Steve Schnur can’t sleep. He calls it a blessing and a curse. 

In pursuit of the next great sports video game soundtrack, Schnur scrolls social media in the middle of the night, discovering new music and sending it to his colleagues who have long gone to bed.

That’s how he found Lola Young.

Swiping through Instagram one morning last November, Schnur, the president of music at Electronic Arts, came across Young’s raspy, soulful voice. “Holy … you know what,” he thought, and immediately texted Cybele Pettus, EA’s senior music supervisor.

Two days later, they attended a rooftop party in Los Angeles where three emerging musicians performed for a crowd of industry veterans. Out walked a young British woman with long dark hair, choppy bangs and nose rings. The same singer-songwriter Schnur had texted Pettus about at 3 a.m. 

“We literally fell in love with her,” Pettus said. “She was just so engaging, so interesting, such a storyteller with her music. We went right up to her, told her how much we loved her set — which was like three songs — met her manager. She was very recently signed at the time to a label … I don’t even think her record was done.”

Schnur and Pettus wanted her for EA Sports FC 25, the latest edition of the wildly popular soccer game. Young doesn’t play video games or follow sports outside of watching the World Cup. But she knew it was a big deal. Her song “Flicker of Light” is nestled among 117 songs from artists in 27 countries.

“It’s interesting because it’s quite a male-dominated game, but there are loads of women who play it. It’s exciting to me that I’m going to be in the game because I’m a female artist doing my thing,” Young said. 

Not all tracks emerge from serendipitous rooftop encounters. But Schnur’s path to Young is emblematic of the modern effort to build a quality, fresh video game soundtrack.

To curate such an expansive collection of varied tracks requires an ear for what will be the next breakout song rather than merely having a finger on the pulse of what already is topping charts or going viral on TikTok. At EA, Schnur challenges his team to a musical scavenger hunt with a rule: don’t listen to the radio or any major outlet where music is played. 

“I don’t want the influence of what is today to influence what will be in the next six months,” Schnur said. “You can’t title a game ‘Madden 25’ and have it sound like 2023. It has to be, by a matter of design, a place of discovery, a place that cements what the next year ahead is going to sound like. A place where the sport itself will be a part of this sound.” 

To achieve this, Schnur and his fellow songseekers scour the globe for fresh tracks. They attend concerts of up-and-coming artists, take suggestions from current athletes and field submissions from the biggest names in the industry. 

Everyone from Green Day to Billie Eilish and her brother/producer Finneas want to know what they have to do to be featured in the wildly popular video games. In the former’s case, that meant playing “American Idiot” on acoustic guitars for Schnur to lobby for its placement on Madden 2005. In the latter, Schnur got to hear Eilish’s new album “Hit Me Hard and Soft” before it was finished because the nine-time Grammy winner wanted to be in FC 25. Eilish’s “CHIHIRO” appears in the game.

Album sneak peeks and concert tickets are perks, but the job also comes with some pressure. Curating a video game soundtrack means creating a playlist that millions will hear — over, and over, and over. Avid gamers will remember the music for better or worse. And the best ones are remembered even decades later, when a song immediately conjures memories of a game and a time and place.

The teams responsible for piecing together the soundtracks are well aware that their work will live on as virtual time capsules once a current game is superseded by a future iteration, but they strive for the initial experience to be an introduction to new sounds instead of a recognition of old favorites. 

“The sound of the NFL to a 20-, 25-year-old is very different than their parents because their associated tone with football comes from Madden,” Schnur said. “It does not come through broadcasts or live football games. It comes from the virtual experience. With that comes an enormous responsibility of getting it right and knowing that you’re defining the sound of the sport going forward.”

That’s something David Kelley, the director of music partnerships and licensing at 2K, considers when selecting songs for the NBA2K franchise.

“The most important part for us is that we want it to be future-facing, always. We want it to sound like something you’ve really not heard before,” he said. 

One artist 2K tabbed for its 2025 installment, released Sept. 3, was as future-facing as it gets.

