#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists

[johannesviii]

Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2023

What a weird year for pop music, full of strange trends, confusing garbage and unexpected hits. Once again, even if the charts don’t always reflect it, music as a whole is currently very interesting to follow closely.

Disclaimers / Rules:

I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these lists. There’s songs that charted in my country way higher than they did in the US, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

No song that I already put on a previous list is elligible.

No old hit song that is re-charting due to a holiday or a trend is elligible either.

Of course there will probably be stuff in French somewhere on this post. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible.

I have sound-to-color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

A lot of bad stuff happened to me this year (several accidents in a row, and also my cat died) but some good stuff too, thank goodness. I only went to two concerts this year (Bloodywood and BMTH), but they were both absolutely amazing. Pretty sure the Bring Me The Horizon one was the best concert I ever went to, actually, and there's a lot of competition considering all the great ones I went to in 2022. I'm just sad 100 gecs had to cancel theirs, I was really looking forward to it. Oh well.

Let’s start with the good or interesting albums that came out in 2023, and oh my, that's a long list already.

Albums

Starting as usual with stuff that disappointed me: Depeche Mode's Memento Mori was... actually it was all right, but I miss the days when I could get excited about a new Depeche Mode album, I really do.

Pink Tape by Lil Uzi Vert was a giant fucking mess. There's some absolute bangers on it, and then you get to the next track and it's the worst thing you've ever heard. Which makes for an interesting listening experience, for sure, but one I'm in no hurry to repeat. At least it's never boring.

After the Magic by Parannoul isn't exactly my cup of tea, but you should definitely listen to it once, I think. It's something special. It might grow on me, though, because I only listened to it for the first time last month.

On the other hand, I listened to Scaring the hoes by Jpegmafia and Danny Brown a while ago, and while this one is definitely not my cup of tea, it's also a ton of fun and I don't feel like a single second of my time was wasted on it. You should listen to it for the samples alone, and just out of sheer curiosity if nothing else.

A kiss for the whole world by Enter Shikari is a weird beast, because the singles are absolutely incredible, but then the rest is a big pile of nothing (at least in my opinion). But the singles, man. I really don't know how to judge it as a whole, the quality is on a rollercoaster.

Kind of the same thing happened with Electric Sun by VNV Nation, one of my favorite bands of all times if not my favorite, if you recall. Some tracks completely floored me, the rest was meh. Oh well. Noire was so incredibly good that I can live with an average VNV album dropping after it.

Fanfare by Dorian Electra was full of absolute bangers but... I don't know, there's some of the madness of the previous record missing. And yes, I'm saying the album containing the minion line (you know the one) is more serious than My Agenda. Go figure. But it's still very good!

Two different friends told me to listen to 4D by Blank Banshee, so I did, obviously. Great electro album. Send tweet

I'm not entirely sure what to think of Atta by Sigur Rós. I cried several times while listening to it for the first time and it's a genuinely impressive series of tracks, but it's also so devastating I've only relistened to it twice since then.

I only discovered Svalbard a couple of years ago, and this year they dropped The weight of the mask, which might be even better than their previous album. It's mostly about depression and trying to fake normality while being depressed. Not a very pleasant topic, and yet this is full of energy and... hope? Everything sounds unbearably bright and between the screams, you feel like everything will be better eventually. Great stuff.

Speaking of depression, there's also No joy by Spanish Love Songs. If you recall their previous album was my album of the year a few lists ago. Their sound changed slightly, and at times it almost sounds like The Killers, but not in a bad way. There's a couple of tracks I don't like very much, but the writing is still on point, and some tracks are among my faves I put in the "unelligible songs" part.

Census Designated by Jane Remover, on the other hand, came out of nowhere just to kick me in the face. I don't even know what to say about that one. Go listen to it.

I found Gunship almost by accident a few months ago, and they immediately dropped a new album, called Unicorn. It's just a huge pile of great synthpop through and through - if you don't mind a couple of really stupid lines (godddd that third track is full of them). The other downside is that it's way too long (more than an hour), and if it was up to me, I'd remove at least four tracks from it. Unlike...

...10000 gecs by, who else, 100 gecs. It's less than half an hour long and it's so fun and so varied in its sounds and so stupid while still being incredibly well produced. For the longest time I couldn't decide which one of the last five albums on this list was my favorite, and then I relistened to all of them in a row and felt compelled to play this one a second time after I was done. Definitely worth the wait.

