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Meet the College Marching Bands Who Play Hits By Chappell Roan, Tyler, the Creator & More
College marching band directors on pop song performance routines to Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Tyler, the Creator and more popular artists.
That kind of stadium-rocking enthusiasm is exactly what motivates collegiate band directors all over the country — whether at major state schools like Temple; smaller, private institutions; or historically Black colleges and universities — to adapt current chart-toppers for halftime shows, stand tunes (keeping the bleachers hyped during timeouts and between plays) and pep rallies every year. Directors have numerous considerations to make when vetting potential selections, from crowd appeal — which many of them measure by surveying students, patrolling the Billboard Hot 100 and tracking Spotify streams as early as spring to determine what will be trendy in the fall — to whether they can secure the necessary licensing, budgeting anywhere from a few thousand dollars to five-digit sums for rights-buying each year. Many of the directors interviewed here scored viral moments for their shows this year, and one group, Jackson State University’s Sonic Boom of the South, even caught the attention of an artist it covered: Tyler, The Creator, who retweeted a video of the band’s speaker-busting rendition of “Sticky” in November and wrote, “THIS IS WHY I ARRANGED IT THAT WAY … MY HEART IS FILLED.”
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