Purple

‘Highway Star’ is pure velocity, built around the restless thrills of going even faster, and the thirst for simply coming first. Deep Purple’s 1972 classic from Machine Head drives forward on Ritchie Blackmore’s racing guitar and Jon Lord’s pounding organ, with the song barely catching its breath before launching into another solo. It suits Gyro’s competitive streak perfectly. He enters the Steel Ball Run to win and treats every stretch of the race as another opportunity to pull ahead. This is the song for when the mere thought of second place feels like an affront to Gyro’s entire existence.

4) ‘A Horse with No Name’ by America

Yes, she does have a name. This one was never meant to obliterate poor Valkyrie’s existence, but rather a playful coincidence between Gyro’s beautifully named horse and America’s most famous equine non-entity. Dewey Bunnell’s ‘A Horse with No Name’ became a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972, its dry acoustic guitar and hypnotic rhythm turning a desert journey into hazy folk-rock. That makes it apt for when Gyro and Johnny eventually find themselves crossing the punishing desert around the Devil’s Palm on horseback. Valkyrie, meanwhile, remains very much named, and Gyro might even stave off rearranging your face with his steel balls until you suggest otherwise.

5) ‘You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)’ by Dead or Alive

There was really no way this playlist could exist without this track. Dead or Alive’s 1984 hi-NRG synth-pop classic, fronted by Pete Burns’ sexy, theatrical delivery, eventually carried it to No. 1 in the UK. The joke is almost offensively literal here because it pretty much captures Gyro’s entire philosophy, right down to the fact that his signature technique is, well… the Spin. In fact, the new Steel Ball Run opening is itself called ‘SPIN.’ Enough said.

6) ‘Old Town Road’ by Lil Nas X

‘Old Town Road’ is Gyro at his campest. Lil Nas X turned a 2018 country-trap joke on exaggerated Western masculinity into one of the decade’s defining cowboy bops. That feels very at home in Araki’s world, where men can be built like Greek statues or dressed like couture models, while still being unmistakably erotic. Lil Nas X’s play with masculinity and queer imagery also echoes the gender fluidity that runs through JoJo, particularly in the flamboyant male bodies and deliberately unstable codes of masculine presentation that Araki brings to his characters. Gyro, for one, is already in a crop top, flashing that gold-toothed “GO! GO! ZEPPELI” grin with the same love for dental bling Lil Nas X has made part of his own look. He hardly needs an excuse to add this banger to his playlist. 

7) ‘The Chain’ by Fleetwood Mac

This might be the most melancholic song on Gyro’s playlist. Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 Rumours masterpiece was stitched together from scraps of separate songs during one of the band’s infamously combustible periods, and its closing bassline became the final track that literally held those fractured compositions together. The faintly tragic, Brokeback Mountain-adjacent metaphor is neat for Gyro and Johnny: two men thrown together by circumstance, bound tighter with every mile, argument and near-death experience until the journey becomes inseparable from the bond it has forged. There is also that enormous American guitar horizon, conjuring the vastness and loneliness of the open country they cross together. Manga readers will likely feel the sting a little earlier, knowing where Gyro and Johnny’s long ride ultimately takes them.

The next 11 episodes of Steel Ball Run: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure begin streaming weekly on Netflix from Friday, September 25