Brer

Apple Music seems to be glitching out a bit with the Gunna tracks, the song with Asake was briefly showing as his highest song (and #1 on US Apple Music) but now reset to a position that makes more sense, I think a lot of his songs were showing up higher than they should have been.

Left my voting a bit late sorry but got them in within the last 10 mins before midnight x I feel like everything from my 10 down to 4 pointers are very close so I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that none of those songs miss out by single digit points. Good semi anyway, would have been happy to vote for about 13 out of the 22 songs!

After Ethel Cain managed to get into the top 10 with a physical (re-?)release for her 2022 album earlier this year and the lead single from the new album made some waves on Spotify I wouldn't rule out her album being a contender for #1 this week assuming it does have first week physicals? Would be less surprising than Reneé Rapp hitting #1 at least x (mgk probably is a contender as well, his last two albums both made the top 3 and indeed seems there is still a fair level of hype around him for whatever reason)

Was hoping from other people's reactions that this would add to the short list of Chappell songs that I like and happy to say it has, instantly my 2nd favourite song from her after 'Good Luck, Babe!', I've not been a fan of most of what I've heard from her but when she's good she's really good. Definitely has a timeless sound to it, on top of all the comparisons already made in here I'll also throw in that it gives me similar vibes to Billie Eilish's 'BIRDS OF A FEATHER', would not mind if it stuck around as well as that did in the chart x

Imagine Dragons had a few pretty good songs from their earlier albums so I'm not 100% on the hate train for them but 'Believer' is borderline unlistenable, had absolutely no business being in the final here so yay for the early exit. (and the bottom 2 being the same as my own bottom 2 albeit the other way around, 'Love On The Brain' is a snoozer for me)

https://sync-tube.de/room/ApAM3t-I Semi 2 starting shortly (sorry for last minute linkage x)

^ there are 6 DNQs per semi so you're missing one! (And really you're missing 2 because there is 0 chance Neliönoir DNQs x)

Shall do the SyncTube for semi 2 this evening

roughly +50 Swimming Pools (Drank) +49 Psycho Killer +48 Where Is My Mind? +47 Champagne Supernova +46 Ocean Drive +45 Here Comes The Sun +44 The Sound Of Silence +43 The Chain +42 Heads Will Roll +41 A-Punk +40 Run Boy Run +39 Let It Happen +38 Blackbird +37 Christmas Wrapping +36 Lost +35 Somebody Else +34 What You Know +33 9 To 5 +32 Ain't No Mountain High Enough +31 Wouldn't It Be Nice (Half The World Away) +30 One Way Or Another +29 We Will Rock You +28 Walking On A Dream +27 Charlemagne +26 On Melancholy Hill +25 Comfortably Numb +24 Morning Glory +23 Summer Of '69 +22 Mardy Bum +21 Brown Eyed Girl +20 Changes +19 Perfect Day +18 In My Life +17 Edge Of Seventeen (oh my) +16 Wish You Were Here +15 Tiny Dancer +14 Rumour Has It +13 She's Electric +12 Take Me Home, Country Roads +11 Gimme Shelter +10 Fuck You +9 Forever Young +8 You Make My Dreams (Come True) +7 Proud Mary (Dream On) +6 Baba O'Riley +5 I Wanna Be Yours +4 I Follow Rivers +3 I Was Made For Lovin' You +2 Love On The Brain +1 Believer

Omg Sorry I forgor again but lemme try and quickly do it tonight xx

Although when they do come back again there's bound to be a ton of hype, so I could see them managing a #1 debut then (provided it doesn't stray too far from the sound of their biggest hits and there isn't a megahit out at the same time etc.)

I am conditioned at this point to instantly stop reading any text as soon as I see "—".

https://sync-tube.de/room/ApAM3t-I Semi 1 coming up from 8pm ish (sorry peeps who wanted semi 2 x) will edit some YT playlists into this post ~ edit: Semi-Final 1 Semi-Final 2 (the link for Pestolia's song from the OP does seem to have been deleted so I've just replaced it there and here with the one Ben posted x)

That rule was dropped quite a while back.

Will do the first listenthrough tomorrow evening (I'll do semi 1 first unless people particularly want semi 2 first again x).