Unelligible Songs

This is kind of a non-hits rec list of sorts, but you know the drill. I also have to mention that two songs from previous lists (The Magic Key by One-T and Dernière Danse by Kyo 2003 represents) recharted this year for some unfathomable reason.

Gonna start with my fave tracks on some of the albums I already mentioned. Because why not.

The only song I consider great on the Depeche Mode album was People are good which sounds like character development considering People are people also exists

Speaking of Depeche Mode, one band arguably out-depeche-moded them this year so let me introduce you to ††† (Crosses) with Ghost ride, Invisible hand and Holier

Lil Uzi Vert is next with Suicide doors and its deranged intro immediately followed by FUCK YOU, AND FUCK YOUR BITCH then Uzi following that by stating they're the Crow. Yes, really. Also there's Werewolf, literally a Bring Me The Horizon song with Lil Uzi Vert on it, and if I had a nickel every time that happened this year I'd have two nickels, which isn't much but-

Wait let me interrupt this list with another song called Werewolf which I've listened to WAY too much this year. It's the kind of song you listen to ironically at first but after the tenth time that happens you realise it's no longer ironic and you love it for real. Seeing Motionless In White live kinda helped, not gonna lie, but still

For Enter Shikari, we have A kiss for the whole world, Bloodshot, and especially [pls] set me on fire, which might be one of my most listened to tracks of 2023, actually

VNV Nation had Wait, Invictus, and Artifice, which are all absolute bangers in my opinion. Ronan is angry and we love to hear it

By the way this year Pink released an extremely VNV-like song called Trustfall and it's very good but also uncanny

Kylie Minogue is also doing something vaguely similar with Hold on to now but in a more mainstream normal way btw

And then for something completely different, we have Dorian Electra singing about obsessive fans on Symphony, fame on Wanna be a star, and most importantly writing anon hate and immediately deleting it on anon

Run is the first track of the Blank Banshee album I rec'd and it's only one minute long so listen to it maybe

Technically I can recommend Gold if you want some taste of the Sigur Rós album but you need to listen to the entire album to get the full crushing effect

Svalbard isn't going to lighten up the mood with How to Swim Down and Faking it

Neither is Spanish Long Songs with Clean-up crew, Marvel, Here you are and Lifers, the last one being notable for having what's possibly my fave bridge of the entire year, and all of them for being endlessly quotable. Stay alive out of spite everyone

Also not lightening up the mood is Jane Remover with Census Designated on the album also called Census Designated

But what's this? It's Gunship with a steel chair trying to punch some joy into this list with Holographic heart, Nuclear Date Night, Taste like venom and Monster in paradise!!

And the gecs with a second steel ch- wait no it's a plastic chair shaped like a frog. Anyway here's Dumbest girl alive and Hollywood baby, and both of them go wayyy harder than they have any rights to

ok that was a lot of songs already. Here's Everything goes on by Porter Robinson as a palate cleanser

Also the first reggaeton song to ever end on one of my playlists, Sci-fi by Tainy and Rauw Alejandro

Also I'm gonna put a gif here otherwise Tumblr won't let me post something with such a long uninterrupted list in it

Ok back to the list of recs

Let's get the humiliation out of the way and say that this year I listened to Raining blood but it's super emo more than I ever listened to Raining blood in all my years combined

Oh yeah and Linkin Park released some old (finished and unfinished) tracks from the Meteora era and I'm kinda pissed off cause Lost missed the year end list. Fighting myself is excellent too, and if you want a really heartwrenching unfinished track, Resolution has a giant Chester-shaped hole where its chorus should be and the lyrics make it even worse. You're welcome

Possibly the most mainstream song on this entire rec list but I'm also pissed off Bad Idea right? by Olivia Rodrigo didn't chart enough to count for my top ten hit songs

I can offer you Eat the acid by Kesha if you want an awesome but mildly disturbing listening experience

For some electro/future pop here's Head over heels by Solitary Experiments

Wait there's also Bring the noise by Neuroticfish

Over is there if you need some Chvrches doing some Chvrching

Justice for Gladiator by Jann

Pointing at Even Jesus got the blues by Gabe Lee and saying I would listen to more country if it sounded half as good as that song, not like anyone cares

