gooddelta

Many thanks Julian, here's hoping!

Dance the mushroom For the first time since summer 2013, we have failed to qualify three times in a row and poor lovely Esther broke Rontvian records by becoming our first ever last placer in the semis, finishing with only 12 points. In an attempt to avoid a record-breaking run of non qualification we have turned to Manchester band HENGE with an eccentric track called Mushroom One. From their 2018 debut album Attention Earth!, Mushroom One has wide-ranging genre classifications online (sci-fi rock, funk, synth, psychedlic, rave) and in truth it is all of those things and more. The band perform in character as alien ambassadors sent to save humanity, and the lead singer is some sort of cosmic cross between Sam Ryder and Wizzard, if they were stranded on another planet. The impressive partly animated music video produced in 2020, titled The Illustrated History of Mushroom One, features a mix of live-action and illustration, and a roll call of credits. It famously features dancing mushrooms, and the aim of the video is to act as a history lesson behind how the band came to be and its lore. While the song is eight years old and has only racked up just over 1 million streams on Spotify, a live version has gone viral on TikTok this week, with the eccentric performance (posted beneath the video) racking up 2.2m views and 216k likes on TikTok since it was posted a week ago. Ricardo Delta explains the entry choice: "We saw this on RontTok earlier in the week and were so immediately captivated by it that we knew we had to send it and share it with the BuzzJack World. It has been on repeat since at RTVN HQ. HENGE are an absolute riot and the song is such an indie groove with a wide range of influences from the last 60 years, which goes in places you don't always expect. So we won't spoil the surprise, but check this one out - in full!" Mushroom One has yet to debut in the Rontvian charts as it is such a fresh discovery, but is sure for a high debut when the next chart is published.

Keep your ai’s peeled

One of the songs in semi 1 has been AI generated just like that semis graphic… In other news Semi 2 is top quality and all created by humans, going to have a struggle voting in that!

Decided to get X and Aphrodite as I could only afford two currently. Not overly fussed on Kiss Me Once anyway but will try and get Light Years asap. So good to have X on vinyl! And always loved Aphrodite a lot.

I prefer Shania personally, although definitely not my preferred top two.

Close between Daniel Bedingfield and Craig David. Gone with Daniel as it was such a poor lead single, so was Craig's but at least had some meme quality to it.

It feels like they put far more effort into the Extra than the main release for '99, with all the wrong versions that had. This is well worth the money, almost all the correct edits and mixes that were hits at the time. Must admit, that is not the version of the Blondie song I remember, but looks like that was the lead mix on the cassette single? So many songs I haven't heard for such a long time and remember so fondly. And it's just wonderful to see the likes of Say It Again, In Our Lifetime and Back In My Life on a Now release and Friends Forever for the first time. The Charlotte/A*Teens sequence <3 I had to start with Disc 3 as these are some of my favourite ever songs, but I will go through the other two properly at the weekend. One change I would make is probably open Disc 1 with Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!! or save it for a prominent place on Final Chapter, it was way bigger than any other song on here and feels marooned halfway through disc three but maybe they wanted to stick the three ABBA rip-offs all next to each other.

Doubt I would ever check Elevator again, I forgot it existed to start with.

Thanks so much, I would say it was the most/only commercial sounding one I ever made.

Poor Colm’s national final, two thirds of his intended entries sent or tried by others!! I don’t know if there is a good semi for my song but hoping there is a chance to Q this time! And yes, that was the 37 minute song I was expecting to see. On the crappy site formatting issues, I must confess I did use ChatGPT to save time on that when I hosted (I don’t use AI for creative stuff but to save time on automating admin stuff I sometimes do). Basically I just had the list of confirmations pasted in a word document, each entry across one line with the hyperlink at the end of each, and then used the prompt ‘add each hyperlink to the other text in the same line in a format that can be posted on BuzzJack.com’ or something like that, and that seemed to do the job.

Just managed to get mine in HMV, who were only stocking one copy… or at least only had one left. They did also appear to be playing it though as that PSB song was on in there.

Love those two, Bom Bom was one of my summer 2012 anthems. Delightfully wacky one-off British one-hit wonder, not something that happens a lot! Gangnam Style I was addicted to for quite a while, such a unique No.1 single too, and the iconic dance! Part Of Me is a pass for me, the other single from that project Wide Awake I loved, but not this, which was very Katy on autopilot. Good Feeling ditto, I'll just stick on Levels instead as others have mentioned. Call My Name is really good, great production on that and Cheryl sounds good on it too (apart from here, oops!).

I would say it is noticeable, but ok. I initially thought it was a small CD skip a couple of times. But it's for sure the only place it is available as a digital file on an official CD. Atmopshere by Russ Abbot has yet to ever appear on CD.

Songs with zero veto points are more likely to flop is my thought. Many people check the same sources so it helps to have some sort of demand or recognisability factor for a track for it to do well. Be that previous BJSC success, an acclaimed song or artist in pop or alt circles, every little helps. Rarely is it a song that is unknown to every single poster apart from the sender and Uhsting could ever win (and those are probably a lot of the songs that get zero veto points).

It's a vinyl rip on this album as you can hear slight crackling at the end of the song. Same with Anita Dobson.

It's a highlight from the album for me anyway, gives me early 00s French house vibes which I love. Kylie definitely complements it well and it's great to see them on a single together after all these years.

One I actually picked up the other day very cheap was this Stars of Soap album, which contains several songs that didn't make it to streaming or Now Yearbooks: https://www.discogs.com/release/2380939-Various-Stars-Of-Soap Letitia Dean! Malandra Burrows! Gayle & Gillian! Tracy Shaw! Anita Dobson! Now did well with 1987 because Ferry Aid - Let It Be also isn't on streaming.

Ah! Could be that Pavi’s is the different length one on YouTube and is different on Spotify?

Maybe a difference in YouTube and Spotify lengths? Mine is about 30 seconds longer on YouTube due to the video. These lengths posted look like from Spotify.

Maybe they'll get Mr Blobby for that album too as it's now finally available to stream. It appeared on Cheggar's Choice a long time ago but that tracklist is one to forget, although features many songs hard to license now (and many nobody would want to for obvious reasons). I wanted to listen to Yearbook Extra '99 today but Amazon can't deliver until tomorrow, even when I checked at midnight, bah. Will see if I have time to go to HMV.

Thanks Wardy!

My latest LB9 release is here! I say latest, I made this song in 2003 and only just found out the vocals were royalty free which meant I can release it. I sent it to BJFestivalen many years ago and it actually did ok there, although not as well as Dan's recent impressive Club Bizarre result. Obviously it's 90s dance inspired. Have always been happy with this one, and glad it's finally available to stream and download.

It’s a really good track, I can see it doing well. Shame I switched from it in Club earlier in the year but intrigued to see what people think. My entry is six minutes but doesn’t really kick in until about two. I really hope people don’t only check the first minute of it and skip as that part is very much not representative.

The article makes some fair points and generally The Guardian is a reliable source but it definitely is undermined by that 60k error. I hope they correct that because it makes the numbers sound way more pitiful than reality. Readers will think 1 stream is equivalent to 1 download.