In 2016, writers Ander Monson and Megan Campbell created a music-themed match during which sixty-four songs and their corresponding essays have been pitted towards one another in successive brackets till there was a single winner. They began with March Unhappiness (Unhappy 90s Indie Songs), producing the essays themselves at first, then inviting others to take part within the competitors.

12 months by yr, the match roared by means of March Fadness (One Hit Wonders of the 90s), March Shredness (Hair Metallic bands), March Vladness (the Goth Bracket), March Badness (Unhealthy Hits of the 70s and 80s), March Plaidness (Grunge), March Faxness (Cowl Tunes), March Fadness redux (One Hit Wonders of the 80’s) and March Danceness (Dance Hits of the 90s). What Monson and Campbell admittedly “began as a joke” shortly grew to become such a wildly fashionable contest {that a} lottery needed to be applied to handle the throngs of wannabe rivals.

Hit Repeat Till I Hate Music: The March Xness Anthology (Cut up/Lip; March 2026) is a group of forty profitable music essays from forty-two writers (as two of the essays are tandem written), with 5 essays per every of the e book’s eight chapters that correspond to the eight themed tournaments listed above. The anthology’s title borrows from Laura C.J. Owen’s sensible essay titled “Don’t Inform My Coronary heart,” which is included within the March Fadness chapter:

Components of me could be trusted, the music suggests: my eyes, my lips, my arms, my legs. However then, some components of me simply can’t bear to listen to the reality: my mind, my ol’ achy breaky coronary heart. Most of me is okay: components of me aren’t. Do I contradict myself? Sings Billy Ray Cyrus: I contradict myself. I’m massive, I include multitudes. MULLET-itudes if you’ll . . . . ‘Achy Breaky Coronary heart’ at all times made me consider the web Awkward Yeti cartoons during which the sensible-but-neurotic Mind is in fixed odd-couple battle with the whimsical, weak Coronary heart. ‘I like this music,’ Coronary heart instructs Mind, ‘Play it till I hate music.’ 

This anthology showcases the easiest writing about the easiest songs — and the very mad, unhappy, and unhealthy songs — that make up the distinctive and irreplaceable soundtrack to our lives. The essays vary in high quality from the merely excellent to the actually transcendent, even life altering. The essays are haunting, indelible; they’re themselves unforgettable songs, dramatic prose performances with 1000’s of lyrics that convey and complement all of the myriad feelings and experiences embedded in a music.

Reviewing this anthology was a problem I needed to settle for as a result of the essays promised to highlight what’s for me the essential interrelationship between music and writing, the 2 intertwined influences which have dominated my life like a dwelling caduceus. The essays delivered far past my expectations. I used to be delighted to find how profoundly and satisfyingly immersive March Xness was; how convincingly and eloquently the essays proved {that a} single music can actually change the lifetime of the listener . . . for higher or worse.

I discover that music, like different joys in life — love, luck, and laughter come readily to thoughts — appears to ask analyses in direct proportion to the very limitations inherent in doing so; that’s to say, the extra you attempt to clarify intellectually, the much less you admire or perceive emotionally. A music’s enchantment (or lack thereof) is actually a thriller, working its magic (or poison) deeply throughout the shadows of the soul and infrequently within the bewildering guise of blended metaphors and a number of meanings: A music generally is a burning spear thrust by means of your coronary heart that helps you reside; a music generally is a worm crawling in your ear that turns right into a butterfly or a badger, or a nightmarish hybrid of each. The important thing to the thriller appears to be context: the place you have been and what was occurring in your life when The Music took maintain of you. As Kathleen Rooney explains this method in her essay on Terry Jacks’ “Seasons within the Solar” present in March Badness:

A rhetorical method of which I’m particularly fond is to go super-deep in my evaluation of one thing that might doubtlessly be extraordinarily shallow. It’s straightforward to dispense a fast opinion a couple of piece of artwork: “I prefer it,” or “I dislike it”; “that factor’s good,” or “that factor sucks.” Far tougher, however extra rewarding, is to dig approach down into how a given piece operates and the circumstances surrounding mentioned piece’s creation: the folks, the time, and the place chargeable for a piece’s existence.”

