THE GAMES ARE LIVE
(4) Ke$ha, TiK ToK vs (2) Nelly, Hot in Herre
(14) Amerie, 1 Thing vs (13) Electric Six, Danger! High Voltage
By now you know what to do, we’re guessing. You have until 9am 3/25 to read, listen, and vote. You
Waiting in the Final Four (Wednesday)
it’s (10) LCD Soundsystem, All My Friends and (3) Destiny's Child, Bootylicious.
Who will join them? For sure we’ll see a 14- or a 13-seed, and for sure we’ll see a 4- and a 2-. It’s been a strange tournament this year, but then all of these Xness tournaments are.
Based on vote totals so far, it’d be hard to bet against Amerie and LCD, but there’s a reason we play the games, and typically voters coalesce behind a song and essay they haven’t voted for yet as the tournament rolls on. There are like 900 people on this email list, enough to swing any game, not even to get into the folks who may not be otherwise paying attn to this official means of communication.
Who knew Electric Six OR Amerie would make it this far? Who had Destiny’s Child taking down Beyoncé last week? And LCD Soundsystem’s beloved, sure, but we’re chalking up their success (and Nelly’s) to the great essays by Kate Carmody and Katie Moulton.
No song goes this deep in the tournament without a great essay paired with it, illuminating its many layers, and this year’s no different.
What is different is how many first-time Xness players we have this deep: returning readers and voters probably recognize Katie Moulton who’s gone deep in Xnesses before but has yet to win a ring (yes the winner receives an actual March Xness championship ring!). Xness old heads will remember Moulton’s hilarious takedown of the Bulletboys’ “Smooth Up in Ya” in March Shredness. By no means was she advocating for the song, but the band took up their spoiler role and made it as deep as the Sweet 16 before going down to Lita Ford 495-493 on a buzzer beater in one of that year’s tournament’s most epic games.
She’s shown up to play ever since, including taking out Selection Committee member Ander Monson this year in the first round, and looks sharp af so far.
The other three Elite 8 players today are all first-time March Xness players, so shout out to Sejal Shah, J. Nicholas Geist (who wrote a great extracurricular video essay last year on the essential whiteness of one-hit wonders), and pinch-hitter Andrea Panzeca. And both essayists on the other side of the bracket waiting in the Final Four are first-timers: Kate Carmody and Avery Ferin. That’s a lot of great talent showing up hard in their first tournaments! Big props to all y’all.
Let’s get our game on!
The Official March Danceness Selection Committee (Ander & Megan)