I didn't hear 'Concorde' until just before the album came out but that'd probably have got me into BC,NR before 'Snow Globes' did if I had, a great choice of highlight from the album (I'd probably 'only' put it as my 3rd or 4th fave but it's still excellent).

 

Much love for 'Sad Cowboy' as an 18 pointer for me ofc <3 and perched for whenever they drop new material, they're a band I should have been into more anyway. Mili was a good entry too though fell short of my votes + Dave ofc quality as usual.

 

30. Sam Ryder - SPACE MAN

29. Gorillaz - Cracker Island

28. o0o - Wedbecutetoget-her

27. Polkadot Stingray - Rideau

26. Zdob și Zdub & Frații Advahov - Trenulețul

 

SPACE MAN needs no introduction, I guess when the UK actually sends a song I want to go back and listen to, we do well. Yay. And now I'm passing up being in the same country as Eurovision for once, but I'm sure I'll finally go when it's somewhere cheaper. There's a second Eurovision song here, the combination of Moldova at their best, Zdob și Zdub and folk instruments plus some warbling about a train journey, one of the best things in Eurovision this year - not to mention sorely necessary in that final.

 

I've been following J-Rock outfit Polkadot Stingray for a couple of years now after they put out the wonderful '

' and an associated rather good album. They're kinda similar to tricot but a bit more pop-leaning, and tricot are always good value. 'Rideau', the lead track off their newest album, is a very rhythmic, very pleasant song to listen to that shows off their abilities well, a light vocal with excellent guitars coming in at the right moments

last in the BJSC semi you wot

.

 

I keep forgetting to look at what is allegedly one of my favourite acts Gorillaz, but they certainly didn't disappoint with the wonderful 'Cracker Island', though I haven't internalised much else from the new era yet, I was very attracted to this one, boppy and summery in a way that reminds me of the great Plastic Beach days and an extra bit of oomph to make it even better than many of those. I'm so pleased to see Gorillaz still going from strength to strength.

 

The sample on 'Wedbecutoget-her' is really well done, it's just very compelling of a remix song. I've enjoyed it a lot since discovering it in BJSC, with the high-pitched vocal and the sweeping production. Definitely one I kept coming back to a lot.

 

 

25. Mori Calliope - Lose-Lose Days

24. Kohta Imafuku - Orihime

23. Diablo Swing Orchestra - Speed Dating An Arsonist

22. Mori Calliope - Q (feat. Gawr Gura)

21. Mori Calliope - Dead On Arrival

 

 

yes there are three Mori tracks here but on the other hand, she actually only has one track in my top 20

as Mori, at least

. I mean, even though I've calmed a little, she still was overall easily my most played artist this year and this has to reflect it in some way. These are all tracks from her first album this year UnAlive. Dead On Arrival is the simplest one to explain, it's just Mori and electro-swing turned up to the max and lyrics like self-describing as a 'sneaky devil dream-eater' make it instantly one of her classics. Lose-Lose Days is more of a really sweet one, as I alluded to back in the album commentary, it ends with a desire to 'make you guys proud' and is just a really dorky pop song about overcoming dark days to reach happier times. It's very lovable.

 

The final Mori track, 'Q', is one I recommend watching the video of, as in what was easily the biggest vtuber music release of the year, Mori and fellow vtuber colleague Gawr Gura teamed up to do what felt like a literal 'ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny', as Mori and an army of skeletons fight Gura and an army of shrimps, with music almost designed to build hype. It's very short, very repeatable and with Mori mostly handling rap verses and Gura mostly doing a Japanese chorus, there's barely a breath to spare between them. Greatly enhanced by the animation but this is one that I racked up many plays of even without that.

 

The curse of electro-swing didn't leave me either as DSO's 'Speed Dating An Arsonist' gave me another instant track with their lead singer's somewhat raspy vocals adding to the urgency of the track, its lyrical tendencies less apparent than some of the other DSO tracks in here but certainly one that doesn't rely on heavy metal as much as a great sense of fun, while the best trance track I heard this year was Orihime from BJSC, with a very pretty breakdown leading to an excellent drop in a genre that, much like electro-swing, normally does one thing very well but admittedly doesn't have much range. I think 'Orihime' expanded and smashed that range with a great sense of feeling and spirit in its instrumental. Plus there's the whole connection with summer, as Orihime is a name for the star Vega in Japanese, which is always connected to the Japanese summer festival Tanabata and the summer fireworks that are set off throughout that festival, and it does feel like 'Orihime' is setting off fireworks sonically.

