Here is your Soundtrack for 2026
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I'll probably skim them later tonight or tomorrow but it is safe to say that this old man from the Midwest doesn't know who 95% (or more) of these artists are. Maybe, like in the Show 25 I can find 10 or 12 bearable tracks in order to not turn off the music completely.
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I always turn the music off first thing and just put spotify on my xbox.
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Another year of trash music. It gets worse every year.
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Does anybody really care about this anymore ?
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We all know its going to be unknown songs. There will probably be a few bangers and a few garbage songs just like every year
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Last year was decent. Although what happened to James Brown? I took two months off to play Madden and came back and it’s gone?
I’ve seen Marcus King live, he’s decent but the rest I am not familiar with at this point outside of the obvious names. I do like them promoting musicians that aren’t pop darlings.
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@TheBigPapa55_PSN said in Here is your Soundtrack for 2026:
Does anybody really care about this anymore ?
Absolutely, when they used to actually license good music—rock, rap, hip hop, alt-rock—the Show soundtracks from '06–'13 had something for literally everyone.
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Here are my thoughts (that nobody asked for) on the first 25 tracks I sampled.
I came out with
- 20 No votes
- 3 Maybe votes (these are very borderline)
- 2 Yes votes
MLB The Show 26 – Soundtrack Notes (so far) | Track | Notes | Verdict | | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- | --------- | | 100 Horses (Geese) | I liked the vibe of it until the vocals started | No | | 360 (feat. Barny Fletcher) (Benni Ola) | Rap/hip hop | No | | Ain’t Nothin’ Finer (Elevator Jay) | Rap | No | | all good (Angelo Mota) | Rap | No | | All The Way (feat. Bailey Zimmerman) (BigXthaPlug, Bailey Zimmerman) | Twangy country/rap | No | | Always On My Mind (Been Stellar) | Not rap but I did not like it | No | | Apple Juice (Teddy Swims) | First decent track | Maybe | | back outside (Earl Hondo, Frsh Waters) | Rap | No | | Bad News (Aaron Frazer) | Like the music — dislike the falsetto-style vocal | No | | Baptized in Collard Greens (Dear Silas) | Rap | No | | BOOKER T (Bad Bunny) | Spanish rap? | No | | Champion (Buju Banton) | WTF? | No | | Clear Black Nights (feat. Raekwon & Ghostface Killah) (Mobb Deep) | Rap | No | | Day In The Sun (Gettin’ wit U) (feat. Q-Tip & Yummy) (De La Soul) | Started out not rap but added rap in the middle | No | | DEGENERE (Myke Towers, benny blanco) | Samples (steals the hook) from Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner | No | | Does Anybody Know (Jesse Roper) | A good laid-back rock track | Yes | | En Vogue (Will Hill) | Rap (explicit lyrics right out of the gate) | No | | Handsome (Dave East) | Rap (more explicit lyrics) | No | | High No More (Hajaj) | Kind of old-school R&B vibe — not bad | Maybe | | Honky Tonk Hell (Marcus King) | Kind of crossover rock/country | Yes | | How Long Do I Have to Wait for You? (Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings) | Kind of old-school R&B | Maybe | | hyogo (Blvck Svm) | Rap | No | | If I Got It (Your Love Brought It) (Aaron Frazer) | Second track by Aaron — still don’t like the vocals | No | | In The Air (The Next Movement) | Rap | No | | La Plena - W Sound 05 (Beéle, Westcol, Ovy On The Drums) | Spanish, with autotune | No thanks | -
this old man from the Midwest doesn't know who 95% (or more) of these artists are.
This old man from New England thought "oh, I'll know more of these than the old man from the Midwest".
Nope. Ooffff.
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Thoughts on the second half
Maybe I was a little more generous than last night.
