097: rhythm is my life!
this week: if you didn't know what music league was, you will now
“Are you familiar with music league? And would you want to be part of mine?” Back in January, when I received this text from RAFTM Allison Picurro1, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I had not, in fact, heard of Music League. But I was down to see what it was. And what is Music League, you ask? It’s hard to explain but the best way that I’ve described it to friends is that it’s like fantasy football for music. I don’t even really know if I know how fantasy football works. Here’s how Music League works:
Someone creates a league and sets a number of themed rounds.
Each member of the league (10-12 is the best amount) submits a song that fits the theme.
Once everyone submits, the app generates a Spotify playlist for everyone to listen to.
League members upvote songs (though you can’t vote for your own submission) and once voting is done, songs (and their submitters) are ranked.
Each step has a time limit, so there’s a quick turnaround especially if everyone is speedy with their submissions and votes.
I won’t lie, it took me a second to figure out what was going but as soon as I did, I was hooked. It truly was consuming me and I was telling everyone about it, largely because I couldn’t believe how badly I was doing. I guess I started off on a bad foot when I submitted a Noah Cyrus song for the first round2 (theme: a song from your Spotify Wrapped). Then, for the TV banger round, I submitted a hitherto unheard cover of “California Dreamin’” by SIA,3 not because I thought it was a banger or even memorable but because I was the last person to submit a song and I heard it in a show I was watching at the time.4 I still regret not submitting “Sex on Fire”! I never recovered from those failures (acts of bravery really) and finished the league in 7th place.
After experiencing the epic highs and lows of Music League (high: winning a round with Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire”; low: my submission of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” ranking sixth in the Woman round), I knew I had to write about it. Mostly, I wanted to talk to my fellow league mates about their process—what went behind votes, what surprises did they have, and what did it take to win?
We played 10 rounds, with the themes from the mind of Allison: Spotify Wrapped; movie banger; tv banger; Woman; boy; stupid; solo; year u were born; desert island song; AND closing credits.
I asked Allison about what went into deciding these categories, especially since she decided to come up with her own instead of using Music League’s premade ones. She said:
The themes for the categories came to me fairly quickly. I always knew I wanted to come up with my own rather than leave it up to the premades in the app because I knew that the originality of the rounds would be the best way to get people invested. I also had an idea of who I wanted to invite to join when I first had the idea to start a league, and I thought a lot about what rounds would be the most fun for my friends, all of whom are around my age, many of whom I first met online. (The online element matters! We're all speaking the same language!) The only thing I would really do differently is have more fun with that first round! On one hand, it was designed to be an easy round to get people used to the game. On the other hand, it could've been a tad more exciting than some random Spotify Wrapped song, you know?
Below, I have taken all my sociology education (the one research methods class I took in undergrad), and compiled the results of my investigation into the incredibly fun, though at times frustrating experience of playing Music League!
Music Tastes
The (self-reported) music taste of the group ranged from indie and pop girlies to select musicals to old man dad rockers. Individual music taste was probably one of the most important factors in determining how things would play out. In our case, our musical tastes were pretty similar but it would be one particular preference (can you guess which) that would really tilt the scales.
What people had to say about their taste
Jerryan Ramos, 26, former art historian current corporate bee5: My favorite kind of music is probably best described as "people with talking about their feelings over soft guitars"—but I am all over the place. My last concert was Pitbull/Enrique Iglesias (who is my distant cousin...sorry it's my favorite fun fact)/Ricky Martin.
Cassidy Olsen, 27, former journalist, now in advertising + film: I was online young and I was determined to have Good Taste, and I was listening to like, Modest Mouse when I was 11. That being said, I really love music and I'm broadly down for a lot of things. I listen to a lot of ambient and electronic [stuff] like Aphex Twin to focus throughout the day but also the stupid uptempo tropical house that they play on Love Island when I want to turn my brain off, alongside singer-songwriters and 60s-70s rock, and new wave, and dream pop, and Radiohead, and pop girls, and so on.
What was your process for choosing a song for a round?
Sarah Turbin, 29, graphic designer: I knew this wasn't the time to be pulling out obscure stuff, and I didn't want to pick songs that are currently insanely popular because I think there is some fatigue that gets telegraphed by those songs. This is a place to be struck by wonder and delighted by a song you haven't visited in a long time. As a wise woman once said, we come to this place for magic.
