Years ago I was really into baseball but I just got so busy with other things in life, my interest just waned and I stopped paying attention. This summer, I went to see the Mets, first to go along with a family member and then at an college alumni event. They won - both times! Fun! They were generally known historically of a team that tended to disappoint its bleeding heart fan base, so I was surprised.
At the second game, I noticed these blown-up signs that said OMG. What was this all about - was this new? At first I found it corny. Clueless me. I didn’t know that OMG was a song. But the two wins I had witnessed got me interested in baseball again, and I began to follow what has turned out to be a very special team. I started hearing in the media that things really turned around for the Mets around the time when they rallied around a song.
It started in late June. On the popular sports radio program Boomer & Gio, Gio mused, “yesterday, at this event at Citi Field, you’ve got the entire team there singing this OMG song, and I…I understand this ups and downs… I still don’t believe the Mets are a playoff team, I can’t be that wishy-washy with it..."
[The following dialogue are excerpts. To hear full program click here.]
Boomer: The thing about this OMG thing is, it’s [written by] one of the players..
Gio: I know! [Me to myself Wow, now that's cool.]
Boomer: I love the fact that the players on their day off actually got together with each other… and were hanging out! That means they actually like each other! Remember we were talking about whether they actually like each other in the locker room and in the dugout?
Gio: Yeah.
Boomer: Well, it seems like they do…
Gio: Clearly.
Boomer: And it seems like everybody has bought into José Iglesias’s song.
So, here’s the thing. That is what you want from your team… I feel like that’s what the Knicks had, that’s what the Rangers had, [ both teams had great seasons last year ] and I feel like that’s what the Mets have. They’ve come out of this colossal disaster of a season that started to now where all of a sudden, they’re getting along with each other and that is what winning does, like I’ve always told you.
[Then they play the song, clearly enjoying it.]
Boomer: Nothing makes me feel better about the Mets being relevant for the rest of the year, then that song...This song and the way the players react to it and the way the fans are going to react to it…! They’ve turned their season completely around in this month of June.
Yup. At the end May, the Mets were down in the dumps, 67-40, four games from last place in the NL East and 16 games behind the first-place Phillies. They even got rid of one of their players for inappropriately expressing his emotions by throwing his glove into the stands and, some thought, by allegedly saying that the Mets were the worst team in baseball. Given how it was going for the team, it was a believable comment. In one month, they were relevant again. But a team we would see in the postseason? Naaaah!
Well, it turns out the Mets are a post-season team (I know, duh! from the baseball fans. And Gio has since become an evidence-based believer). I began this blog on October 5th, the night before I watched the decisive wild card game between the Mets and the Brewers - a total nail biter. The score was zip-zip for most of the game, then the Brewers came on top at the bottom of the 7th with back-to-back homers. And yet, the Mets managed to win the game 4-2 thanks to a stunning homer in the 9th inning by Pete Alonso. Not to mention my going back to Citi Field for their final home game against the Phillies of all teams - who had just clinched the NL East. Another nail biter - but they did it again! That’s how the Mets have been playing, in a sort of OMG way, topping teams that you know are excellent, over and over again. Nothing tells it like the numbers - from June through the rest of the regular season, the Mets became the best team in baseball!
Remember, the turning point came at the same time the song OMG came on the scene. The Mets are tanking, morale's low. Francisco Lindor calls a team meeting where everyone in the team got to gripe. They get rid of the glove-thrower (Jorge Lopez). All of this helps. The clincher: they call up some new blood from their minor league team: José Iglesias.
Candelita finds a voice with the Mets
Aside from a career in baseball, 34 year-old José Iglesias pursues music in the off-season under the stage name Candelita. According to Wikipedia, Iglesias says the song had just the type of energy he needed and that everything negative should be pushed away. The lyrics of the song's chorus are: "Oh My God, todo lo malo échalo pa’ allá (Everything that's bad, push it to the side), Oh My God, dame salud y prosperidad (Give me health and prosperity)." The perfect message for a team that needed to change their mojo, and also from a very positive guy, a great teammate.
First, Iglesias chose his new, unreleased song as his walk-up song. But Iglesias's teammate urged him him to perform it for the team, and release it sooner than he had planned (it hit Number 1 on the Latino Billboard pop charts instantly) The teammates loved it! Next thing you know, they're playing it when anyone hits a homer, the artist Jerome McCroy gets inspired to make the now famous OMG sign, the fans love the song, the sign, and the rest is history.