Holding on to nothing by Sierra. Send tweet

Northwind + Sky-colored dream by Strawberry Hospital and Parasite Heart is just seven minutes of cool pastel screams

And for an absolute goth banger everyone collectively decided to ignore here's Train to Harlem by Korine

I can't get enough of Nosebleeder by Lil Lotus and that's probably mildly embarrassing at my age but I've decided to stay mildly embarrassing forever

kisses by Slowdive if you want vibes and vibes only

Blood and sugar by Boys Like Girls if, like me, you want something that sounds exactly like The 1975

Choose your fighter by Ava Max if you want something that sounds exactly like Barbie Girl

I really wish I could explain what my feelings are every time I listen to The King by Anjimile but the only thing I'm sure about is that I'm feeling something a LOT and that it's terrifying

On a lighter note here's Mall rat by Durry, a very upbeat pop punk song about mall goth teenagers having fun and it's extremely good, listen to it immediately if you're having a bad day

And as some of you might have expected because of that previous gif, we're gonna finish with some Bring Me The Horizon, who have joined my list of favorite bands alarmingly quickly (that new album can't drop soon enough), and let's just say LosT and especially AmEN! were some of my absolute fave non-hit songs this year. Seriously. What the fuck was that.

And now, some elligible hits that didn't make the list.

Honorable Mentions

Tiki Taka (Vacra) - Afrobeats is the best thing that happened to the charts in recent years.

Shining Light (Aime Simone) - I wish I liked that artist more.

Unholy (Sam Smith & Kim Petras) - At first I didn't like this one, and then I headcanoned Kim Petras as a girl in a confessional and Sam Smith as the priest on the other side looking concerned but also weirdly into it, and suddenly it was a really funny song.

Dance the night away (Dua Lipa) - I'm pretty sure that's the song Chained to the Rhythm by Katy Perry is talking about

Casanova (Soolking) - This is a borderline guilty pleasure, and also it sounds like Magic System. Which is a bonus, by the way.

Calm Down (Rema) - Afrobeats is the best thing that happened to the charts in recent years 2: the sequel

Rush (Ayra Starr) - Afrobeats is the best thing that happened to the charts in recent years 3: the sequel to the sequel

Strangers (Kenya Grace) - Very good low-key track to play when you're driving at night

Bloody Mary (Lady Gaga) - What can I say. It's Lady Gaga. It's good.

I remember everything (Zach Bryan) - And for "songs that would be on the list if I had good taste-"

Going going gone (Luke Combs) - The last cut from the list. Great earworm, good writing.

THE ACTUAL TOP TEN LIST

This is a very solid list, actually. All of these things are still on some of my playlists to this day.

10 - Bad Habit (Steve Lacy)

US: #39 / FR: Not on the list

This was the last cut from my 2022 top 10 and it was a painful one, so imagine my joy when I saw it was elligible for this year's list too! Welcome back, Steve Lacy, your little song is still an earworm and a half even after all this time.

9 - Cruel Summer (Taylor Swift)

US: #18 / FR: Not on the list

I have no idea how a song that rhymes "oh woah oh" with "summer" can sound so good. Well played, madam. Well played.

8 - Star Walkin' (Lil Nas X)

US: Not on the list / FR: #67

Not the best Lil Nas X song by a mile, and still quite good! It plays a lot at the gym for some reason. The hype is real, even after hearing it pretty much every hour on the hour. And despite that weird, weird line about his dad.

Very surprised it's not on the US year-end list, by the way.

7 - Vois sur ton chemin (Bennett)

US: Not on the list / FR: #69

If you're creeped out by the AI-generated kids in the music video, I think that's kind of the point, which is why I can tolerate it for once.

Anyway, this is a remix of a choir song about lost kids, originally from a retro movie called Les Choristes which came out back when I was a teenager. And now it's been turned into a somewhat creepy techno remix of itself, and you know what's bad about that? Not a single thing actually. Play it again.

6 - Fast Car (covered by Luke Combs)

US: #8 / FR: Not on the list

If you remember correctly, Fast Car was the number one song of the very first list I made in this series (1988). And since this cover is so similar to the original song, I considered making it non-elligible for this list. I counted it in the end but put it kinda low compared to the original. It's only fair.