All of the forty essays on this anthology present such a contextual key by means of historic analysis and private backstory. Every essay makes an attempt to unlock the thriller of The Music residing inside each the musician and the essayist. In so doing, the thriller of The Music could be unlocked throughout the reader, as nicely.  It’s exactly this poignant mix of criticism and memoir that makes these essays so compelling, and that makes March Xness so irresistible.

Out of solidarity with the extra confessionary elements of March Xness, I’ll admit my prejudice in favor of the March Badness essays. This subcollection was my favourite for a number of causes, all of them shamelessly subjective. For starters, I discovered the March Badness essays to be as infectious as COVID, as humorous as an orangutan with hiccups, and as addictive as popping bubble wrap.

On a deeper dive into my druthers, I discovered that reexamining my relationship with shitty songs from the 70s and 80s was easy, virtually reflexive and instinctual, like blinking at sudden loud noises or checking the coin returns of merchandising machines. My March Badness partisanship didn’t demand that I blowtorch my previous to put naked the smoldering incongruities of my psyche — a meditative self-immolation, if you’ll, required by and celebrated within the different themed tournaments I used to be drawn to love Goth and Grunge. Quite, with March Badness, I solely needed to bear in mind . . . after which sit again and skim with jaw dropped in awe of the dazzling, multilayered analyses that mixed private animus, cultural anthropology, and music historical past to decode the worst songs of all time:

Elena Passarello, on “Muskrat Love” by Captain and Tenille: 

[Toni Tennille] says she first heard ‘Muskrat Love’ within the automotive on the way in which to a nightclub gig, a couple of yr earlier than she and Captain Daryl have been found. Given the timeline, they most likely heard the band America’s 1973 cowl of Willis Alan Ramsey’s music. This was each the primary recording re-named ‘Muskrat Love’ and the primary to obtain any actual radio airplay. Weirdly, singer Lani Corridor recorded a soporific tackle the music, renamed ‘Solar Down,’ the yr earlier than, on the label that ultimately signed Captain and Tennille. ‘Solar Down’ has the identical tune as ‘Muskrat Love,’ however makes use of new lyrics that omit the Susie and Sam storyline, and I totally reject this heinous act of muskrat erasure.

Not like Lani Corridor, the band America weren’t about to take away the titular muskrats; their model retains all of Ramsey’s rodent lyrics intact. That is unsurprising, since America’s first two albums made notable contributions to the canon of animalian tender rock. Keep in mind that one music in regards to the ‘alligator lizards within the air’ (how did they stand up there? Did anyone toss them)? And that different music in regards to the horse with no identify, which options crackerjack naturalist observations like ‘there have been crops and birds and rocks and issues?’

Martin Seay, on Chuck Berry’s “My Ding-a-Ling,” Berry’s solely number-one hit:

What’s most annoying about Berry is the inescapable suggestion that these two main traits—virtuosic pied piper of America’s youth, and sexually compulsive predator—can’t be disentangled: that his genius can’t be simply extricated from his unhealthy conduct, that the latter infests the previous to its core. A part of the damaging, faintly illicit thrill of Berry’s finest music comes from the impression of those tendencies circling one another, sparks arcing by means of the hole between them, attaining an unstable equilibrium. And a part of what makes ‘My Ding-a-Ling’ so terrible comes from the impression of this equilibrium collapsing, simply completely exhibiting its ass. . . . What’s upsetting about ‘My Ding-a-Ling’ . . . is the truth that it was rewarded so abundantly. Not even that, it’s the truth that it was rewarded so abundantly when it was the worst factor Berry ever recorded, whereas the very best issues Berry ever recorded are among the many finest issues anyone ever recorded.

In closing, howsoever besotted I’m with beautiful essays about horrible tunes, I discovered probably the most succinct and considerate summation of March Xness’ influence on writers and readers, alike, in Cameron Carr’s gorgeous essay (discovered within the March Fadness’ One Hit Wonders of the 80s chapter) titled “At The Crack of a Whip,” which explores the band Devo’s influences and legacy:

If writing about music is a contest, then the opponent is what’s misplaced between the expertise and the writing down. The most effective music writing—or possibly any writing—does greater than inform what’s there: it provides form to what’s misplaced.