Here's the video of Candelita's performance at Citi Field that Boomer & Gio were talking about where all of the Mets and their lucky fans shared the love and excitement of a team in transformation:
The Transformative Influence of Music: Exploring the Power of a Song
In one short month the Mets came together as a team in the best sense of the word. Many ingredients contributed to the Mets' success (some, including The New York Post, give Grimace props for his part in it). As a music therapist, I am drawn to the particular role the song played into it because I know songs have power. It's not just a group of people having a good time in that video, there is a true bonding experience happening.
Music as an agent for bringing people together as well as for social change is pretty obvious. Think weddings, rousing battle music, protest songs. As a field of study, music sociology, the exploration of how music interacts with and influences society, has been around for over a century (although Plato had quite a bit to say about it, believing that it was a key element in shaping individual character, maintaining social harmony, and ensuring the moral and political order of society). By the 1970s and 1980s, the sociology of music became a well-established field where scholars have examined how music reflected or resisted social structures, power dynamics, and cultural identities. Tia DeNora, a professor of sociology and music at the University of Exeter noted a shift in the late 1970's and early 80's in which scholars began to shift their focus from what can be said or thought about particular cultural works to what "the appropriation of cultural materials achieves in action, what culture 'does' for its consumers within the contexts of their lives."
That quote comes from DeNora's book, Music in Everyday Life (2000), a work that illustrates music's structuring powers in everyday experience where she takes up the challenge of showing "how music articulates social life and social life articulates music." I hope to show examples from the book, to illuminate the power of OMG beyond the fact that everyone who's been observing the phenomenon of this season's Mets.
The Bikeboys
DeNora cites an example of "how music was used and referred to by actors during their ongoing attempts to produce their social situations and themselves as selves" in Paul Willis's depiction of the bikeboys Profane Culture (1978). The bikeboys' use of music deliberately invited, "perhaps incited" movement. One of the bikeboys said "if you hear a fast record, you've got to get up and do something, I think. If you can't dance any more, or if the dance is over, you've just got to go for a burn-up [motorcycle ride]." Maybe in 2024, when probably everyone owns a set of headphones and is aware of the use of music to maximize the effectiveness of workouts (discussed in the book and in one of my blogs) it seems obvious that music is deliberately utilized to motivate. I am merely pointing out the study of such things. DeNora informs us that Willis's work was pioneering in that it reminded us of how we do things to music and with music. We dance and ride, perhaps, like the bikeboys and we do just about everything else under the sun with music playing, sometimes in our heads to similar effect. "You can hear the beat in your head, don't you... you go with the beat, don't you?" said one of boys. So whether used in real time or in memory, music can take you from one state to another. In the case of the bikeboys, from sitting around to dancing as the music plays or riding as it plays in memory.
Musical Reappropriation & Social Response
Making meaning from music involves interpreting the sounds, rhythms, and emotions that a piece of music evokes. It is often a deeply personal and cultural process, as listeners draw from their own experiences, memories, and emotions to connect with the music--which is why it can be so useful in therapy. Additionally, music can convey cultural or social meanings, reflecting a particular time, place, or community. OMG has certainly done that, and whether it was intentional or not (I don't think so), it was reappropriated. What do I mean by that? Since we've been talking baseball, it just so happens that a brilliant example of effective musical reappropriation is our national anthem, 'The Star Spangled Banner,' which is sung at the top of every baseball game (except when the Toronto Bluejays play at home, of course.) At Woodstock in 1969 during the Vietnam war, Jimi Hendrix turned the anthem on its head, playing it on his white Fender Stratocaster full of feedback and distortion. She quotes an observer: 'one man with a guitar said more in three and a half minutes about that peculiarly disgusting war and its reverberations than all the novels, memoirs, and movies put together.'
Thus, 'The Star Spangled Banner,' for some, may never be heard the same way again. DeNora: "Think, too, of how certain renditions of 'The Star Spangled Banner' at baseball games in the United States have had patriotic fans up in arms. Moreover, even 'sung with conviction' would any version of 'The Star Spangled Banner,' have evoked national pride and community spirit among seasoned Hendrix fans? Would it perhaps have been contested or heard ironically?
