Pandora Suggestion Led To Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Friendship With Favorite Band

Dale Earnhardt Jr. recently lived out every music fans’ dream when he got to hang out with his favorite band on the set of their new music video. But he apparently never would have heard of the group, let alone met them, had it not been for a suggestion on Pandora.

Earnhardt recently revealed that he only discovered The Dangerous Summer because one of their songs popped up on his Stone Temple Pilots station, according to Noisey’s Luke O’Neil. What’s more, by the time he got hooked on their music, they no longer were making new material.

The 43-year-old driver became such a big fan of The Dangerous Summer that he uses one of their songs as the theme song for his “Dale Jr. Download” podcast.

“I kept hearing more of their songs as I started liking more on my apps,” Earnhardt told Noisey. “Then I started reading about the band. I was disappointed because they weren’t together, they had broken up. So I was reading about all that drama.”

Although the band had since broken up, Earnhardt still reached out to its former frontman, AJ Perdomo, on Twitter. They reportedly developed a friendship that saw Perdomo attend several NASCAR races as Earnhardt’s guest, and partly contributed to The Dangerous Summer reuniting to release a self-named album Jan. 26.

As a result, the group hired the Kannapolis, N.C., native’s production company, Hammerhead Entertainment, to shoot their new music video, “Ghost.”

“So they came here, and they brought some of their instruments, and played a little acoustic set in the basement which was pretty badass, so all my friends and family could see who these guys were,” Earnhardt said. “We had a great time.”

Earnhardt told Noisey that drivers typically don’t share his taste in pop-punk and emo music. He claims most listen to country and pop, and while that might be true, Darrell Wallace Jr. has shown it’s not always the case.