5 - Anti-hero (Taylor Swift)

US: #4 / FR: Not on the list

I was pretty indifferent to this one at the beginning of the year, but it slowly but surely grew on me. Everything has already been said about this song. So yeah, it's very good. I like it. It's on the list.

Moving on!

4 - Substitution (Purple Disco Machine x Kungs)

US: Not on the list / FR: #56

Some songs just make you want to move every single time you hear them, without fail. The thing is, this one plays a LOT on the radio in public settings, so catch me dancing in the aisles of the local supermarket every time it's on. It's like some memetic SCP bullshit.

At this point, it should be possible to make a great playlist with all the best retro-sounding hits we got in the past five years or so - and yeah, put this one on it too, for sure.

3 - Miracle (Ellie Goulding, Calvin Harris)

US: Not on the list / FR: #51

At some point this was my number one, and can you really blame me? An Ellie Goulding song with a drop that sounds exactly like a Robert Miles track? Really?

Then I realised I loved Robert Miles' tracks because of that dreamy piano/synth melody they all have, and that this song only had a drop/musical chorus that sounded like that, so something was missing. Oh well. Still a fantastic dance track, though.

2 - Escapism (Raye)

US: #48 / FR: Not on the list

Welcome to the other side of most of The Weeknd songs, I guess, but that's also what makes this track so compelling. The intro sounds like anxiety, and even when the song gets more pleasant to listen to it just never goes completely away - just like in the lyrics, in fact. Well written, well produced, everything is on point and if I had better taste it would probably be number one on this list.

Alas, I am what I am.

1 - Just wanna rock (Lil Uzi Vert)

US: #28 / FR: Not on the list

At some point, this was the third song on the list. Why shouldn't it be? It's so brainless compared to Escapism, and laughably short compared to Miracle. It's just a fragment of a song. It sounds like the intro of a track that will never start.

It's also by far my most replayed hit song on this entire top ten list and I can't justify that in any way. So yeah, putting anything else here felt like lying to myself. The fact it never really starts also means the hype never really ends. Going "daaaaaaaaaaaamn" along with Uzi's distorted vocals is so satisfying.

I just wanna rock, man. What a vibe. See you next year!

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music #flashing lights tw #eye contact tw #god that one took ages

[acastleintheair]

Multiples of five?

Dani, you’re the best.

5. do you prefer to drink soda from soda cans, soda bottles, plastic cups or glass cups?

either from a soda can with a straw or from a glass bottle.

10. game you were best at in p.e.?

either volleyball or tennis but I was bad at all of them. I was a swimmer. PE was all about hand-eye coordination. I don’t have that.

15. favorite book you read as a school assignment?

In high school, it was The Great Gatsby because one of my best friends was in class with me and we’d make fun of it. Also during one class we made a list of all the gay things in the book and then I turned that into a paper. I got an A on it. In college so far, it was The Three Body Problem. It’s a Chinese sci-fi novel about an alien invasion. It’s fascinating. It can be difficult to follow at times (there’s a lot of science and math in it) but it’s one of the most realistic alien invasion stories I’ve seen.

20. preferred place to write (i.e., in a note book, on your laptop, sketchpad, post-it notes, etc.)?

already answered! notebook and laptop.

25. first song you remember hearing?

I have a terrible memory so I have no idea. I can tell you that when I was still in the hospital after being born my sister and I watched Britney Spears music videos on MTV.

30. places that you find sacred?

places of worship - churches, monasteries, etc. bodies of water. ruins. forests.

35. average time you fall asleep?

average time I sleep or how long it takes me to fall asleep? it takes me a couple hours at least to fall asleep almost always. I sleep for 6 to 8 hours on a good day during the school year.

40. weirdest thing to ever happen at your school?

really, my high school was super boring. in my creative writing class senior year there was this one dude who got caught saying some racist crap so everyone had to go through race sensitivity lectures. he was a dick and always wrote really vulgar stories. some of them were pretty good, but none of them were appropriate for school.

45. which genre: sci-fi, fantasy or superhero?

all three

50. what made you laugh the hardest you ever have?