In June, 310babii, an 18-year-old rapper from Inglewood, Calif., collected his high school diploma and a platinum plaque for his hit single “Soak City (Do It)” on the same day. An avid 2K player, he jumped at the opportunity to secure a coveted spot on the soundtrack. He wrote and recorded “forward, back,” a basketball-inspired track, exclusively for NBA2K25 and hopes to hear it when the game shows replays of LeBron James dunking on other players.

Much in the way that Millennial gamers equate Madden 04 with Blink-182 and Yellowcard or hearken back to the Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtrack, 310babii associates the NBA2K installments of his childhood with the artists featured.

“For me, 2K16 is one of my favorites. When I was in fifth grade, I remember DJ Khaled having the craziest songs on there. That’s what made that game special to me aside from the gameplay itself,” he said. “For a 10-year-old kid, my song could be that for him.” 

At EA and 2K, the process for scoring a game begins the day after the previous edition launches. Figuring out how the songs flow together to establish a vibe is just as imperative as choosing the individual tracks. 

“You’re kind of like a DJ in a club. You can be having a great set, then if you play one song that feels out of place, you’ll lose the whole audience and you’ve got to build that trust back,” Kelley said. “It’s something we take very seriously.” 

Nailing an authentic sound means molding the soundtrack to fit the sport. That doesn’t necessarily mean zeroing in on a particular genre, though hip-hop, rap, R&B and pop tracks are frequent choices, but it does mean keying in on what athletes and fans are listening to. Kelley said Milwaukee Bucks point guard Damian Lillard and Phoenix Suns forward Kevin Durant even send songs or artists for consideration.

For MLB: The Show, finding the right vibe can mean looking to players’ walk-up songs for inspiration. Ramone Russell, PlayStation’s director of product development communications and brand strategy, said they’ve tried to lean more into the different cultures and ethnicities represented within the sport.

“We’ve started to have more Latin music, more reggaeton, some bachata. We have to do that if we’re being accurate to the source material,” he said. “We’re making a Major League Baseball game based off of something that’s real life. If in real life 40 percent of the players are Latin, and the music that they listen to on average is Latin, our soundtrack should probably have some Latin music in it.”  

The team putting together the MLB: The Show soundtrack receives about 50 albums per day from labels and publishers hoping to land an artist’s track in the game, PlayStation Studios director of music affairs Alex Hackford said in an email. Along with partners at Sony Music, Hackford sends ideas to Russell’s team, which then decides what fits on the game’s base soundtrack.

The team also curates a specific set of music for the game’s “Storylines” mode, which allows gamers to play out narratives from baseball history. The songs for the “Storylines” mode that centered on the Negro Leagues were chosen solely by Russell, with the intention of expressing the more somber aspects of baseball’s history through music.

“That’s not necessarily a happy story to tell, but what we try to focus on here is what these men and women accomplished despite the racism and the Jim Crow.” Russell said. “We don’t shy away from the ugliness that’s in this story, but we celebrate what these men and women accomplished despite those things. ” 

That’s particularly evident with the introduction of Toni Stone, the first woman to play regularly in a men’s major league, into MLB: The Show 24. 

“When we decided we were going to do Toni Stone, the first song that came to mind was ‘It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World’ by James Brown. I’m like, ‘This has to be her intro song because it is perfect. The nuance is there. It’ll just get people into the right mindset for the kind of story that we’re telling.’ Because it is still very much a man’s world, and it was very much a man’s world back then,” Russell said. “But as James Brown said, it wouldn’t be anything without a woman. There’s that duality there that really helps tie everything together.”

Through each new video game released year after year, these soundtracks weave across sports and through time to become cultural touchstones. The songs bind the gameplay experience to moments that go beyond scoring virtual touchdowns or blasting animated home runs. 

“Nobody remembers that unique piece of gameplay that came about in 2009,” Schnur said, “But everybody remembers the music.” 

(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; Photos: Kevin Mazur, Sean Gallup / Getty Images)

The Los Angeles Dodgers won their second World Series in four years, but Friday marked the first time they were able to celebrate with their fans.

