Muller Monthly Music Meta, January 2026

Title: “Songbirds” by Pete Muller, Mack Meller, and Andrew White
Prompt: The meta for this puzzle is a well-known rock band

Grid: approx. 15 mins
Meta: before completing the grid

G’day from Down Under: it’s benchen71, filling in for Matt Gaffney. Welcome to the first MMMM puzzle of 2026! Pete likes to take things a little bit easier for the first few puzzles. Well, let’s see how true that is…

Actually, the grid turned out to be quite a tricky grid in places. There were a few clues I had to look up as I went along; and then there’s a funny thing going on with what are clearly the themers:

• 18A {1999 Lou Bega hit} MAMBO NO 5
• 23A {2008 Madonna hit} 4 MINUTES
• 51A {1997 Matchbox Twenty hit} 3 AM
• 53A {1996 Spice Girls hit} 2 BECOME 1

The complication was that the down entries crossing the numbers did not also utilise those numbers, but required the letters CROW:

• 12D {Popcorn popper, perhaps} MICROWAVE
• 4D {Nashville district that’s home to the RCA Studio B} MUSIC ROW
• 40D {Hold in trust} ESCROW
• 34D {Packs too tightly, as an arena} OVERCROWDS
• 56D {Common police car discontinued in 2011, familiarly} CROWN VIC

I’d left the 4 of 4 MINUTES blank, partly because I’ve never heard of MUSIC ROW. But once I got to the 5 of MAMBO NO 5 and MICROWAVE, I saw pretty clearly what was going on. That made the other themers easier to handle, too.

As for the meta, given we’re looking for a well-known rock band, with 5/CROW, 4/CROW, 3/CROW, 2/CROW, and 1/CROW, it seems we’re COUNTING CROWS. I had decided this must be the meta answer before completing the grid, and so I submitted confidently. But I was still very pleased to see my name appear in the list of successful solvers, because sometimes you never know!

Another fun meta from Pete, Mack, and Andrew. I particularly liked the way the counting went down sequentially as you descend the grid. And, even better, I think I’ve spotted something that could be either this year’s red herring (which I missed last year) or the mega meta (which I only got in December). My money’s on it being the red herring!