The game show is on the rise, according to my coworker and cultural analyst Kate Dries, and far be it from Christina Aguilera to stay off that train. This year, the singer will executive-produce a Spike TV game show called Tracks, in which contestants will be required to name a song based solely on hearing its bassline, or its drum fills, or its guitar riffs, or—if it’s a Christina Aguilera song—its proliferation of vocal melisma wailing up and down the treble clef.
Christina Aguilera is excited! Because, as she’s quoted in Deadline, “Having finely tuned my ear for music over the years, I thought it would be fun to test other folks and see if they can identify a track—with a twist—since contestants will have to focus on a single component of a song.”
This brings to mind two songs. The first is the ubiquitous, inevitable bassline from White Stripes’s “Seven Nation Army,” which is sung in every mass gathering of stupid humans from sporting events to big-ticket corporate music festivals. The first Tracks contestant who does not recognize “Seven Nation Army” will be sacrificed atop a pyramid with an ancient stone dagger for the crime of being un-American.
The second song that comes to mind is the most beautiful a cappella song in the history of the universe, the gospel rendition of Monica’s “Sideline Ho” without backing tracks.
Hopefully these fools attempting to win prizes and music nerd credibility on Tracks are ready to throw down with the adults because while it is a game, it’s seriously not a game.
Now please enjoy re-watching Christina Aguilera’s second-wave-style feminist anthem “Can’t Hold Us Down.”