Lusi Zhang, 33, freelance translator: I first try to see if I can think of something off the top of my head, and if I can't I go into my Spotify to see if anything fits the round. I tried to go with my heart instead of what I think would get the most votes (aka I put a kpop song for the boy round expecting only Claire to vote for it) because I didn't think it was gonna get competitive but then it did lmao. It depended on the round how easy/difficult it was to pick. Like for the movie round I immediately had a few options, but for the last round [closing credits] I really wasn't sure what to pick.
Allison Picurro, 28, “journalist”6: My process changed over time; since I came up with the themes for the rounds, I had an idea of what songs I wanted to use before I even started recruiting people for the league. (I'm going to admit here and now that I chose the "movie banger" round JUST so I could submit “Baby, You're a Rich Man”) But as the game got more competitive I did away with my initial choices and started tailoring my picks to what I thought would hit with the group... I was playing to win, I'll admit it. I also had a note in my phone that I would use to keep track of potential submissions and would narrow them down before each round. The difficulty definitely varied based on the rounds; I changed my submission for the "Woman" round, like, five times, but my submission for the "desert island" round came to me immediately and I stuck with it.
Ariana Bacle, 32, TV marketing: I approach ML the same way I’d approach making a mix CD for a friend in high school: What do I love, and what do I think they could love, too? But the later we got in the game, the more I got a little competitive and did try to be a bit more strategic — like for “year u were born,” my heart said Nirvana’s “In Bloom” but I wasn’t confident this was a grunge crowd so I went with the seemingly safer “Losing My Religion” instead. I still got second to last <3
How did you vote? Did you vote based on how well something fit the category or how much you liked it?
I was most interested in this question because I knew that I was voting differently for each round. For rounds where I liked most of the songs, I tried to vote for songs that fit the category but for rounds that were a mixed bag or when I hadn’t listened to the playlist, I voted for what I liked. Most people also voted based “on vibes” or how much they liked the song, though some people had a process:
Sarah: I tried to vote for songs that fit the theme and also delighted and surprised me. "El Tango de Roxane" from Moulin Rouge, for example, did that, because it really is a movie banger AND it changed my brain chemistry the first time I saw it.
Mary Alice, 32, hair salon manager: I combined how well it fit the category and how much I personally vibed with it. Also, I listened to the entire playlist! I'm just saying sometimes there would be votes submitted moments after the playlist went live... not voting in good faith imo...
Jerryan: Definitely both. I would listen to the playlist at least once through to truly get on the group wavelength. Sometimes I would immediately be ready to vote, but I had to sit with my options in a couple of cases (I took this perhaps too seriously). I tried to scale my votes a little to start with (e.g. 3 votes to my favorite, 2 to my second favorite, 1 to my third favorite, and then distribute the rest where my heart took me), but sometimes I would go back and give more points to my favorite if I liked that song significantly more than any other. There were times when I would give votes even if I didn't love the song because I had an inkling of who had submitted it and I respected their submission even if the song wasn't for me.
What was your favorite round?
Most people named the “Woman” round as their favorite round, largely because it ended up being “wall-to-wall bangers”!
Sarah: I liked the stupid round, because I love lots of stupid songs, and as proven by the submissions, I like how many directions stupidity can go in. I went with "I Love It" by Icona Pop, which is perhaps one of the more stupid pop girl songs of the last 20 years. HOWEVER, it's almost so overused and catchy that you forget it's stupid, whereas some of the submissions (this is not a criticism, by the way) immediately come to mind as stupid. I hypothesize that this is why this song worked and I placed 2nd in that round, because the element of surprise and delight worked in my favor.
Cassidy: My favorite round was probably solo because 1. I won [and] 2. I have not been able to stop listening to “You Can Call Me Al” since that round dropped. Sure, I have heard that song a million times before, but it never occurred to me I could just play it whenever I want, and now I can't stop. Woman was probably a close second because that was wall-to-wall bangers.
What was your least favorite round?
desert island song was named a few times as people’s least favorite round with the explanation that everyone interpreted what that meant differently and so “it was a little disjointed.” More of us need to listen to Desert Island Discs!
