Michael Bubré

I am, yes x https://sync-tube.de/room/ApAM3t-I Will start quite soon after 8pm, apols for the short notice link posting again

You baited me successfully Willing this to do well x

Most likely Wednesday unless people object x Semi 1 was strong (especially the first half), have got at least 14 points-worthy songs in there - going to send my biggest hypes from first impressions to what I think is a quite diverse sounding trio of A-Konohagakure, Dalisska and Mothertopia.

I am home in time after all but thank you Iz for stepping in (for the very taxing task of copy and pasting a link or two x)

It wasn't yet yet

Oop due to some unforeseen circumstances ~ I don't think I should commit to hosting a listenthrough today, I'm not sure I'll be online for 8pm. If someone else could host today that'd be fab and I'll join when/if I can x (I might still be back in time but unsure)

B L O B B Y

Aside x Semi 1 listenthrough tomorrow (Monday) evening? I'm happy to host (provided I am awake at 8pm etc.) Thanks Rich for sorting out the YouTube playlists and saving me the effort, 2 contests in a row, blessed by our recent hosts 😎

Can we normalise waiting until we've actually heard the songs to name potential winners rather than just assuming the contenders will be whichever songs people already know before the contest x (disregarding that that has kind of ended up being the case a few times recently, but it certainly wasn't last month, Mattias aside). Hmm it wasn't quite the lore that was being set up for this contest which will now forever remain a mystery but still 2 nepo siblings in this contest (Absolutely being RAYE's sister and hannah bahng being Bang Chan from Stray Kids' sister). James Ferraro found rotting Yes, Lentyll's original run in the contest (as New Rivermaya) ended in BJSC 22 so they had a gap of 157 contests before returning! Stats dump time x Dalisska's gap of 97 contests is the 4th longest ever though so quite a coincidence that it happens to be dwarfed by another returnee in the same month. (The 2nd longest was also this year - Yuxhaaq returning in BJSC 172 after a 125 contest gap - and the 3rd longest was Land of Jack returning in BJSC 153 after a 105 contest gap). There have been 2 cases before of countries returning from long breaks and winning straight away, FARC with SOHN in BJSC 62 after a 45 contest gap and N DNTN with Doss in BJSC 133 after a 31 contest gap. Surprisingly only 3 other winners were return entries at all and all of those were after missing just 1 contest! (Medhelnia with Clare Maguire in BJSC 98, Ojnoj with Kim Petras in BJSC 102 and most recently Fljótavík with Ninajirachi just a few months ago in BJSC 176).

Lovely to have you back again! (I still remember your last entry from nearly a decade ago... looking back it didn't quite make my semi-final votes surprisingly but it was in the contest that I still think of as probably the highest quality one ever and I think it may have been one that grew on me more after the contest. Hope you may have better luck with this comeback, looks like an interesting one).

+5 Century +4 WHERE IS MY HUSBAND! +3 Raindance +2 The Fate Of Ophelia +1 So Easy (To Fall In Love) -1 Man I Need -2 Last Christmas -3 Rein Me In -4 Golden -5 Opalite I want to get back to voting in these again anyway but straying in to give EsDeeKid some support mainly xx The top 2 are way ahead of the rest for me (the RAYE song grew on me a lot after being mixed on it at first) and then another big gap between 5th and 6th.

I will have heard 'Spark' once before as I was there for a listenthrough Dandy organised for that album in the retro forum a couple of years ago but I'd be lying if I said I remember what I thought of it (doesn't help that I forgot to post in the thread about it), I'll see if it comes back to me when I hear it. I know 'Hotel' was my favourite song from the album though as I did save it in one of my playlists x

Oh if we're doing strobe warnings my video should probably have one too (the YouTube description specifically warns of 'flashing images and high levels of spiritual brainwashing' ) We're not being epileptic friendly this month apparently x

Lucrative sponsors xx

Anyhoo - looks like random.org has been fairly kind to me again I think, seeing a good amount of people who I hope might be the target audience for this kind of thing so fingers crossed to round the year out with 9/10 qualifiers (I did 8/10 both of the last two years). We also look to have ended up with quite imbalanced semi-final lengths by random chance again as well - this time there aren't any excessively long entries but based on Spotify semi 2 is still ~18 minutes longer than semi 1. Semi 1 has no songs over 5 minutes long but semi 2 has 3 songs that are over 7 minutes and another over 6 minutes! Aside, when I was checking during the confirmation period the Sukatani song was not available on Spotify (at least in the UK) but I see it's there now so must have just been a temporary issue, good timing for it to be back! I do remember them via the Fantano video Cow posted in his national thread regarding another song of theirs that they had to take down due to political pressure so I wondered if that might have been the case with this song too... I think there are more songs in this that I've already heard than there have been in most recent contests - Utopia's entry is a little on the cheeky side (that was the one I was kind of expecting to attract some 'controversy', not bbno$ lol - I really wouldn't have thought he's that relevant to BuzzJack demographics outside of his 2 hits) but it is excellent as Daniel Avery tends to be so happy for more people to hear it, I also remember really enjoying the Trifoski entry when seven sent it on PopJustice a while back.