Oh yay at "Orihime" being here! :dance: Also liking "SPACE MAN" and "Trenuletul" here (Moldova's entry is so underrated imo).

 

20. aamourocean - Parmi Les Mortels

19. AtomA - Then Came The Wave

18. CAPSULE - Jumper

17. DEMONDICE - Wanting, Getting, Wanting

16. Ado - Backlight

 

 

I guess I'm topping out the discoveries from BJSC last year, "Parmi Les Mortels" was a great hardcore track that got me entranced from the minute of hearing it, building with what feels like a timeless melody and well placed French lyrics and one that, like all the best hardcore trance, makes it feels like it encapsulates all of life itself as you listen to it.

 

Similarly epic in scale, 'Then Came The Wave' was much like that but for post-rock for me, a giant, cinematic, sweeping track that makes you feel at one with the emotions they're trying to go for. Such a powerful track that just sends me into contemplative thought whenever it comes on, a great discovery.

 

Unlike the other two, 'Jumper' appeals to my love of fun, rhythmic songs and this apparent electronic classic was really something I couldn't get enough of when it was sent, the melody in its hook line is unlike anything else I've heard, in a very good sense. Nor is the drop after it gets really hyper. So many parts to this song and all of them sound completely unique.

 

a section in this EOY is nothing without a bit from DemonDiceKaren, and Wanting, Getting, Wanting is the perfect, opener track to Shut Up Get Happy, as DD breathlessly asks for a way to let out her thoughts and feelings in an outlet atop a pacy instrumental. It's an honest track and by her own admission written just after she got big - 'you're rich, and you're famous and you're f***ing depressed', the chorus 'an endless wanting, getting, wanting' indicating that even after getting everything it's still not satisfying - giving the rather stale genre of brag rap a new twist. Plus there's a cute No Church In The Wild reference given DD's identity as a 'demon': 'what is a man to a king and a king to a god, what's a god to a devil putting up a facade'. It's the least good track on Shut Up Get Happy because there isn't much to it beyond this, but it's punchy and opens the EP well.

 

Backlight is probably the closest followup to Odo from my top 10 last year, a very uptempo pop track that feels like Ado is yelling at you. As her tones are the best in pop right now, her yelling like that sounds awesome and gives the track a great deal of energy to fistpump along to.

Right, doing this sometimes runs into January but I need to stop putting it off and finish it so let's go for quickfire posts so I get back into the poster charts yay!

 

15. Kalush Orchestra - Stefania

 

 

The video solidified ‘Stefania’ for me, a perfect tie into the emotion wrapped up in the song. It was always one of my favourites throughout the Eurovision season, a high-quality rap song with great Ukrainian weight built into it from their excellent Eurovision performance. In hindsight, though it seemed a little obvious, there couldn’t have been another winner, and it’s one of the best recent ones too, symbolic of both Ukrainian defiance and a still awful war.

 

14. Moona Hoshinova - High Tide

 

 

Of all my experiences with vtubers, I think my favourite is how it’s permanently made me aware of Indonesia (and by extension South East Asia) as a culture where there was a bit of a blank spot before – and given how good they are at English in comparison to the rest of Asia while ready to take on the best parts of Japanese pop sensibilities, the possibility of a worldwide Asian music star from a different angle to the K-pop capitalist machines. I’m not saying that Moona is that breakout star, but she stands a chance if she keeps putting out songs like ‘High Tide’.

 

‘High Tide’ has a very urgent production, the sort that makes you breathless if you try to sing along, which makes it all the more impressive that Moona can do it, plus she’s put in some rather complicated English words, enough to make it seem slightly ESL but they fit surprisingly well with unusual things like ‘an effulgent sight’ and the way she enunciates ‘radiance’ is very noticeable. It’s an exciting pop song, complete with proclaiming her dominance over the moon and tides, and one that feels like it could have been made by a top international pop team.

 

13. Mori Calliope - UnAlive

 

 

I think my favourite vtuber moment this year was my jawdrop as we saw 3D Mori Calliope for the first time in this video premiere. It was the first sign that Mori was really hitting the big-time, one might not have noticed it on Buzzjack as I’ve been quieter about it but she’s hit the charts in Japan and signed with a major label since this song, and that is quite a turning point.

 

This is quite different from past work too, making use of production by a guy named Elliot Tsu, whose usual work is creating elfin, lilty soundtracks, as such this is almost all singing with beautiful string-like segments and epic, Dragon Quest-like feelings. The few rap sections are fast-paced and lead straight into the well constructed chorus. It doesn’t quite top ‘end of a life’, but it comes close as the lead track for the lovely album of the same name.

