Highlights
- Widow's Wine has a catchy and intoxicating jingle that matches its jazz-inspired composition, making it a pleasure to listen to.
- Deadshot Daiquiri has a stadium rock and eighties vibe, with punchy lyrics that are sure to make players want to shout along.
- Vulture Aid Elixir surprises players with its cool and moody bluesy jingle, featuring instruments like guitar, saxophone, and keyboards for a brilliant listening experience.
There’s no better way to keep a player on their feet and to help make their weapons more effective in combat in Call of Duty Zombies than with a refreshing Perk-A-Cola. Treyarch didn’t simply just introduce perks in the form of drink machines and leave it at just that. They went a step further by implementing jaunty jingles that play sporadically, or a shortened version when someone buys a drink for points in the classic Call of Duty Zombies game mode.
It’s still an ongoing hot topic within the community as to which of the perks are the best or worst of the bunch. But, what about the tunes that play? Which of them are, debatably, the best of them all, and can save players with even the worst weapons?
8 Widow’s Wine
Jazz lovers are in for a treat with Widow’s Wine. First introduced in Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 on its debut map Shadows of Evil, this is an original track composed by Jack Wall, with instrumentation that’s so catchy it’s bound to get a player all tangled up.
Cindy Shapiro lays down some fittingly sensual vocals alongside some passionate backup vocals. Blaring brass and the smooth-sounding drums and percussions persisting throughout the track mix together to make a most potent and intoxicating listen - just like the drink itself.
7 Deadshot Daiquiri
Deadshot Daiquiri has a stadium rock and eighties vibe to its jingle (it’s a non-copyright track called We Love Rock ‘n’ Roll from the stock music compilation 80s Icons), sounding like the sort of thing one would strum an air guitar to during an awkward drunken karaoke session.
Layering additional vocals atop certain lines helps give the lyrics a lot more of a punch to them, making it quite a challenge to restrain oneself from shouting along to “the HEADSHOT power of a DEADSHOT Daiquiri!” Plus, some of the rhymes are nothing short of poetry: “To err is human, to forgive is divine. Well, I'm not forgiving and the error ain't mine!” It's one to keep coming back to for maximum enjoyment.
6 Vulture Aid Elixir
A one-time perk like Vulture Aid from the map Buried in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 had no right to have such a cool jingle. Appropriate moody, this bluesy, mournful ditty (presumably a Treyarch original, compared to the rest of the jingles that use stock songs and record lyrics over them) has a glittering guitar being strummed over some bongos, a smooth saxophone, and the melancholic sounds of the keyboards slowly slipping its way through.
Its vocals are nowhere near as over-the-top within their delivery as the other jingles, too, so it’s more than just appropriate for a dirge track - it’s all just simply brilliant to listen to.
5 Tombstone Soda
It’s a shame that Tombstone Soda never really made that many appearances in Zombies maps (it doesn’t even appear in solo games of TranZit in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2!). Even if it’s a highly situational perk, the jingle that plays along is amazing. The original stock track is named Blue Grass and is taken from the compilation album Hollywood The Golden Years.
The upbeat combination of the twanging banjo, fiddle, and violin blends together perfectly, along with the hick-like singer and the “oooh” layered atop during the alternating pitch of the chorus: “It’s Tombstone! It's Tombstone!”
4 Speed Cola
A sizzling salsa (Salsa Feeling B from the copyright-free album Commercial Non-Stop Volume 6 - Hispanic) greets those who spend a considerable amount of points to pop out a bottle of Speed Cola from its vendor. The delightful brass instruments chirp along, enough to make any peppy zombie killer swing along joyfully, and the same can be said about the lyrics.
In this appropriately up-tempo track, the male vocalist sounds aggressive, building up in enthusiasm before belting out “Just try it NOW! And speed is mastered!” The track ends with female vocals rounding it off over its peppy outro: “Speed Cola speeds up your life!”
3 Elemental Pop
Elena Siegman - better known as the vocalist of many of the secret songs that can be played during many of the Call of Duty Zombies maps - takes a break from delivering bone-shattering screams and showcases a softer, peppier side of her singing with the Elemental Pop tune, first appearing in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.
This sugary-sweet pop number starts with a wah-wah guitar, but it really increases in sweetness tenfold during the second the first instance of the chorus, where the feel-good synths begin to chime along, along with backup vocals repeating “pop”. Plus, how could a line like “you bring out the best in me, it's fundamental. I'll bring out the best in you, it's elemental” not put a smile on any player’s face?
2 Double Tap Root Beer
Of course, a root beer vendor is going to have a country jam. The Double Tap Root Beer jingle is incredibly infectious - even Richtofen can be caught singing along to it - and it sounds like the kind of song that would play in a saloon on a self-playing piano. The original tune is actually a stock track called Slapstick Dick.
As for the vocals, a jaunty, thick Texan-sounding voice chants along about how cowboys (and that probably includes anyone who needs to unload their weapons like a cowboy against hordes of the undead) “reach for the root beer shelf.” After that, the song repeats with added background vocals of ladies enthusiastically singing along to the drink’s name before it rounds off with the hilariously delivered: “Ya thirsty, partner?!”
1 Quick Revive
Call of Duty fanatics would be hard-pressed to find anyone who didn’t chant along to the Quick Revive song, which is nothing short of iconic. The original track is yet another stock song, It's A Perfect Day, with original lyrics layered over it.
With bluesy twangs of an acoustic guitar, the gruff vocals slip and slide smoothly across the notes, all coming to the climactic outro: “Ya need a little revive!” That iconic, energetic round-off belted out by the singer is no doubt cemented in the mind of every player’s mind, making it the catchiest jingle of all. If only the flavor of the drink was nearly as good as the jingle…