John Fogerty has written some of the most instantly recognizable songs in rock ‘n’ roll history. After all, what’s a wedding reception without “Proud Mary” or a Vietnam War film that leaves “Fortunate Son” off the soundtrack? But on a bright, blustery November day in Manhattan, the question was not whether anyone could recognize the Creedence Clearwater Revival band member’s hits. It was if Fogerty could recognize those of anyone else.
That day, Fogerty was a guest on “Track Star,” an online show with an endearingly straightforward premise: The host Jack Coyne queues up a song and contestants win $5 if they can name the artist. If they are correct, they can go double-or-nothing until they lose it all or decide to tap out. What started as a civilians-on-the-street series has evolved into a top stop on the modern celebrity promo trail. Stars give their controversial opinions on “Subway Takes”; have awkward, flirty chats on “Chicken Shop Date”; and flex their music savvy, basking in a shared passion for their favorite deep cuts, on “Track Star.”
“At the end, do I get like, $27 or something?” Fogerty asked with a smile just before filming started. “Can I buy a vowel?”
Coyne began the quiz with “Blue Moon” by Elvis Presley, then Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene.” The Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There” sparked Fogerty to tell his tale of meeting George Harrison in 1987, complete with an excellent Harrison impression. “I was kind of stunned,” Fogerty said. “Standing there with” — and here he went full Liverpool — “a Beat-le!” Looking to the sky, he cried out, “Thank you, George!”
The next track — Pete Seeger, “John Brown’s Body” — drew Fogerty back to his youth. When he was 12, Fogerty and his mom attended the Berkeley Folk Festival, where he met Seeger, who played “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” “That song had a huge impact on me,” Fogerty said. “I still think that’s a wonderful statement on the folly of war.”
“Is that when you decided to become a songwriter?” Coyne asked. “Just from your mom playing you those records?”
“What I remember is my first song,” Fogerty said. This original composition from his childhood was a bluesy take on an ad for laundry soap, with a Muddy Waters riff. Right there on the sidewalk, Fogerty broke into song: “Dun-da-duh-dun-DUN: Oh I’ve got the wash day blues! Dun-da-duh-dun-DUN. I got so many clothes I got to wash!’”
Coyne’s face split into an enormous smile, looking as if he was mentally filing away the moment as an episode highlight, one that might find its way onto a TikTok or Instagram feed. He built the playlist for Fogerty almost as if he were making a mixtape for a crush: Coyne listened to Fogerty’s oeuvre and dug around for clues Fogerty had dropped in other interviews that signaled there’s probably a story there. Here was preparation’s payoff.
“We are tricking people into telling a story,” Coyne said a few days before filming. “They’re listening to something, they get fired up, and then they get to talk about it.”
“It’s a sophisticated trick,” said David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker and a recent guest. “He’s making you tell a little bit about yourself and your life and your obsessions and your pleasures, maybe your heartbreaks.” The show seems to have thoroughly charmed him. “It is, in this ugly world, a relief and a pleasure to see people talking about what makes them feel something very deeply.”
Coyne, 34, his brother, Kieran, 31, and a friend, Henry Kornaros, 26, founded their media company, Public Opinion, in 2022, when man-on-the-street videos were starting to take off on social platforms. Most of those efforts were either obviously staged or uncomfortably aggressive.
“We wanted to make stuff that would hopefully make you smarter as opposed to add to the noise of ‘gotcha’ videos and pranks,” Kieran Coyne said.
They first attempted a New York City trivia game show. It was a bust. They’d wait around forever for someone to volunteer to play. “And then they would know nothing,” says Kornaros. So in early 2023, they pivoted to a topic many knew, loved and could get excited about: music.
At first, they just chatted up regular people. Celebrities soon wanted in on the action. Olivia Rodrigo, who last year became one of the first major artists on “Track Star,” half-seriously called the game “the most anxiety-inducing interview I’ve ever done.” More big names followed: Charli XCX, David Byrne, Elmo. Coyne estimates that around 60 percent of guests are stars, with civilians still comprising the rest of the contestants. Four months ago, one perfect normie, Gen X-er Sue Molnar won $10,000. “I’m going to have to pay you in installments,” Coyne joked during the episode.
The celebrities on “Track Star” were all pitched by their teams, Coyne says. He estimates they get “about 100 pitches a week” and have to turn most people down. The musician and songwriter Amy Allen was already a fan when she made her debut on the show. She said it had been one of her favorite interviews, adding that she was blown away by Coyne’s music knowledge: “He was telling me things about my favorite songs that I had never heard of.”
Some politicians asked in, too. In an appearance during his campaign for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani nailed a string of city anthems (“No Sleep ’Til Brooklyn,” “New York, New York”) only to whiff on Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind.” The show then tried to book Andrew Cuomo. “He never got back to us,” Coyne said.
Vice President Kamala Harris came on during the 2024 presidential election to rhapsodize about Stevie Wonder, Miles Davis and Roy Ayers, and to assert her “Track Star” fandom. “I love what you do,” she told Coyne.
But Coyne said politicians generally make for lousy guests. They’re too on-message and they don’t tell good stories. “Even Zohran,” he said. “It’s not that interesting.”
With artists, though, there’s hope for candor. The standard press junket can look, from a certain point of view, like a humiliation ritual. Even big stars can’t escape tap-dancing for the algorithm: taking the lie detector tests, competing in snack wars, reacting to memes. That’s all well and goofy; the virality gods must have their sacrifices. Real moments of curiosity and vulnerability can be pretty hard to find, but upon hearing their favorite song, even the hottest artist typically opens up.
Back at the Public Opinion office in NoHo, a smattering of the company’s seven employees worked with headphones on, tuning out the sound of building construction that hints at bigger aspirations. Some viewers spot “Track Star” clips on TikTok or Instagram Reels, but Coyne said his team’s focus is on longer-form YouTube videos. Most episodes are between 10 and 15 minutes, while others stretch to nearly an hour. According to Coyne, nearly 70 percent of the “Track Star” audience is older than 35 and most watch on YouTube, primarily on their TVs.
“We talk about going deeper, going wider, going more frequently,” Coyne said. “Track Star” has begun posting documentary-style explorations of pop punk, Chess Records and movie scores that near or exceed an hour in length. Coyne said the company aims to be the music-centric storytelling hub for a digital age, in the vein of “CBS: This Morning” — still “playful and silly and fun,” but also “educational.” “How MTV was thought of in the ’80s,” he said. “That’s what we want to create, or recreate.”
Weeks after filming his episode, Fogerty reflected on his experience. “It was just startling to me, how much that music meant to me, those songs that were played for me, and the way Jack talked about them,” he said. “It was presented as a quite honorable endeavor, you know what I mean? He wasn’t joking. I think he took it seriously and so did I.”
The post How Your Favorite Musician’s Favorite Game Show Took Over Social Media appeared first on New York Times.
