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

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.

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...

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.

@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!

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...

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

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

"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...

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.

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

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

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...

i've always heard "uninvited" by @alanismorissette.bsky.social as "menacing," as @lelascottmacneil.bsky.social writes in a searing, harrowing essay for @marchxness.bsky.social. i do think "i can't make you love me" is a *sadder* song, but this matchup is brutal! marchxness.com#/2ndround-mo...

I do think Bonnie Raitt has the sadder song in this match, all things considered, but @lelascottmacneil.bsky.social's mother-betrayal transforms Alanis's "Uninvited" into a much sadder song than it plays unattached to the essay, so taken as a package it has an edge: marchxness.com/2ndround-mor...

Help my Alanis Morissette essay about grief and rage and the Hard Rock Cafe make it to the sweet sixteen of 90s sadness? It's the saddest thing I've ever written, and that should count for something.

Beating Elliot Smith in a tournament of sadness feels like a real accomplishment. And I loved Jamison Crabtree's quietly heartbreaking essay.

"horror-film twist" is maybe my favorite compliment I've ever received about my writing

I have loved many @marchxness.bsky.social essays and have not posted about them all, but @lelascottmacneil.bsky.social’s Alanis essay especially got me. I no longer have a relationship with my mother, and while this relationship was largely different from mine, I still felt a chill of recognition

“I keep being confronted by a choice: learn to re-parent myself or let my pain hurt everyone around me, like my mother and her mother before her.” Oof, this one is a gut-punch from @lelascottmacneil.bsky.social marchxness.com/1stround-mor...

Love Alanis no matter what, especially because "Sometimes she has to unhinge her jaw to let the full sound out." And WOW, this essay is a sadness I didn't expect (meant as a complete, because whoa it packed a punch!)

MARCH SADNESS 90S EDITION DAY 5 FINAL SCORES: BELLE & SEBASTIAN 89, Lauryn Hill 82 DES'REE 147, Goo Goo Dolls 127 BEN FOLDS FIVE 123, Skid Row 64 LISA LOEB 111, Lee Ann Womack 49 New games just went up at marchxness.com. Read, listen, vote by 9am AZ time 3/7.