<\/p>\n
John Fogerty has written some of the most instantly recognizable songs in rock \u2019n\u2019 roll history. After all, what\u2019s a wedding reception without \u201cProud Mary\u201d or a Vietnam War film that leaves \u201cFortunate Son\u201d 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\u2019s hits. It was if Fogerty could recognize those of anyone else.<\/p>\n
That day, Fogerty was a guest on \u201cTrack Star,\u201d 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 \u201cSubway Takes<\/a>\u201d; have awkward, flirty chats on \u201cChicken Shop Date<\/a>\u201d; and flex their music savvy, basking in a shared passion for their favorite deep cuts, on \u201cTrack Star.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cAt the end, do I get like, $27 or something?\u201d Fogerty asked with a smile just before filming started. \u201cCan I buy a vowel?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Coyne began the quiz with \u201cBlue Moon\u201d by Elvis Presley, then Chuck Berry\u2019s \u201cMaybellene.\u201d The Beatles\u2019 \u201cI Saw Her Standing There\u201d sparked Fogerty to tell his tale of meeting George Harrison in 1987, complete with an excellent Harrison impression. \u201cI was kind of stunned,\u201d Fogerty said. \u201cStanding there with\u201d \u2014 and here he went full Liverpool \u2014 \u201ca Beat-le!\u201d Looking to the sky, he cried out, \u201cThank you, George!\u201d<\/p>\n The next track \u2014 Pete Seeger, \u201cJohn Brown\u2019s Body\u201d \u2014 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 \u201cWhere Have All the Flowers Gone?\u201d \u201cThat song had a huge impact on me,\u201d Fogerty said. \u201cI still think that\u2019s a wonderful statement on the folly of war.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIs that when you decided to become a songwriter?\u201d Coyne asked. \u201cJust from your mom playing you those records?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I remember is my first song,\u201d 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: \u201cDun-da-duh-dun-DUN: Oh I\u2019ve got the wash day blues! Dun-da-duh-dun-DUN. I got so many clothes I got to wash!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Coyne\u2019s 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\u2019s oeuvre and dug around for clues Fogerty had dropped in other interviews that signaled there\u2019s probably a story there. Here was preparation\u2019s payoff.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe are tricking people into telling a story,\u201d Coyne said a few days before filming. \u201cThey\u2019re listening to something, they get fired up, and then they get to talk about it.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a sophisticated trick,\u201d said David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker and a recent guest. \u201cHe\u2019s making you tell a little bit about yourself and your life and your obsessions and your pleasures, maybe your heartbreaks.\u201d The show seems to have thoroughly charmed him. \u201cIt is, in this ugly world, a relief and a pleasure to see people talking about what makes them feel something very deeply.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe wanted to make stuff that would hopefully make you smarter as opposed to add to the noise of \u2018gotcha\u2019 videos and pranks,\u201d Kieran Coyne said.<\/p>\n They first attempted a New York City trivia game show. It was a bust. They\u2019d wait around forever for someone to volunteer to play. \u201cAnd then they would know nothing,\u201d says Kornaros. So in early 2023, they pivoted to a topic many knew, loved and could get excited about: music.<\/p>\n At first, they just chatted up regular people. Celebrities soon wanted in on the action. Olivia Rodrigo<\/a>, who last year became one of the first major artists on \u201cTrack Star,\u201d half-seriously called the game \u201cthe most anxiety-inducing interview I\u2019ve ever done.\u201d More big names followed: Charli XCX<\/a>, David Byrne<\/a>, Elmo<\/a>. 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<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m going to have to pay you in installments,\u201d Coyne joked during the episode.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The celebrities on \u201cTrack Star\u201d were all pitched by their teams, Coyne says. He estimates they get \u201cabout 100 pitches a week\u201d and have to turn most people down. The musician and songwriter Amy Allen<\/a> 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\u2019s music knowledge: \u201cHe was telling me things about my favorite songs that I had never heard of.\u201d<\/p>\n Some politicians asked in, too. In an appearance during his campaign<\/a> for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani nailed a string of city anthems (\u201cNo Sleep \u2019Til Brooklyn,\u201d \u201cNew York, New York\u201d) only to whiff on Billy Joel\u2019s \u201cNew York State of Mind.\u201d The show then tried to book Andrew Cuomo. \u201cHe never got back to us,\u201d Coyne said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Vice President Kamala Harris came on<\/a> during the 2024 presidential election to rhapsodize about Stevie Wonder, Miles Davis and Roy Ayers, and to assert her \u201cTrack Star\u201d fandom. \u201cI love what you do,\u201d she told Coyne.<\/p>\n But Coyne said politicians generally make for lousy guests. They\u2019re too on-message and they don\u2019t tell good stories. \u201cEven Zohran,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not that interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n With artists, though, there\u2019s hope for candor. The standard press junket can look, from a certain point of view, like a humiliation ritual. Even big stars can\u2019t escape tap-dancing for the algorithm: taking the lie detector tests, competing in snack wars, reacting to memes. That\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Back at the Public Opinion office in NoHo, a smattering of the company\u2019s seven employees worked with headphones on, tuning out the sound of building construction that hints at bigger aspirations. Some viewers spot \u201cTrack Star\u201d clips on TikTok or Instagram Reels, but Coyne said his team\u2019s 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 \u201cTrack Star\u201d audience is older than 35 and most watch on YouTube, primarily on their TVs.<\/p>\n \u201cWe talk about going deeper, going wider, going more frequently,\u201d Coyne said. \u201cTrack Star\u201d has begun posting documentary-style explorations of pop punk<\/a>, Chess Records<\/a> and movie scores<\/a> 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 \u201cCBS: This Morning\u201d \u2014 still \u201cplayful and silly and fun,\u201d but also \u201ceducational.\u201d \u201cHow MTV was thought of in the \u201980s,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s what we want to create, or recreate.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Weeks after filming his episode, Fogerty reflected on his experience. \u201cIt 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,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was presented as a quite honorable endeavor, you know what I mean? He wasn\u2019t joking. I think he took it seriously and so did I.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nytimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" John Fogerty has written some of the most instantly recognizable songs in rock \u2019n\u2019 roll history. After all, what\u2019s a wedding reception without \u201cProud Mary\u201d or a Vietnam War film that leaves \u201cFortunate Son\u201d off the soundtrack? But on a bright, blustery November day in Manhattan, the question was not whether anyone could recognize the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2215029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[356577,428019,428020,334347,42175,356576,21928],"class_list":["post-2215028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-content-type-personal-profile","tag-coyne","tag-fogerty","tag-jack","tag-john","tag-pop-and-rock-music","tag-social-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/How-Track-Star-Became-a-YouTube-and-TikTok-Music-Phenomenon.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2215028"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2215030,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215028\/revisions\/2215030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2215029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2215028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2215028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2215028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}