Was there a song that you were surprised to see do so well? To do poorly?
Lusi: All the old white men songs!!! I will say that is a blindspot for me because I did not grow up in this country so nobody made me listen to older white guy music and I just never sought it out myself. To that point I was so surprised that so many diva songs did so poorly (“My Heart Will Go On”, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”, etc). Personally I thought my pick for the solo round would do better (“Motivation” by Normani7); I was like I thought we were all girlies here???
Allison: Just generally, I could never have predicted Paul Simon randomly being the star of the league. His music was featured in THREE SEPARATE ROUNDS, which I believe is the most of any artist? When I discovered that the "solo" round was a threeway race between George Harrison, Paul Simon, and Zayn Malik I almost had to go to the hospital. What the hell, you guys?
Ariana: “GATman and Robbin,” my pick for the “stupid” round, was — perhaps appropriately — robbed. The title alone should have gotten it into the top 3 of that round at the very least, so I still feel wronged that it placed second to last. My theories are that people didn’t actually listen to it, OR that they are scared of calling 50 Cent stupid. He can handle it!!!
How would you describe your Music League experience overall? Had you participated in Music League before? Would you do it again?
Ariana: This was my sixth Music League, and in each one I’ve been in, there’s always at least one round where I decide that by forcing us to place numerical values on songs, ML is anti-art. Obviously, this only happens when I’ve lost (I once submitted “Jumpin’ Jumpin’” for “2000” and it placed last, which still haunts me), but I don’t think I really felt that this time. I see ML as a way to get to know people through their taste and to discover/rediscover music, so this definitely achieved those things, though I do think that this league was overall more about winning through familiarity than about the discovery aspect — not a knock; these playlists were killer.
Mary Alice: I had done one before with Allison and Ariana! I love it! It is truly a bright spot of spontaneity that helps the weeks go by! I want to keep doing more so we can all get weirder and more personal with our submissions.
If you can’t tell from these answers, clearly everyone took ML seriously and was playing to do well. But what did it actually take to win? I asked the two league members who would know best: Sarah and Jerryan. For most of our league, Sarah was set to win UNTIL, at the very last moment, Jerryan, snuck in and stole Sarah’s crown!
Sarah: I was on vacation for most of Music League, so I would check in when I had time, but I was worried that I would forget to submit and needlessly lose points. So I didn't think I would do well. It took me a few rounds to even realize I was winning, because I am so humble and was also mostly jetlagged and didn't realize I could check the rankings until like four rounds in. Winning was euphoric, and I was bitter when I was edged out. That's what I get for getting too cocky. Jerryan, if you're reading this....I owe you an apology, I wasn't really familiar with your game. I think the secret to being good at Music League is not thinking so hard about it and going with your gut, because when I tried to think more about the prompts, that's when I started losing points. I have other ideas on how to do well, but why should I give those away for free?!
Jerryan: I must say I was as surprised as anyone, especially since I didn't even win a single round (!). I think I coasted consistently with strong bangers that were not super polarizing (except for “Hurdy Gurdy Man” which like.....FINE.........). I must also shout out Cassidy who went "all for Paul [Simon]" and gave me a ten-point boost in our Solo round. Winning felt glorious, but I have to give credit to my co-champions Claire and Allison, who had the same amount of points but somehow ranked lower. The secret to Music League is to go with your gut while also keeping your friends' and friends' of friends esoteric music taste at the forefront of your mind....a little pandering never hurt anybody!
Thank you for reading! And thank you to my league mates for such a fun time! I’ll be back on Sunday with my thoughts on Tenet.
RAFTM = Reader and Friend to Me; credit to Rachel Tashjian
I understand that some of y’all will never understand and that’s YOUR LOSS!
You have to listen to this immediately because it’s as insane as it sounds.
If you, like everyone else, are wondering what TV show this was in, I am embarrassed to say that it was Famous in Love, a Freeform show starring Bella Thorne that no has seen.
Jerryan ended up winning our league but more on that later!
Note from Allison re: those scare quotes around “journalist”: “feels fake considering that I work for a fake website but allegedly that is what I am…”
With the utmost respect, she needs the streams!
perfect issue! rhythm is our lives!!!!!! <3
Thomas Brodie-Sangster <3