ROCKY

What came first—the title or the irony? Because Rocky ran up museum steps to Conti's orchestral triumph, and here we are with "ROCKY - Running music" that sounds like someone threw a skateboard through a garage window at 2 AM. Victory, Meat Market, Lick the Wall—this isn't the Italian Stallion's Philadelphia. This is the city's basement, its underbelly, the punk club three blocks from the tourist traps where nobody's getting inspired. And let me tell you, that's exactly what makes this playlist work.

Here's my Top 5 realizations about why this playlist rejects everything Rocky actually stood for: 1) Rocky had a training montage—this has "Meat Market" and "Lick the Wall," which sound like anti-training, like showing up hungover. 2) Rocky had an inspirational arc—this playlist just gets weirder and heavier as it goes, spiraling from skate punk into psychedelic sludge. 3) Rocky believed in himself—these track titles (Nootmare, Death Train, Doom Wop) suggest belief is for suckers. 4) Rocky had Adrian—this playlist has no love interest, just "Sporty Boy" buried at track nine like a punchline. 5) Rocky won—this playlist sounds like it's still fighting in the basement, and honestly, that's more relatable.

Victory opens this thing, and obviously I'm expecting something triumphant. What I get sounds like skate punk recorded in a shipping container. It's not inspirational—it's antagonistic. Then Meat Market and Lick the Wall double down on the garage rock chaos, all trebly guitars and vocals that sound like they're yelling at you through a wall. This is egg punk territory, that deliberately ugly lo-fi aesthetic where production quality is a form of cowardice. I'm three tracks in and my heart rate's up, but not from inspiration—from anxiety. Which, for a weekend warrior like me stealing forty minutes from the chaos of everything else, is weirdly appropriate.

Then Nootmare (K.I.L.L.I.N.G) [Meow!] hits at track four and I'm realizing this playlist has a sense of humor about its own aggression. That meow in the title is the tell—this isn't earnest punk fury, it's self-aware noise. In Memory Of A House Plant and Sickle Walk push into psychedelic and stoner rock territory, and suddenly the energy shifts from chaotic to hypnotic. The tempos stay driving but the walls get wider, like running through a tunnel that just opened into an abandoned warehouse. This is where the playlist stops being a joke about Rocky and becomes something else—a meditation on endurance that has nothing to do with winning.

Iron Feet at track seven is the thesis statement I didn't know was coming. The title alone—iron feet, not iron will or iron fists—is about the grind, the physical reality of just continuing. Gift Horse, Sporty Boy, Stimulation—this middle section locks into a rhythm that's almost trance-like. It's stoner metal and noise rock that doesn't care if you're inspired. It just keeps moving. Barry would argue this section drags, but Barry's never run ten miles with only his thoughts for company and discovered that "dragging" is the point.

The final stretch—Death Train, Dichotomatic, Doom Wop—gets genuinely heavy. Sludge metal that sounds like the pavement's fighting back, post-punk darkness that acknowledges the wall we all hit around mile eight. Doom Wop is the closer, and that title is perfect: doom as a dance, as a rhythm you can't escape. Rocky ran up those steps to prove something to the world. This playlist suggests the only person you're proving anything to is yourself, and even that's questionable.

Here's what I keep thinking about: Rocky's story is aspirational, about transcending your circumstances through will and training montages. This playlist is about the opposite—about being stuck in the basement with the same five chords and the same problems, and running anyway. Not to become a champion, just to move. The cheesesteak reference in the description is the giveaway—it's the most famous thing about Rocky's Philadelphia, the tourist version. But this music is the Philadelphia nobody photographs, all dive bars and skate parks and venues that smell like spilled beer and ambition that died in 1983.

What came first—the delusion that running would fix anything, or the playlist that acknowledged it won't? I'm forty minutes in, legs burning on the Lakefront Trail, and Rocky is still about believing you can change your life with enough heart. This playlist just sounds like life, difficult and weird and occasionally beautiful in its refusal to be anything else. That's not what Adrian would want to hear, but it's what the rest of us need: proof that you don't have to be inspirational to keep going. You just have to keep going.