I've noticed Spotify embeds playing up today and seems they are indeed now completely broken - glad to see it isn't just a problem with my connection, I'm sure it'll be fixed soon x (unless Spotify is just breaking due to the devastating impact of Xiu Xiu and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard removing their discographies)

Now a UK top 10 hit then - a good 9 and a half years on from Tinashe's only previous one, with only one other top 40 hit in the mean time. There are plenty of other songs from her that are much better than the songs that have actually charted but I do like this a good deal more than 'All My Friends' at least, it's becoming a bit of an earworm for me now. Admittedly have still not heard the original whoops (her album is on my list of 2024 albums to catch up with, should get to it soonish x) so can't comment on if it's better or worse than that but for what it is I think it works quite well!

And now a full circle moment with us having to slightly change the format of this contest to avoid having semi-finals to kick out only 3 songs once again!

Lookylion having the longest entry of the month

I think we successfully publicly shamed people into not trying Grace. x Hooray for this kicking off, feels like ages since the last contest (admittedly because it kind of has been due to BJFestivalen being a bit more of a time sink than planned but hey ho). My entry this month is a rare return to my OG entry selection method of just plucking a song off (non daytime) Radio 1, from the Future Artists show which I briefly had on in the car the other day and this song caught my attention immediately, mainly for the ear candy guitar parts but also just thought it's a really well structured and hook filled indie pop song, reminds me a bit of Dominic Fike and Artemas. The artist hasn't been mentioned on BuzzJack before and the song only has a combined ~38k streams between YouTube and Spotify so hopefully it's new to everyone x a bit more of a mainstream sound than I usually go for so will see how that pans out and I can always run back to my niche safespaces next time (my last entry that I sourced from Radio 1 was Godford in BJSC 139 and that was a top 10 so will that be a good omen ~ -DNQs-) I think it's another month where the only songs I've already heard are ones that have been in PopJustice's contest before (4 of them by my count, all in the opposite semi from me, Cor Lupus' being my favourite of those ones! + 2 more that are in the current contest which I'll be listening to tomorrow), although I guess I may well have heard at least parts of that Emily Osment song back in the day so will see if I recognise it, quite the random throwback there but why not! Very intrigued to hear Terra Avium's entry, I saw that it is a Persephonia recycle of sorts as Karin Park is a member of Årabrot although from the BandCamp genre tags it looks like this song is going to sound nothing like my entry from her haha. Happy with the compromise to go with 17 Qs per semi, 4 fewer people to send hate my way (plus will be good to keep the 18 point voting system in the final). aside: ikonik that there are artists in this contest called 'Blond' and 'BLOND:ISH' and another fun fact: this will be only the second ever BJSC final with exactly 36 songs in it, the previous one was also hosted by Silas! (the infamous BJ[U]SC 29)

Even I'll be blaming myself so go for it xx (it was tied before I voted fwiw ) There have been at least a couple of contests where I had nothing 48 minutes before the deadline (produces very mixed results but Agent blå got me a top 10 from 'shit I have nothing to send, let me quickly browse some album tracks from the /r/indieheads New Music Friday post', which was also how I found Messa, everything there is handily genre tagged for me to zero in on a niche pretty quickly). I was a bit less last minute this time, dropped a song in on Tuesday evening x

I reserve the right to still be mad if I DNQ

For posterity we're only missing entries from the following who entered the last contest (plus the 2 banned nations): Hushkanukia Kylienips Ojnoj Sandénia The Spodic Empire So it's not a huge number of withdrawals, it's just that we don't have many returning nations to replace them (only Fljótavík and Thelonia). I know Mikey had a song for this contest because he accidentally confirmed it for BJFest maybe next month x

Not the OBF vs. semis vote currently being a 52-48 split where have we seen that before x I've voted in favour of keeping semis because a) I thiiiink this was discussed years ago and we said that dipping below 51 entries would trigger a return to the 31-32 song final format with OBF only kicking in again if we go below 41 entries, but I have no idea where this was posted or what to search to find it and b) I feel like 48 is maybe a few too many for OBF, I know people can sometimes struggle enough with 41-42 songs as it is (I wouldn't mind myself though). But I'm not massively bothered either way, it might be nice to give people a reprieve from the threat of a DNQ for once (and keeping the 18 point system would be better for cohesion of the YTD leaderboard lol), then fingers crossed we will bounce back over 51 next month to leave it as a one off at least for now x

Voted for the Stones for 4-6 and Oasis for the rest - most of these were quite easy choices but 'Get Off Of My Cloud' / 'Go Let It Out' / 'I'm The One' were all fairly close and Sam was close-ish for the last 2 as well.