Literally got 0 veto points. This was why I made this post the other day x (these are... not the songs I expected people to take issue with here )

Certainly not as tasteful as the posthumous 2Pac #1 but I do have a soft spot for 'Nasty Girl' (albeit one I'd definitely be less inclined to want to listen to again these days for obvious reasons). I don't think I actually knew that it was just based off one of the songs from 'Life After Death'! Chris Brown's catalogue is mostly easy to dismiss for just not being very good regardless of what you make of him as a person but I still think 'Run It!' is a banger and his best song, if he had to have a UK #1 I'd have greatly preferred it to be that over the song that did eventually get him one.

Oop I completely missed this thread until just now! Nice theme choice. I think in general top 10 hits are prohibited but anything that charted lower should be fair game as long as it's not very well known indeed.

Ooh welcome back to the freshly rebranded Lentyll from Persephonia My participation just about overlapped with your original run for all of 3 contests (back when we were called Egabbac x). I did wonder if you might be plotting a return at some point as I've seen you lurking as well as entering a few of the other song contests around the site lately. A gap of 157 contests between entries makes you instantly a record breaker, the second time that record has been broken this year following Yuxhaaq making a cameo return after 125 contests away.

BTW yes if songs were sent to song contests elsewhere on the site it will be picked up in research but it's not an auto-veto (that's only for songs that were previously in BJSC or BJSC spinoffs), just something that'll be considered.

10+ songs DNQing per semi was the norm for quite some time! (And tsss Rob acting as if he doesn't have like a 98% chance of qualifying no matter how many entries there are xx). I've not minded having some smaller semis recently but it's good to at least occasionally have more of a test to the long Q streaks. x Don't think we'll quite be reaching 10 DNQs per semi this month though, we'd need to have a couple more last minute returning nations as well as getting all of the remaining countries who entered last month (minus Hushky). I've been hiding for a couple of days so a belated welcome back to Dalisska *.* + Aesthetica and Utopia albeit from much shorter absences. That Madison Beer song is a banger (I remember strongly disliking her previous BJSC entries but she's made some great songs more recently) but yes, nice try! You weren't the only person to try and send a song that's in the current Multichart top 40 tbf, but the other one got reconfirmed before it was formally vetoed. I've confirmed now - was procrastinating all week on looking for a new song but then Reddit delivered on quickly giving me an artist with eye catching genre tags. Rounding out the year with a post-punk adjacent entry with African influences, reminds me a bit of Ibibio Sound Machine but with a punkier edge. Obsessed already x (and as with so many artists, they can previously be found appearing in an uhsting chart but no other mentions on the site).

I also knew 'Enter The Ninja' before 'Butterfly', I still prefer Yo-Landi's take on it tbh x I was not that keen on 'Sulk' at the time it was entered (and it's only grown on me a little since) but have been a big fan of almost everything I've heard from TR/ST since, including 'Capitol', so was good to be able to get behind him winning the second time around! BJSC 100 was indeed by far the largest contest (152 was the second biggest with 74 entries) and the only one to use the 18 point system in the semis, quite hard to imagine we'd ever reach those numbers again now but who knows. There are still 9 countries whose last appearance was in BJSC 100.

Chico a legend obvz xx

Sandi Thom is the first one here that I'd rank a good bit higher myself / am surprised to see it so low, I didn't realise it evoked so much ire, admittedly I don't think too deeply about the lyrics as per but it's a catchy and pretty unique song and the background of it being one of the first 'viral' hits is some fun nostalgia. Also as Rich already mentioned, the fact she released a greatest hits album is pretty iconic, I remember using that for a round of Album Cover Puzzle I think I'd rank it somewhere near the top 10 of the year myself. Almost all of the XF winner songs just blend into the same formulaic inessential mess to me and Leona is no different, the fact it was a cover of a song used as an American Idol winner's single just cheapens it further. Leona had some good songs later on though ofc.

https://sync-tube.de/room/ApAM3t-I Listenthrough starting shortly