MUSIC LEAGUE - a way to gamify your music taste

MUSIC LEAGUE IS A FUN GAME WHERE EVERY ROUND YOU PICK OUT SONGS BASED ON A THEME
THEN A PLAYLIST IS CREATED
THEN YOU VOTE ON THE SONGS VIA UPVOTES AND DOWNVOTES

WHO WANTS TO PLAY MUSIC LEAGUE?

I'll start a ILX league with a basic 5 round game - winners will get to pick the theme of the rounds in the next game.

You can play on mobile or web.

JOIN HERE https://app.musicleague.com/l/ec1767aa53a34d73aa8cbd4f9c5e8aa1/

Looks interesting but it seems you need spotify to sign up and I'm not going to use spotify, sorry.

Samwell - What What In The Butt

exactly! i dont pay for spotify and i still play

The Roches - Hammond Song (Arthur Baker "Downtown" rmx)

lol one of my besties plays this, she is always pissed of at the rest of the comparatively mainstream tastes in her group

3 players so far woo!

Yeah I’m in. Sounds fun.

aight i'll do it

we have 4!!!

SIX!!!

I HAVE JOINED THUS

THIS

Oh I’m so happy

Im the one with the Steve Perry avatar

this sounds awesome, I'm in

i have entered the building

good you're the one I wanna beat

I definitely won't be this first round though lol

10! WE HAVE A LEAGUE PEOPLE!

like a maniac I have my choices set up for the next rounds too

It took me a while to work out how to submit my votes. It looks like you're given an allocation of 10 plus points and 2 minus points, which you can distribute amongst the songs however you want, i.e. you can give a song more than 1 plus/minus points, or you can leave a song on 0 points.

Yah I can change that I’d people want that’s just how my other leagues are

It's good this way!

The fact that you can give out negative points is gonna tank my chances at ever winning this thing

Jumped aboard too late for Round 1, but I'll be able to play in Round 2.

The chat and comments make for the best part of the leagues. Plus non-algorithmic music discoveries.

Oof should have disabled downvotes. I feel bad downvoting other people’s noms and there’s nothing I think even warrants them in this round.

Someone less lazy than me should transcribe the tracklists from the playlists in here for future reference.

So we have to give two downvotes and also can't give more than three upvotes to any one song? Is that right?

No more than 3*

I like downvotes because I’m a hater

If only the White Mountain Cooler jingle from 1986 was on Spotify. Damn thing has a "You Give Love A Bad Name"-style chorus intro, a verse, a pre-chorus, and another chorus, all in 30 seconds!? I guess that means that their next commercial was their "New Jersey"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1XlpbUVaUY

I’m lolling a little at the blurb that’s longer than the song it’s describing

VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE

Oh it’s a relief to see my song climb the standings as more votes go in lol

lol, this is not the experience I am having

I didn't get last place so that's nice

One voter remains. What could possibly be riding on it?

looks like my song is the one people are the most indifferent to, that's something at least

Wow! ILX hates weird Paul!

I thought it was ok, it was just not as good as all the other songs, so I had to downvote it per the rules of this game

Love it

(The hater energy)

Just voted - maybe I needed at least 900 more gecs

Very interested in the tracklist for round 2! Love grooving.

I’m gonna suck so bad at round 3 I don’t know any britpop music. I don’t even know what can be considered as Britpop besides the obvious things. Are the Stone Roses britpop? Is early The Verve allowed?

I'm not even sure I know what a groove is so I might sit the next one out for fear of making an embarrassing mistake.

Thanks to the first round for "Final Day" which I did not know and which has been haunting my brain for the last few days.

This round made me realize that the short songs I respond to most are the ones where the song itself is in some way about not quite having enough time. Also, I think, why I have always responded more strongly to the Stones cover of "Good Times" than to the Sam Cooke original: the Stones version is shorter, under two minutes, and I think that's one reason it's always given me a more intense feeling of a fleeting golden moment that will not be repeated.

so no one else is waking up every morning with "Bart and Marge, they are in charge" stuck in their head?

Oh you seriously need to get on the Colossal Youth album. It sits on its own plane of existence.

Xpost to lily

And Lily: I think of groovy music as music with an insistent rhythm that makes you feel like bobbin your head, your body, your mind. don’t overthink it, just groove.

Sorry kurt (//0~~0//) xps

Do we have to allocate all our votes? As did feel bad down voting

The comments are the best. The cattier the better AFAIC.

I don’t like doing hateful comments to other people’s tracks but oddly enough I love reading hateful comments towards my own submissions. I sometimes want to submit songs that I love, but I know will stir feathers just to read the reactions.

I felt compelled to downvote one of my favorite songs on the list for catty reasons, it rules

kind of a Whose Line is it Anyway vibe to the scoring here, I'd be proud to win but there's no shame in losing

We really should have a round of “songs that makes you nauseous” just to see who submits the worst one. Comments would be spicy.

And it would be an incentive to write the most agressive comments.

one of the songs on the Xmas playlist gives me the absolute fear, will leave you in suspense as to which one.

I hope to fuck it’s “Skating.”

My relationship with ACBX (A Charlie Brown Xmas) is getting more complicated over time — a weird mix of nostalgia, rejection of nostalgia on principle, appreciation for the thing in itself, detestation of children singing, overexposure, appreciation for the thing being less rebarbative than 99% of Xmas music, resentment of the commitments of the holiday season, complicated emotions around Xmas itself v tangled up in childhood memories, irritation that the simple pleasures of the thing in itself are tainted by all these external factors, shut up you twat can’t you just put all that aside and just enjoy something at face value for once in your overthinking life, etc.

here comes the cheer again, oh yeah
a brand new year again

I made up for not putting “Knockin Boots for Christmas” into our Christmas round by putting it into the Christmas round for the “no rap” league

I chose Eazy-E's "Merry Muthafuckin' Xmas' for that, will confess that I haven't actually heard it.

