This spring, while the Frozen Four and March Madness brackets were taking over the campus consciousness, alumnus JJ Bersch (MA’16, PhD’22) was distracted by a very different kind of competition.
Bersch, who now works as a researcher for the popular film podcast Blank Check, was wrapping up another season administering his Music League, a chance for players to compete to see who has the best musical library and the keenest (and cleverest) musical knowledge. Users play by submitting songs to a pool based on a specific theme and then voting for the entries they think most closely hit the mark. Think of it like “Apples to Apples” for music listeners. From concrete themes like “Title Track” and “Breakup Songs” to more abstract ideas like “Yoga Studio” and “Sunset,” the group has covered every corner of the musical world.
The league, which started in 2023 shortly after Bersch completed his graduate work at UW, is special because its 16 players are a collage of current and former members of the Department of Communication Arts.
After Bersch picks a theme, the players use an app to submit songs to a playlist which is then generated on Sunday. They then have five days to listen to submissions and vote. Each “season” lasts eight rounds, after which a winner is declared. In the years since it started, there have been more than 130 rounds.
Bersch keeps a sprawling spreadsheet of every one of the more than 2,000 songs that have been submitted. After all, the chances aren’t high that Iggy Pop’s “Nightclubbing” and Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” will ever be included together on the same playlist again (the theme was “Going Solo”).
The longevity of the league has forced him to get creative with the themes, including “Music League All-Stars,” a round in which players submitted songs by artists whose music had already been used multiple times – MF DOOM, the British-American rapper, is a universal favorite for this category.
Some of the players’ picks are predictable — each week brings lots of American indie rock and R&B — but the group isn’t without some eyebrow-raising curveballs.
“We have always joked that if you just need points, you hit the ‘Brazil’ button, submit a Brazilian song, and it’s going to do well,” laughs Bersch. “And it truly does, all the time.”
According to Bersch, the league’s best playlist was themed “Space” and featured the song, “Space Shuttle Ride” by Bumblebee Unlimited, an electronic disco song from 1979 that still stands out when he looks back.
What started as a fun pastime has become an unwavering point of valuable connection.
“It’s just formed these friendships that are so solid,” explains Bersch. “These people are in my life on a weekly basis. Because of this, I talk to them even more than friends that I see in real life each week.”
Many of their relationships are as unexpected as they are strong. Jeremy Morris, a professor of communication arts, has joined Bersch at concerts on various occasions thanks to their Music League bond. Other members of the League include Alyxandra Vesey (PhD’16), Nick Marx (’03, PhD’12), Evan Elkins (PhD’15), Brian Fauteux, Pauline Lampert (MA’19, PhD’25) and Zachary Zahos (MA’18, PhD’24).
Bersch points out that some of the league members are UW alumni whose tenures in Madison never overlapped. Now, they’re scattered across the country. As a result, their friendships are even more untraditional: They’ve never met in person but have yearslong bonds based only in music.
“You’ll open the playlist, and it’ll be anonymized until the voting is complete, but really you can open the playlist and just tell which song is from who,” he explains. “There are these unique connections between us. You look at it and you know these people would be close friends if they were in the same space.”