The US Women’s National Soccer Team Shared the Music That Gets Them Hyped Before a Game

Anyone who’s thrown on their favorite playlist to grind through a treadmill session or achieved a brand new weight room PR due to Spotify knows that music is usually a serious exercise motivator. It’s a truth that all of us can leverage to perform our physical best, including the world’s top athletes.

“I feel there’s a beauty in music,” Crystal Dunn, defender for the US Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT), tells SELF. “It’s much like sports, where it’s like you simply come alive if you end up near it and you are feeling it.”

Research supports these energizing effects, confirming listening to music can enhance physical performance and make exercise feel easier—while also simply boosting your well-being.

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that because the USWNT attempts to defend their title on the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, they’re leaning on the ability of music to stoke them into competition mode. Recently, SELF chatted with quite a lot of the players to learn what specific tunes they’re blasting for inspiration before they take the sector.

Dunn, for one, says she loves just about all genres of music but is an enormous fan of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion. Cardi B, specifically, gives her that “pumped-up, ready-to-go type of vibes,” she says. Midfielder Andi Sullivan prefers Beyoncé—plenty of Beyoncé—including the artist’s Homecoming: The Live Album recorded at Coachella. “I adore it, and I just hearken to it straight through as much as I can before I get to the locker room,” Sullivan tells SELF.

Several other players, including midfielder Julie Ertz and defender Alana Cook, dig a superb Rihanna ballad, while forward Lynn Williams and defender Emily Fox are big on Drake. On the flip side, forward Alyssa Thomspon favors more mellow songs from artists like SZA and Summer Walker as a solution to quash before-competition jitters.