- Yes: 5
- No: 15
- Maybe: 0
| Track | Notes | Verdict | | --------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------- | ------- | | La Samaria (Bomba Estéreo, Carlos Vives) | Didn't like this one — in Spanish | No | | Lights on Long Island (Driveways) | Didn't like this one | No | | Morning in America (Durand Jones & The Indications) | R&B — I liked this one | Yes | | Morning Sun (Otis Kane) | Another R&B — this was decent too | Yes | | My Life Is Real (Nas, DJ Premier) | Rap | No | | Mystical Magical (Benson Boone) | Ok — but not my style | No | | Ohtani (Eladio Carrion) | Spanish/rap?/autotune? | No | | Pain and Misery (The Teskey Brothers) | I like this one | Yes | | Phone Numbers (Dominic Fike, Kenny Beats) | Rap? | No | | Planté Bandera (Tommy Olivencia y Su Orquesta, Chamaco Ramirez) | Salsa is not my thing | No | | Pull Like a Dog (The Scratch) | Noise | No | | Rome (Dojo Cuts) | R&B with a nice female vocal | Yes | | Take Your Aim (Rocket) | Rock but not really my style | No | | The False Economy (Soulwax) | Dislike the vintage synth beat | No | | To Build Something (Malted Milk) | Pretty good | Yes | | Too Much (Russ) | Rap — explicit lyrics | No | | Tú Con Él (Rauw Alejandro) | Another salsa track? | No | | Wheelz of Steel (Outkast) | Rap | No | | When I B On Tha Mic (Rakim) | Rap — explicit lyrics | No | | White Lighter (Jean Dawson) | It didn't grab me | No | -
Final thoughts now after sampling all of the tunes. Unlike last year there are not enough tracks I truly like that I will leave them on. I said Yes to 7 out of 45 tracks and that may have been generous. That would mean they will cycle too quickly and I will burn out on them. So all music is getting shut off this year.
Maybe SDS has demographic data on their audience, but I find it hard to believe that the preponderance of Rap suits the overall baseball demographic.
And I said it last year and I will say it this year, I still do not understand their desire or need to choose tracks with explicit lyrics for a game that is rated E for Everyone. I know they choose the censored versions of these tracks but it still seems like a odd choice to choose songs that drop the F bomb in the second line of the track. Even if you are a fan of these artists do you really want to listen to censored versions of the tracks.
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I will be running Amazon Music with my own playlists all year. I’m not a fan of the rap overload that appears here. I will give it a week or so, but I’m taking the 13th off of work to dive into the game uninterrupted all day and will be surprised if I still have the jukebox on by 5pm that day.
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Afghan Whigs ''House of I'' is mentioned being on the soundtrack in the official blog but elsewhere its not listed and on top of that, after scouring the interweb, then asking Google A.I., I can find no such song by the Whigs in this section of the multiverse???
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Not a fan of the soundtrack, but I'm old and don't listen to the radio or anything that came out in the last 30 years.
Psy
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As usual even if you don't know most of the artists, there are guaranteed to always be 4-5 songs you end up really liking, 4-5 songs you loathe entirely and a lot of meh in the middle.
For 2025, the sneaky highlights for me were "The End" and that song "Cherry Tree." Also, did anyone else notice that "Groceries" was also in 2024? Has that ever happened before with a song from these playlists being in back-to-back titles? Figured the SDS thing to do would be to at least wait a year before bringing it back as a "Returning Legend."
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As usual even if you don't know most of the artists, there are guaranteed to always be 4-5 songs you end up really liking, 4-5 songs you loathe entirely and a lot of meh in the middle.
While I did find 6 songs that I would say that I liked, I would say that there were a whole lot more songs I loathed. Very few fell into the Meh category for me. I actively disliked the majority of the rest of the tracks.
Songs I would leave turned on
Does Anybody Know (Jesse Roper)
Honky Tonk Hell (Marcus King)
Morning in America (Durand Jones & The Indications)
Pain and Misery (The Teskey Brothers)
Rome (Dojo Cuts)
To Build Something (Malted Milk)But 6 songs out of 45 is too few to leave turned on. They would become too repetitive and I would burn out on them quickly.
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It would be different if they were cheating out on the music to toss that money into more development but uh, well, here we are.
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Interested in hearing what the RoFlo narration will be like for a while. But since it's brand new and the volume will most likely be unsustainable, I'll switch over to my brand new playlist 'Jimmy Eat Goo' featuring ... well ... you could probably guess.
