Songfacts®:

• Dave Mustaine wrote this as a sports anthem. He's a huge fan of the Arizona Coyotes hockey team (at the time called the Phoenix Coyotes), and couldn't stand hearing Gary Glitter's "Rock And Roll Part 2" every time they scored a goal. He thought he could do better, so he wrote "Crush 'Em." >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Dae - Paraparaumu, New Zealand
• The song first appeared on the soundtrack to the action film Universal Soldier: The Return before becoming the lead off single to Megadeth's 1999 Risk album.
• Mustaine admitted to Noisecreep in a 2013 interview that this is a Megadeth song he isn't "that fond" of. "Probably the dumbest song Megadeth ever did was 'Crush 'Em.' Not that I hate it, because we've never released something that I didn't like musically, but I'm not that fond of it," he said.
  
  "We had huge success with our prior album [1997's Cryptic Writings] big singles and all of that," he continued. "That had never happened before. So we figured, why not give the label and our management more to work with next time out since the last one did so well on radio. That was a huge mistake.
  
  "I remember the day our manager at the time [the late Bud Prager] came to my house and he goes, 'I got an idea. Two words: crush 'em.' The silence was deafening. Look, I wanted to write a hockey song cause I was sick of [convicted sex offender] Gary Glitter's song ['Rock and Roll] being played in all the arenas. I'm a hockey season ticket holder and this is a family sport. I didn't want that guy's song anymore. I wanted to write something better. So I wrote the riff and then I see Bud's lyrics and I think to myself, 'This isn't what I was thinking.' So yeah, it didn't work."
• A "jock mix" remixed by Anthony J. Resta was released in 2000 on Megadeth's Breadline EP.