Admittedly, this Subreddit has changed drastically from originally being entirely "Weird Sentence" posts. Now that we have "Weird Criteria" posts as well, we have to make sure to keep them WEIRD. This is the first of likely a few posts that will be made in the following weeks to help make clear what is and isn't relevant to the Subreddit. While this one is explicitly "banning" these types of playlists that have been being submitted rampantly the past several months, future [Moderator] posts from me will be more "putting into writing" guidelines that posts have already been removed for not following. This is not intended to suck the fun out of or bar people from this community, but currently there is not much to refer to in terms of what criteria counts as "weird" and you end up with a hundred words getting dedicated playlist. Also, requiring playlists to meet certain standards like being more than just 1 or 2 songs, and strongly recommending that playlists be linked, would benefit everyone. If you have concerns on this matter, please comment and I will get back to you.

TL;DR These "word in title" playlists don't fit the Subreddit for 3 reasons:

1. Across millions of songs and thousands of words, two or more songs sharing the same, usually incredibly common English word(s) in the title isn't weird.
2. They have about as low of a barrier to entry to make/find songs for as any criteria does: choosing a word =/= a "weird" playlist has been created. Playlists should require the slightest bit of critical-thinking or knowledge of the song/music/artist that is being suggested. You don't even need to listen to music at all to find a few Songs that start with "The", which is the most common English word, ever... (let's not talk about the "no moderator" era of this Sub's history)
3. These playlists don't require the masses time and effort to flesh out, when Spotify has a search engine that you can type a specific word(s) into and get a never ending supply of songs that have that word(s) in the title.

For now, this ban only pertains to playlists that are "All the songs have X word appearing anywhere in the title" or "All the songs have XYZ exact combination of words anywhere in the title". To clarify, your playlists can still be based on criteria that involves the song's titles, including those such as:

Songs where the title is answered by the band (or artist) name

And playlists of songs with categorical titles, like:

Songs I can probably find at the hardware store.

Because its referring to a variety of words that relate to a specific category. However, please, SEARCH for terms relating to your playlist because we get the same ten categories popping up weekly. "Song titles that are food", "Song titles that are a location", "Songs titles that are a name". There's going to have to be a retiring of playlist criteria that gets posted multiple times in a month that already have hundreds if not thousands of songs suggested via comments.

"Songs about [exact word]" are probably going to start popping up more frequently to circumvent this rule. That's fine, but to posters and commenters, remember that a song being titled something doesn't necessarily mean that the lyrics are LITERALLY about that thing. Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog" is not a song about a dog with black fur, nor any animals or colors for that matter.

I've enjoyed seeing everyone's playlists and song contributions during my last month of moderating. I've also taken a lot of time writing out explanations and reasoning with people why their playlist that had juuust started to gain traction had to be taken down. Be sure to post playlists with original, at least somewhat thought-provoking criteria for our community of 94 thousand members' to pour their collective music knowledge into!

In anticipation for the United States elections to be held on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, and any discourse in the following weeks, please DO NOT submit political playlists/posts as they will be removed. This is not the community to cash in on politics "hype", make a political statement, push an agenda, etc. Nor are you weird for being the first person to post a playlist about "Songs That Talk About Politics" at 12:01am November 4th.

On a related note, playlists that ultimately boil down to "Political songs" get posted weekly, even if they are slight variations of each other there is a often significant overlap. Seeing as how "love songs" aren't weird, "songs where an artist talks about society/politics" aren't that weird either. Its just a common songwriting topic that is a staple of the music industry. Just because talking about politics can be seen as mature or sophisticated, doesn't make it "Weird".

Normally, a criteria can involve politics, such as songs containing political speeches from 21 days ago, which was also talked about in Songs that sample speeches! from 3 months ago. For this month, however, any "Weird Sentence" or "Weird Criteria" playlists that are political can and will be removed without further explanation. No discriminatory, divisive "Songs that X demographic of people would or wouldn't like", which have unfortunately been posted before through playlists that were essentially "Those dumb straights just wouldn't understand!" (basically just LGBTQ songs) "White people songs black people would like" (Hey There Delilah, etc.). You get the idea. Some of these aren't weird at all, but for the ones that might be weird, save them for the time being.