Michael Bubré

I do think semi 2 is the stronger of the two but there's not that much in it imo at least when comparing my top 10s! (Semi 1 does have a few more quite samey songs but a lot of them have sounded better on second listen)

'LIFETIMES' didn't go top 200 on Spotify at all and still made the official top 100, I'm sure this song will be fine especially given how many songs are currently starred out / on ACR.

Voted now and am now doing a relisten of semi 1 as well. Artists with fruit in their names are popping off this month x

Petition to rename the thread this week to 'Streaming Services LUXcussion' xo

Very much looking forward to the Monday mids, confident now that 'LUX' will chart higher than 'MOTOMAMI' as it's doing far better on streaming but hard to tell just how much higher yet. Bad Bunny's last album got to #13 here after a similar profile boost and his couple of albums before that got to #62 and #70 so maybe top 10 can be on the cards but I don't want to get my hopes up too much again as it will come down to physical sales at the end of the day (and Bad Bunny held up really well on streaming). Great to see a new Spotify peak for 'Berghain' again although it's not that much higher than where it started last week - although with so few other notable new releases this week and the Halloween songs vanishing hopefully it has another chance to sneak into the top 40 if the album streams hold up ok...

Let me know what stats you want and I should be able to provide them x

'I Love You' and 'Retrograde' going gold *.* I was actually just wondering if 'Spooky, Scary Skeletons' would have been anywhere near platinum - turns out the answer is a clear no but love to see it both making the top 40 and being certified for the first time in the same week x

2 great songs and 1 sneak x

You know what you did x

Why the secrecy, I'm curious now xx

I think it's been more or less confirmed that the Playboi Carti vocals in both The Weeknd's 'Timeless' and his own 'Rather Lie' were actually some other guy using an AI Playboi Carti filter so it's been in the charts already. Apparently that Xania Monet thing has been charting in some US radio airplay charts already as well :') I think the usage of AI on things like Headache and that GrimesAI track are a bit different to entirely AI generated songs/artists, those are effectively just the same thing as vocaloid software, the music and lyrics were still made by real people. As I posted in the Summericia thread already it was disappointing to learn that it was an AI artist but I'm not going to hold that against it when it is a good sounding song and especially when Roba didn't know it was AI when he confirmed it, I will just hope against hope that this is a 'trend' that dies out.

This was the song I tried to cheekily change to after the deadline but was denied (fairly, but was worth a try x) There are a handful of songs here that I know already (agreed with Chez that 'Jump In The Pool' feels more like Friendly Fires' big hit than their one actual top 40 which I see isn't even in their top 10 on Spotify - which has more bangers than I remembered them having tbh x) but the majority will still be new to me. I see a couple of names here that came to mind when I was brainstorming (FKA twigs and Imogen Heap - I had a feeling the latter would come up but was less sure about the former as her one hit was a pretty forgettable feature, also the reason why Sampha didn't come to mind for me until too late!) Was hoping we might see Everything Everything here but alas not x

Minor nitpick but why single out 'Sparks' when 3 of the 4 songs in that list are at least 19 years old? I guess 'MUTT' heavily suffers from its streams being split between two versions.

FELICIA arguably sounds more like AI than the actual AI song tbf x

I don't plan to mark it down myself and I get the sense that most people are far less bothered about AI than I am in general so I'm sure it'll probably be fine x (I'd be side eyeing a lot more if people sent AI songs on purpose but I cannot fault you here for not realising it was AI)

Katherine Jayne (Ultraviolenceland entry) is also fully AI I believe. Although not sure to what extent the lyrics to that or indeed this were written by a human. I felt happier not knowing this was AI as it's a little concerning how much this does just sound like a regular (and good!) dream pop song. But ah well. A good song is a good song I guess x (and the person behind copperplate posted on their BandCamp asking people to support real artists lol so at least they're self aware...)

Racism (jk I figured it'd probably be pushing it x)

I can't immediately think of any other Estonian language entries! (I don't have all the stats on that, maybe one day x)

Is it too late to change my entry as well without being vetoed? Just thought of another idea that didn't come to me last night

^ if you're going to count Charlie/FAANGS there are a few of your other artists (that I know of) who have also been entered under different names! REYNA = Vic And Gab HALIENE = Kelly Sweet SERYABKINA (as she seems to now go by) = MOLLY but conversely the IDA that you sent is not the same as the other artist of that name who was sent a few times before x

Right I have confirmed now - not sure it'll do particularly well but what's new. For the first time in one of these contests I'm sending a song that I actually remember from when it originally came out!

I'm brainstorming xx

Looks like quite a good semi draw for me again yay ~ sending a darkwave song worked well for me in the last retro song contest so sticking with the theme for this! (I am laughing a bit at dandy*'s last post though as it describes my entry perfectly even down to the switchup ending x) As per usual of late most of the songs I already know are just because they were already in the PopJustice Song Contest - ORKID and Rochelle Jordan both came top 5 in the edition that just finished (2nd and 5th), I can definitely see the former also doing quite well here, not as confident as I'd like to be on the latter considering it's easily my favourite of the songs I do already know but hopefully it will be at the very least a qualifier after Rochelle's 2 previous entries both DNQed. The other former PJSC entries are Ashley Sienna, Kat Cunning, Maria Sur and TSHA, none of which I particularly remember (they came 6th, 27th, 3rd and 8th respectively if anyone wondered). Those aside I think the only other song I've already heard is Pearly Drops, which I also don't recall that well but I think I do remember liking it. We do love to see the recaps again *.* and thanks Jade for saving me some effort by making the YouTube playlists already and offering to host the listenthroughs x I am forced to stan Scotland 2 swinging around from the longest entry last contest to the shortest this contest. République d'Áskorza's record for shortest qualifying song potentially only standing for one month... (also at worstie Callum being the saviour of the #longsongbloc just as we all expected). Just a quick FYI that the song you tried (which someone else also tried this month!) wouldn't have been allowed as it is the song that came top 3 for her in the Pop Forum Song Contest... and you didn't vote for it there #exposedT Am I missing something here or is it just that she's a member of WagakkiBand? (which was noted in the research, they're not that big of a name x)

Oop I was trying to be careful to look out for any potential clashes as I am being lazy only putting the song titles but I missed this one - yes it is for Harry. (Lowkey the Tia Kofi song is not that bad though, far better than the original by Lena x)