The Dodgers won the 2020 Fall Classic, but COVID restrictions prevented a parade and celebration at the ballpark.

On Friday, players made up for what they had missed.

Clayton Kershaw was one of 12 players on this year’s Dodgers team who also won it all in 2020. Manager Dave Roberts also filled out the lineup cards four years ago.

Kershaw only appeared in seven games this season while dealing with numerous injuries, but he was celebrating like he had pitched in every game the Dodgers had played. And as the victory parade wrapped up at Chavez Ravine, Kershaw released four years of happiness.

“Oh man, I’ve waited for this day for a long time. I’ve waited to celebrate for a long time,” a relieved Kershaw said at Dodger Stadium Friday. “I can’t imagine being anywhere else right now, and I can’t imagine doing it with a better group of guys than this group right here. I’m at a loss for words.

Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw lifts the World Series trophy during the team celebration at Dodger Stadium.  (Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Imagn Images)

DODGERS STUDIED YANKEES’ DEFENSIVE, BASERUNNING SHORTCOMINGS THAT LED TO CRUSHING WORLD SERIES DEFEAT: REPORT

“I didn’t have anything to do with this championship, but it feels like the best feeling in the world, getting to celebrate with you guys. Two-time champ, and a lot more coming. Let’s go!”

Kershaw has been notorious for his postseason struggles, but he did pitch to a 2.31 ERA (three earned runs in 11⅔ innings) in the 2020 Fall Classic.

Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers celebrates with the Commissioner’s Trophy during the team’s 2024 World Series celebration at Dodger Stadium Nov. 1, 2024, in Los Angeles.   (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

It’s the eighth World Series title for the Dodgers, who took down the New York Yankees in five games.

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Fernando Valenzuela would have turned 64 on Friday.

The left-handed pitcher who sparked “Fernandomania” and helped the Dodgers defeat the New York Yankees in the 1981 World Series died Oct. 22. Eight days later, the 2024 Dodgers clinched another World Series title by beating the Yankees. The team’s victory parade was also Friday in downtown Los Angeles, followed by a celebration at Dodger Stadium.

Valenzuela is not in the Hall of Fame, but he is a Dodgers legend. Coming from a small town in Mexico, Valenzuela helped expand the Dodgers’ fan base to include a large portion of L.A.’s Latino population decades after many members of that community were forced out of their homes in Chavez Ravine to clear the way for Dodger Stadium.

There is no statue honoring Valenzuela at the stadium. Only two Dodgers greats have received that honor — Jackie Robinson in 2017 and Sandy Koufax in 2022.

A group of Dodgers fans thinks it’s time that changed. A change.org petition calling for a Valenzuela statue to be erected at the stadium was started two days after the former Cy Young winner’s death. As of Friday morning, it had received more than 900 signatures.

“Fernando, popularly known as “El Toro”, isn’t just a player; he’s a symbol of resilience, dedication, and passion to many like myself who grew up venerating him,” wrote Hector Gonzalez, who started the petition. “He created a sense of invincibility around himself, standing as a symbol of hope for the fans, especially the Hispanic community in Los Angeles.”

Gonzalez added: “The addition of a statue for Fernando Valenzuela would further encapsulate the respect the organization shows for their influential players and enhance the significance of the Dodgers’ rich cultural and sports heritage. Moreover, it would act as a celebration of not only Fernando’s influence in baseball, but his contribution to forging cultural ties through sports.”

The Dodgers declined to comment for this article.

The team officially retired Valenzuela’s No. 34 jersey in 2023, although no L.A. player had been assigned that number since Valenzuela was released in March 1991. It was the first time the Dodgers retired the number of a player who is not in the Hall of Fame.

During their World Series run this year, the Dodgers honored Valenzuela by wearing patches that read “Fernando,” with his No. 34 below on their jerseys and painting his number on the pitcher’s mound at Dodger Stadium.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts gave Valenzuela a special shout-out during Friday’s rally.

“Happy birthday, Fernando!” Roberts shouted. “This one’s for you, too!”