 

12. DEMONDICE - Fake Ass Gold

 

 

The closing track to Shut Up Get Happy, it’s the one track on the EP that is not depressing or venting, it’s an attempt to end the EP on a positive note and I think it succeeds in that aim very well. It uses up a fair bit of Demondice-brand cringe in the first minute by breaking the fourth wall a little but then you have Kanye-circa-2004-2007-style choirs that give an image of looking up into a sky (or as she says ‘pyrite skies’, one of DD’s cleverest lyrics among stiff competition).

 

Ultimately this is a lovely uplifiting track, much like ‘You’re An Ace Kid’ on past work, that is a self-motivating anthem about how putting the work in is eventually worth it, even if the glamour and glory from music is overrated, or ‘fake ass gold’.

 

It ends with a very firm affirmation that ‘there will be mistakes, and there will be days of sorrow…. It’s just the treasure that you make for you’, a very mature outlook that justifies all of DDK’s venting (and making art in the process) in her other tracks on this EP.

 

11. Midnight Grand Orchestra - SOS

 

 

The combination of vtubers and Japan’s EDM scene is not something that I would have thought to make particularly great music, but it so happens that Suisei, the singer for this project alongside producer Taku Inoue, is one of the best. And while there’s a whole great album from Midnight Grand Overture, the best was their opening track ‘SOS’.

 

I love the build and drop on this so much, I never normally hold with generic EDM any more but fortunately this is anything but, a fast tempo that keeps adrenaline pumping and an instant hook with the repeat of ‘SOS’, and it’s an instant classic, held up fantastically by the continued 'levelling up' that Inoue is doing throughout the song and Suisei's fantastic vocals - speaking of which, she just recently did a rendition of her own song 'Stellar Stellar' on popular Japanese YT channel The First Take and it is... just incredible, may even top the original of this song for me, this girl may be an anime girl vtuber but there's no denying she can SING.

 

 

For anyone who wants to keep track at how… stacked with certain obsessions my top 10 is, my top 10 contains… 4 Eurovision tracks, 3 BJSC entries, 2 Demondice tracks and 1 other (which is obvious, probably).

 

Nice to see Stefania here, a brilliant song and a very deserved winner of Eurovision this year! Continued to grow on me after the contest as well.

we are finishing this right now so I don't leave this hanging on beyond January, this is very important to me. these ten songs were fantastic last year, listen if you don't know any of them x

 

10. Konstrakta - In Corpore Sano

 

 

Serbia’s incredibly intense Eurovision entry was an undisputed highlight of Eurovision for me, in Latin, so a good start from the off, talking about current events, performed in a fantastically esoteric way. It became that much more of an obsession with its great performance and Konstrakta proved to be a very enjoyable presence during Eurovision season. I haven’t enjoyed a Serbian entry like this in a long, long time, a very inspired pick.

9. Alvan & Ahez - Fulenn

 

 

Also a very inspired pick and one that unfortunately didn’t work out as well was France’s venture into something that’s not actually French for once. Taking cues from ‘Shum’ and France’s Celtic region of Brittany, a French Eurovision entry being in Breton is about as unbelievable to me as it is the UK ever sending something in Cornish.

 

Which is something we should try, as for once France managed to capture the exciting traditional vibe that many Eastern European Eurovision entries often do – something that’s harder to do with dominant languages like French and English for a variety of reasons. All that is to say is that Fulenn is a trip of exciting sounds with great instrumentation backing it and a very enjoyable presence during Eurovision week.

 

8. Cornelia Jakobs - Hold Me Closer

 

 

Third Eurovision entry in a row, this one just because ‘Hold Me Closer’ is near the best of modern pop, very slick in its performance but in a manner that I really like, some emotional singing and lyrics that complement the perfect production. It’s not JUST because Sweden sent a woman, they sent an interesting pop song for once. In a manner that gives me chills when she goes into the final chorus.

 

7. MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS - Just

 

 

‘Just’ really stood out to me in a way that no other MASS… song had done before. The closing track on their album this year, it takes the best parts of shoegaze, the shimmery, slightly harsh production and the feeling that you’re submerged in the sound somewhat, and uses it against hard-to-make-out lyrics to create a fantastic build. Plus there’s some lovely drops that accompany some fast almost rap-like singing and you get one of the best aural experiences of the year.

