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LEAGUE 23
118
Submissions
12
Players
708
Total Points
League Champion
jsexe86
total points
★ Highest Scoring Song
13
points
PITCHFORK
Best New Champion: jsexe (86 pts)
A league that understood what it wanted to be — even if it occasionally confused accessibility for ambition.
By Cassandra Noel · Best New League: 7.5
League 23 arrives at a moment when competitive curation has perhaps overcorrected toward the legible. jsexe's victory — built on 86 points across 5 rounds — feels less like a breakthrough than a confirmation: the market, as ever, rewards the comprehensible. A 17-point margin sealed the result.
"The Killing Moon" by Echo & the Bunnymen — submitted by jsexe, accruing 13 points — is the league's defining artifact. It does what it does without apology. Whether that constitutes a virtue is a question the voters answered clearly, if not always convincingly.
"I can get behind this Godspeed meets Built to Spill sound"
jsexe on The Moon Is Down - Remastered by Explosions In The Sky · Jason's Theme - Song About the Moon
The "Super's Theme - Gingers Snappin" round produced the league's most instructive moment: Super's selection of "Cornflake Girl" by Tori Amos demonstrated the tension between accessibility and taste that defined the season. "Shannon's Theme - duh wish I had used that song instead" went to Eric with "Anticipation" by Carly Simon (11 pts). And for "Jason's Theme - Song About the Moon" went to jsexe with "The Killing Moon" by Echo & the Bunnymen (13 pts).
The field remained largely consistent — a stability that cuts both ways.
new wave and jangle pop defined the mood of this league. The 1990s cast a long shadow over the playlist. There is something telling in the gravitational pull toward 1990s. Not wrong, exactly. Just revealing.
League 23: 7.3. Recommended, with reservations. League 24 will, presumably, tell us something we didn't already know.