Thank you!! Yours too, for me.

Youths, may I recommend you look up how the subprime mortgage crisis happened? Just, you know, for science

Huge congrats!!

Good luck @mfitejohnson.bsky.social!

This will be my hardest vote yet. I so loved both of your essays.

"Back before anyone had cell phones, we’d drive with the windows down, shouting to other kids as we passed, pulling up to packs of cars idling at the Cenex, trying to find something—anything—to do. Something—anything—to be, other than what we were." I love this essay and its very 90s sadness.

It's Axl Rose holding a skull, colorized because the internet is perverse, with some Guns N' Roses imagery and "GN'R VOTE SWEET SIXTEEN" across the top and ALAS POOR YORICK! exclamation point unfurling across it.

My sweet husband who is not on Bluesky made this March Sadness promo image for me. Read, listen, and vote in the Sweet Sixteen! marchxness.com#/sweet16-gnr...

Hahaha awww thank you! Good luck!

I feel great about making it as far as I did with a song that isn't exactly sad by an artist I have complicated feelings about. Huge Congrats to Cicily Bennion and @jamcharlesworth.bsky.social: I adored the sadness in both of your essays and will be rooting for you.

March Sadness 90s Edition A yearly March Madness-style tournament of essays about songs we love (and occasionally loathe)

@lelascottmacneil.bsky.social wrote a heartbreaking essay about hearing her toxic mother's words come out of heroine Alanis Morissette's mouth. I also want to run from a "highly sensitive empath"! That and the song feel more scary slash haunting to me, though YMMV. marchxness.com#/sweet16-col...

"Uninvited" still seems more menacing or bitter than sad—Alanis's strengths! Grateful to @lelascottmacneil.bsky.social for her excellent @marchxness.bsky.social essay & the reminder of how loopy this song is: compellingly convoluted lyrics, a whole-ass orchestra, very sparing tabla (?) etc. Wild!

Awww thank you!! And congrats on your big win yesterday!

Thank you and back at you!!

March Sadness 90s Edition A yearly March Madness-style tournament of essays about songs we love (and occasionally loathe)

My Alanis @marchxness.bsky.social essay is going up against
@jamcharlesworth.bsky.social's heartbreaking essay about Collective Soul in the Sweet 16 today. Both songs are arguably much sadder when taken with the essays. Which one will win? Only you can decide!
marchxness.com#/sweet16-col...

I love Ani and I really loved your essay about this song.

Lisa Kudrow Is Back—Again Twenty two years after the end of “Friends,” the actress returns with a new installment of “The Comeback.”

Twenty two years after the end of “Friends,” Lisa Kudrow returns with a new installment of “The Comeback.” www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

I agree! Both excellent and very sad in different ways.

"Pre-emptive grief creates a void, and if DiFranco understands one thing, it’s how to manipulate voids."

Your essay was brilliantly sad. And I loved all the literal crows.

March Sadness 90s Edition A yearly March Madness-style tournament of essays about songs we love (and occasionally loathe)

"When I was young, I swam in the deep end of sadness. I luxuriated in those murky waters, and whatever might dwell in their depths."
@mlfaliveno.bsky.social's @marchxness.bsky.social essay brought me back into the sad 90s teenager I used to be, and gets my vote.
marchxness.com#/2ndround-my...

Thank you!!

You too!

I've been a huge March Xness fangirl for the better part of a decade and this is my first official tourney essay—getting to the Sweet 16 is thrilling! Thank you to everyone who read and voted. Rage can be sadness too.

This Collective Soul vs. Des'ree @marchxness.bsky.social matchup is impossible. "The World I Know" and Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet are both PEAK '90s sadness. HELP.

March Sadness 90s Edition A yearly March Madness-style tournament of essays about songs we love (and occasionally loathe)

I'm not voting against Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me," a top shelf weeper, at least not yet, and I like Casey's essay a lot. Rooting for it here, but Lela makes a strong case for a surprising Alanis song:

marchxness.com#/2ndround-mo...

!!!!

“I turn on one track repeat, dig my nails into my palms, let myself dissolve. Eventually I don’t exist outside of this song, this tender cave of feeling. “ I mean, these lines alone are such a gut punch, it seems impossible to vote otherwise.

I felt this essay so hard

March Sadness 90s Edition A yearly March Madness-style tournament of essays about songs we love (and occasionally loathe)

90s sadness has a particular flavor and tint. Grateful to be so filled with it from all these gloriously sad March Sadness essays. marchxness.com

March Sadness 90s Edition A yearly March Madness-style tournament of essays about songs we love (and occasionally loathe)

Raitt's sad. But, she said, in dramatic, I'm voting for the more wrenching @marchxness.bsky.social essay.

@lelascottmacneil.bsky.social & a complicated Alanis: "I told myself I needed nothing, but it wasn’t true & I’m grateful I don’t listen to that voice anymore." marchxness.com#/2ndround-mo...