 

6. Monika Liu - Sentimentai

 

 

Lithuania have almost without exception, always been one of my least favourite Eurovision countries. Even when they were just ‘okay’, there hadn’t been an entry from them that I thought about much after the contest was over. I suppose given that backdrop it was almost inevitable that one year they’d finally have my Eurovision entry of the year, and it came from actually-f***ing-singing-in-their-native-language-for-once-everyone-do-that-more, that and Monika Liu’s incredible personality both on and off stage. She really sells this song, this beautiful retro-pop song, like she came straight out of the 1930s to lounge sing on the Eurovision stage, and it’s just captivating.

 

It always feels good to have a Eurovision entry to really root for and along with Konstrakta (both of them were Reddit faves and I tend to align myself with the reddit hivemind on many things embarrassingly often), made the experience of Eurovision 2022 for me. The lilts, the beat are all fantastic.

 

 

5. DEMONDICE - Dark Hour

 

 

One thing I think is fair to say about some of the older DEMONDICE music is that she didn’t have singing training and it showed when she tried to sing, instead of rap. ‘Dark Hour’ shows off the results of extensive professional singing training and it’s like night and day. It’s also got a really cool, creepy, backdrop as befits a song that’s about sleep being one’s only escape from the worries of life “the dark hour beckons, and that’s where I’ll hide”. It’s also got a lot of spoken-word rap which is a style that really suits her – while I’ve ranked ‘Take The Bait’ ahead of it, ‘Dark Hour’ takes the title of most beautiful DEMONDICE song with ease.

4. Ado - The World's Continuation

 

 

I don’t normally hold with trad ballads these days. I used to, for base emotions, but especially in Western pop music, the chords feel so familiar, the songs so slow, I get bored easily. Not to strongly say that Eastern pop is better (but it is), because ‘The World’s Continuation’ doesn’t do much that’s specifically Eastern aside from language and a little bit of instrumentation.

 

But it is when you have a talent like Ado singing it, and it is when you have the writers who are working with her (as a cover that Mori did of this song was just as beautiful and a little more personal for me). The repeated ‘Shinjirareru’ (‘Can you believe it?’) in the chorus is so powerful, the finality of its lyrics and promise of hope not just specific to the film it was written for, this is (and I’ll keep using superlatives to describe Ado because I genuinely believe she is at the pinnacle of the global pop music game, not just Japan) easily the best ballad released in the 2020s so far. Also finally, I wouldn’t describe any of my top 3 as pop. I can keep my alt cred.

 

3. DEMONDICE - Take The Bait

 

 

The background of my third-favourite song this year is one that I did have some mixed feelings about. It is at its core, an ‘own the haters’ song, something I mostly think is lyrically best avoided. However it packs such a punch, taking direct aim at the problems of internet celebrity and parasocial attachment, that I can forgive it. The lyrics in it are just too ‘wow, she really said that’. And maybe it is seemingly almost directly about 4chan harassment. A topic that deserves discussion, sometimes.

 

‘Take The Bait’ is about DEMONDICE wishing she could snap back at people who leave anonymous hate online, and how it affects her mental state. “I am not your daughter, your wife or your role model” stated plainly to tell people to stop being weird about her, “all on a spinning rock middle of the void, losing marbles over Twitter talk cause you got annoyed” – to tell people to touch grass, “gotta have a little fun while shit’s burnin’”, a really pleasingly delivered line following a stanza about how most people can say what they like online but with a following you can’t just snap back (to take the bait), even if it feels vindicating.

 

The final verse does the misinterpreting on Twitter tweet in very nice fashion ‘”this bitch hate her own fans”, “but I never said that”’, repeating the ‘never said that’ after more false claims to drive the point home. All this with a refrain of ‘life is good’ repeated throughout the song to remind DDK that despite online bombardments, her life is really pretty good. It’s a tough needle to thread, writing lyrics about harassment you receive on the internet, especially as it invites targets and onlookers saying “it’s bad to comment on it”, but this is a very good go, and as I am invested in her, it really hits hard for me.

 

2. Diablo Swing Orchestra - Celebremos Lo Inevitable

 

 

My rediscovery of Diablo Swing Orchestra this year I did cover in my review of their album earlier in the thread, but it was in large part spurred by my love for this insane Spanish rock extravaganza. Sounding like a Latin ballad at the start, progressing into a huge metal guitar drop, this turns from beauty into absolute beautiful chaos and that kept me coming back to it again and again. I love songs that make me headbang or mime drums just by listening to them and I certainly do that every time the singer yells ‘¡Celebremos!’. ‘celebrating the inevitable’ adds a doomy vibe to it.

 

this was really rock like very few other rock songs of late, brash, unafraid of hurting anyone's ears, just having the most fun with a creepy concept and sounding triumphant because of it.

 

best Séyetana entry from 2022, it not qualifying was silly x