I’ve been playing Madden football games since the late 1900s on my SNES. In fact, I still own a few of my Super Nintendo Madden NFL game cartridges. I also still have a few physical Madden games from the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 eras in my collection.
Back in the early days of Madden, there was no popular music in the games. It wasn’t until 2003 that Madden introduced soundtracks (or EA Trax) featuring new music. Since then music has been a big part of the Madden NFL franchise. Today, many of us identify certain songs as “Madden songs.” The only reason I even know about Good Charlotte’s “The Anthem” or Andrew W.K.’s “Party Hard” is thanks to hours of playing Madden.
Over the years the Madden Music Curation team has included a nice mix of music from hard rock to hip hop and everything in between. There’s always a few classic bangers, some brand new hits, and a few obscure songs crammed in there. For the bands, I’m sure it’s a big deal to be featured in a Madden game — and it must certainly help build their fanbase.
For the past 20+ years, Madden games have helped players open their music horizons. I’m sure some of these songs have even become big hits in NFL locker rooms thanks to these games. Of course, NFL players love playing Madden — if you were in a video game, wouldn’t you play it?
RETURN TO MADDEN
After Madden 19 or Madden 20 I took a few years off. Prior to that I had purchased every Madden iteration since the early 2000s. There was even a point in time where Best Buy allowed us to trade-in last year’s Madden towards the new one for about $30 sometimes — with a few hacks to the system.
I made my faithful return to the Madden series with Madden NFL 25 and that’s when I started to notice something different about the soundtracks in the past few games — especially with this year’s entry (Madden NFL 27). The Madden soundtrack is now a thing of nostalgia. They may be following the same cycle we’re seeing from many video game studios — why create something new when we can recreate (remake, remaster, or reimagine) the things we all loved from the past?
This year’s Madden soundtrack is the largest one yet featuring 80 songs. There are many new songs in there, but I have heard many songs from past Madden games too. It’s almost like a “greatest hits” compilation of Madden over the years plus a few cool new songs.
Madden NFL 27 takes up about 50-60 GB on my PlayStation 5, which is a big leap from the 2 GB of a Madden game about twenty years ago. This means we now have more space for everything, including music.
Video game music has come a long way. When we first started, composers had a few sounds to choose from when creating music for games. They also had limited space, so everything was on a loop. We now have full orchestras creating scores for video games. Other games are able to curate playlists of popular songs — like many sports games.
MY OLD WAYS
Back before sports games featured popular music in their menus and gameplay, I would curate my own music. I remember playing so much NBA Live, Madden, and other sports titles with the TV volume on low while blasting rap albums on my AIWA stereo system in the background. Anytime I hear DMX’s It’s Dark and Hell is Hot I think of playing NBA Live in my bedroom — anytime I hear any DMX album actually.
There’s a new version of this. When I finally get sick of the curated playlist in Madden, EA FC, EA F1, or any sports game I end up turning off all music on the soundtrack. I go into my Apple Music account directly on my PlayStation 5 and can choose whatever music I want to hear while playing the game.
Now, I get to hear the game’s sounds mixed with my favorite music. When it comes to games with orchestrated music, I don’t mess around with that. I play the game with its music as intended, but at some point we can get bored of hearing the same popular songs over and over while playing a repetitive sports title. I’m still playing Madden NFL 27 with the music it came with, but it’s nice when there are 80 songs to shuffle through.
*myVGBC.com was provided a review code for Madden NFL 27 by EA.
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