I also put in “Christmas Rappin” by Kurtis Blow because someone beat me to it”Christmas in Hollis”, lol

I’m working a little harder on my cringey comments this round, (inspired by Kurt and Lavator’s posts) I should have my votes in tonight

I think ML should have an option for delayed round starts — like 24 hours between the results of one round and selecting songs for the next. Would encourage conversation about the previous round and the results. As it is, everyone’s brain energy quickly shifts to the new round & the old one gets relatively neglected. And of course discussing the current round’s songs before voting ends is kind of bad form.

yeah it does all get a bit hectic, maybe enforcing a longer wait even if everyone has picked their tracks would do the job?

"I think ML should have an option for delayed round starts — like 24 hours between the results of one round and selecting songs for the next."

yes yes yes massively otm

I think because we're ahead of schedule, once the final two cast their Xmas votes we'll have something like six days to submit the next round's songs

OK, Xmas votes are in, and I will be refusing to post a relaxing song for the full four days, so we'll have ample time to discuss the results.

My first top 3 finish. Ho ho ho

Yeesh tough crowd lol

I’ve been feeling extra grinchy this week - work kicking my ass, ready for a break, Xmas isn’t really that much of a break because of lots of forced togetherness — and my relationship with Xmas music is fraught at the best of times. So I think I was coming down harder on the playlist than normal.

I was genuinely surprised at the landslide winner. Not because it's bad or anything but as a Brit I didn't realise how big an impact Charlie Brown's Christmas obviously has Stateside. I don't think I've ever seen it and don't know many people this side of the pond who have.

Trying to think what the UK version would be - maybe The Snowman? Pretty sure that Aled Jones would *not" have won that round though

Ha, I actually entered Walking in the Air in the Christmas music league (in the "from a Xmas TV/film" round). It came close to bottom

Charlie Brown was big here in the UK; we even had the TV show, but yeah, it's weird that the Christmas show is barely known. Was it ever shown? Some TV executive's decision holding a nation's collective Christmas memory in their hands

I don’t have any great attachment to A Charlie Brown Christmas but it was just really nice to hear in the context of the playlist. My sentimental attachment is to this album of Pete Seeger playing Christmas carols - I think this is a pretty wonderful song and maybe it would have been a little more popular than “Must Be Santa”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yOAvuE9SF8

As the submitter of the Charlie Brown song, I can tell you I have never seen the special! It’s just an album I really love. For those who aren’t that familiar with it, several — I think even the majority — of the songs are traditional Christmas songs, just done in the same tasteful piano trio arrangement. But the few originals that are created by Guaraldi are pretty much all stone cold classics. He ended up having a long and fruitful relationship with the Peanuts empire, soundtracking many specials. Lots of nice music in there. Actually not sure if Christmas was the first or what.

This video, which was recently posted on the Charlie Brown Christmas thread, is pretty interesting. It gives a history of the album and the tv special:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiTZWV_rdeU
Apparently Dave Brubeck was their first choice, but he turned them down.

This might be overstatement but it has always felt to me that A Charlie Brown Christmas is as impactful to American culture as the Super Bowl. It’s definitely an integral part of the Christmas experience along with The Grinch and the Rankin/Bass specials.

i cant believe no one liked tiny tim tellin his little story - i just read tiny's bio so im a bit biased by his "quirkiness"

I liked him telling his story! I hadn’t looked at the title of the song so I was listening going “what could he possibly have done that would be so offensive” so when the song started, my “oh no” was a genuine real-time reaction.

I didn’t take points off because it is a song tied to Christmas but WOW

I am fine with Tiny Tim on the whole, enjoyed the 500 Songs episode on him, but I just don't want bad AIDS jokes on my Xmas playlist.

yah i guess that hasnt aged well

Started poorly, got worse towards the middle, and the less said about the end the better. As they say.

I've not rly heard the Charlie Brown Xmas stuff so it is without prejudice that I can say Skating completely owns

What do I relax to ffs

I also do not do much relaxing, however I have songs I can play in my head to put myself in a meditative state, so I'll go for one of those.

I listen to so much relaxing music, it’s a sickness

Spoiler alert: brimstead is going to submit “Down with the Sickness”

loool

Last day to get your submissions in

Can any of y'all UK residents explain Shakin' Stevens to me? Of the first 4 bars we checked out in Edinburgh, 3 played Christmassy songs by him (my phone has a 'perma Shazam' setting that IDs every song it hears). I am assuming he's not Sufyan's older bro

Rock n Roll revivalist guy from Wales who was hugely successful on the uk charts in the 1980s, was still considered important enough in 2021 that the BBC ran a new article about him getting his covid vax: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-55980009

He's a Welsh Elvis impersonator and the best-selling singles artist of the 80s in the UK, more than Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna, anyone else you can think of. Can I explain why he was quite so popular? No.

What? Is that true? I can only think of one of his hits

OK three

28 top 40 hits, including 14 top 10 hits, including 4 number ones (This Ole House, Green Door, Oh Julie, Merry Christmas Everyone), in the eighties.

Yes been looking into it. Still suspicious it might be a factoid but if it's true I guess it's in large part from sheer volume of releases

I mean, his highest position in the chart of the 80s is no 40

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_singles_of_the_1980s_in_the_United_Kingdom

Best selling UK artist I could definitely believe

yeah it's a sheer numbers thing, if you have a top 200 he will have quite a few more I think, middle-market solid sellers consistently through the decade, then as soon as 1990 arrives he goes off a cliff. whereas most of the big names were only popular for half the decade.