Rock Band

This month, we made a comprehensive spreadsheet of all the songs in the Xbox One edition of Rock Band. It separates out the songs we own, and includes a column for team member preferences.

We've been spending a lot of nights with Rock Band this spring, and I decided to make it official: a spreadsheet of every song we owned, every bird’s preferred instrument, and our ratings. It looked like a rehearsal log crossed with a census — but what it really showed is how much we love the instruments themselves.

The Rock Band controllers are toys, but they’re also expressive. A plastic guitar neck, a few color-coded buttons, a strum bar — that’s enough to let you shred. A set of rubber drum pads, enough rebound to teach you rhythm. A single microphone, enough amplification to let you discover you can actually sing in key. None of us had the training to walk into a studio and pick up a “real” instrument, but these tools gave us access. They were bridges between play and music.

The spreadsheet revealed our tendencies: Starling on vocals almost every time, Albatross stubbornly at guitar, Finch steady on drums, Condor avoiding bass until he didn’t. Patterns formed: ballads with harmonies, anthems with everyone shouting, disco tracks universally underrated. The ✩✩✩✩s were less about song quality and more about how well the track fit our little flock.

The clearest favorites were the songs where all four birds had a part. Those tracks became instant classics — moments where nobody had to sit out, everyone was in, the room got loud, and we felt like a real band. Our heaviest rotations came from the same stable of rock canon and oddball surprises: Alanis Morissette and Alabama Shakes, Audioslave and Billy Idol, Blondie and Blue Öyster Cult, Black Sabbath and Ozzy, Boston, Cake, The Cranberries, CCR, Fleetwood Mac, the Dead, Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Nirvana, No Doubt, Queen, QotSA, Rage Against the Machine, the Chili Peppers, REO Speedwagon, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Stone Temple Pilots, T. Rex, Talking Heads, Tears for Fears, The B-52s, The Beach Boys, The Black Keys, The Doors, Tom Petty, Weezer, The White Stripes, The Who, Yes, The Zombies. A jukebox history lesson disguised as a game.

What we kept saying over and over is that we wish there were real instruments like this. Things you could pick up with no formal training, that still rewarded practice and expression, that were forgiving enough to sound good but still challenging enough to be satisfying. Imagine a guitar with a few intuitive buttons instead of six months of scales; a drum kit that didn’t get you evicted.

We weren’t pretending to be rock stars so much as testing what it felt like to share sound together, without gatekeepers or lessons. Rock Band was the medium. The instruments were the message.

After everyone ranked the list, these ended up being our favorite songs:

Bird Band Top 5

(all four birds playing, ✩✩✩✩ or better)

Cryin’ — Aerosmith (✩✩✩✩✩)

Amber — 311 (✩✩✩✩)

What’s Up? — 4 Non Blondes (✩✩✩✩)

I Ran (So Far Away) — A Flock of Seagulls (✩✩✩✩)

Take On Me — a-ha (✩✩✩✩)