It's up to the listener. "Music's semiotic force - its affect upon hearing - cannot be fully specified in advance of actual reception." And then there are layers, the layers of time and place, the layers of material objects and their significance. Hendrix played the anthem on an instrument which at the time represented rebellion, all of which attributes to how the listener responds.
OMG Fight for your dreams because yes, you can
Back to OMG. That's a lyric translated from Spanish by the way. Here's how that song was reappropriated. Iglesias wrote in on the off-season inspired by a picturesque night he could see from his ranch while his home percolated with family joy. He loved the energy and wanted to capture it. It had nothing to do with baseball, and certainly nothing to do with the Mets. Remember, he got called up to play with them when they hit bottom. Then, he reappropriated it to be his walk-up song. Then his teammates reappropriated it in a variety of ways. "We gotta use this. We gotta ride this out," J.D. Martinez was quoted saying. To inspire the team. To come together as a team. It was a dugout theme that spilled out to the stadium as they gave it to their fans with that performance. Out came the sign (note the layers). The song worked its inspiring easy to sing chant, upbeat rhythm on the team, similar to the way music worked on the bikeboys, to get this team moving - out of their rut and into something new. Then the fans reappropriated the song, using it to fuel their excitement , give an outlet for it, and show their love to the team in a reciprocal circle of positive energy. Thus, Candelita's off-season song written back at the ranch became the Mets 2024 anthem and feel-good LGM (Let's Go Mets) song for the fans.
We can give credit to a lot of things, including Grimace, in creating the recipe that has led to what will go down as one of the best seasons in the franchise's history. Let us remember that a song was the most vital ingredient.
The Overlap of Music Sociology & Music Therapy
As a music therapist, I find the OMG phenomenon irresistible, which inspired this blog. Yet, I wrote about the social implications and nothing about music therapy itself. However, music sociology and music therapy are closely connected through their exploration of music’s impact on individuals and society, though they approach it from different angles.
Social and Cultural Contexts: Both fields study how music is shaped by and shapes social and cultural environments. Music sociology looks at how music reflects societal structures, group identities, and social movements, while music therapy considers how cultural background influences an individual’s or group's response to therapeutic interventions.
Group Dynamics and Identity: Music sociology explores how music fosters group cohesion, belonging, and collective identity, as I hope was made clear in this blog. Similarly, in music therapy, music is used in to enhance social interaction, communication, and collective well-being.
Emotional and Psychological Impact: Music sociology investigates how music affects emotions and social behaviors on a large scale. In music therapy, the emotional and relational power of music is harnessed in a targeted way to help individuals manage emotions, reduce stress, or work through trauma.
Health and Well-being: Music therapy is directly concerned with music’s role in healing and well-being, using it as a therapeutic tool to address physical, emotional, or cognitive challenges. Music sociology, while broader, also looks at music’s role in health, such as how musical practices in communities contribute to mental health and social support.
In both fields, music is seen as a vital tool for shaping human experience and facilitating positive social or personal change.
If this has inspired you to utilize music in your therapy journey, please contact me to schedule a consultation.
OMG, throw all the bad things away from here
OMG, give me health and prosperity
I have nothing, but I am happy
Only memories inhabit me
Dreams to fulfill and I’m going to achieve them
Maybe I’m Crazy, but not lazy
And I will keep going until I achieve it
OMG, throw all the bad things away from here
OMG, give me health and prosperity
Let all the planets align for me
May my wallet not go on a diet anymore
May good luck visit me
To help all my people
OMG, throw all the bad things away from here
OMG, give me health and prosperity
I have to give thanks for one more day of life
For the friends who are few today
Don’t do evil because everything turns around
One day you’re down, the next you’re up
Dreams to fulfill and I’m going to achieve them
Maybe I’m Crazy, but not lazy
And I will keep going until I achieve it
OMG
Candelita
OMG
Mauro
Tell them, Guianko
OMG, throw all the bad things away from here
OMG, give me health and prosperity
Let the evil tongues have no chance
And let envy not reach me
May time always be my witness
I only do good, that’s why I ask
OMG
Fight for your dreams
Because yes, you can
OMG
And when you don’t find the way out
Sing with me
OMG, throw all the bad things away from here
OMG, give me health and prosperity
[ OMG is actually in Spanish.]
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