I? don’t??? know??? memes are good at making me laugh. the inside jokes I have with my friends at dance are hilarious. we also like to do the most ridiculous dance moves. Dance class in general is just the place for comedy it seems to me.

55. favorite fairy tale?

favorite mainstream fairy tale is probably the little mermaid. favorite lesser known fairy tale is Faithful Johannes.

60. if you were a character in an anime, what kind of anime would you want it to be?

already answered! I’d be happiest in a slice of life anime.

65. any permanent scars?

not really. my skin marks up really easily, but those marks tend to fade and disappear with time. (by time, I mean years tho)

70. left or right handed?

left-handed!

75. when did you lose your first tooth?

no idea! I remember one tooth I lost. I went to the bathroom, as one does when they’re about to leave the house for things, and noticed a tooth was loose so I wiggled it (as you’re not supposed to do) and it got hella loose. So I went to my mom and showed it to her as she was busy trying to get ready to go out. She looked at it and plucked it out of my mouth.

80. earth tones or jewel tones?

already answered! jewel tones.

85. fairy tales or mythology?

mythology 110%

90. luckiest mistake?

no idea. my mistakes tend to be catastrophic.

95.  favorite app on your phone?

hmm probably chrome. I spend all of my time on it reading fic on ao3 so I guess it’s my favorite.

#starsandsupernovae #ask games #long post

[johannesviii]

Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2022

Another pretty decent year for pop music ; a very slow one, with a lot of trash, but the good stuff was so good making a top 10 took me ages, unlike 2021 where it was way easier. Outside of the top 100, some incredible stuff dropped this year too, so yeah - even if the charts don't always reflect it, music as a whole is currently very interesting to follow.

Disclaimers / Rules:

I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these lists. There’s songs that charted in my country way higher than they did in the US, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

No song that I already put on a previous list is elligible.

No old hit song that is re-charting due to a holiday or a trend is elligible either.

Of course there will probably be stuff in French somewhere on this post. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible.

I have sound-to-color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

So. Uh. Again, again. How was your 2022??

Still didn't catch covid but I did catch a very nasty cold a month ago. Still drawing and writing a lot, and also spending more and more time customising my clothes with dumb patches and embroidered messages and stuff.

I went to a LOT of concerts this year, and they were all fantastic for completely different reasons! I'm so glad I finally have the budget to do this without feeling guilty or cutting down some more vital stuff. So yeah. I went to see My Chemical Romance, The Soft Moon, Sigur Ros, Placebo and Enter Shikari. Before that the last concert I had attended was VNV Nation all the way back in 2019!

Speaking of which, let’s start with the good or interesting albums that came out in 2022 or in late 2021, and this is going to be pretty long.

Albums

I have to mention that I tried to get into Ghost this year. It's definitely not for me apart from a couple of songs, but also, Impera was pretty bad. Probably wasn't a good idea to start listening to these guys in their current era.

I also have to mention that I've been thoroughly disappointed by Mainstream Sellout, because I'm one of those weirdos who actually liked Tickets to my Downfall by Machine Gun Kelly. But yeah, the guy became self-aware, and that's the worst thing that could possibly happen. Awful. Emo Girl is unintentionally funny, though.

Not sure this counts as an "album" since it's an EP, and a five minutes-long one at that, but Snake Eyes by 100 Gecs made me even more excited for their new album in 2023.

Electric Callboy's Tekkno is dumb and funny in all the right ways and I'm glad they got so much positive attention out of it. That's trolling with actual effort and passion put into it and it's kind of a lost art form at this point. The music videos are amazing too.

Rakshak by Bloodywood is exactly the kind of thing Nu Metal needed to move forward and I love the fact that energy came from India, of all places. A lot of fresh ideas, generally interesting topics and politics ; I'm sold. This is great. More, please.

Muna by uh Muna didn't leave much of an impression on me at first but I kept thinking about it and I eventually came back to it to relisten to it several times later in the year. I'm not sure what it means. Probably something good, though. Maybe it will be one of my faves of the year in retrospect..? Also it's very gay, which never hurts.

I'm somewhat conflicted about Being Funny in a Foreign Language by The 1975. Objectively, it's probably their best album ; it's straightforward, it's very well produced, it has a couple of bangers. Subjectively, I'm not even sure I'd place it above Notes on a Conditional Form, which if you recall was a GIGANTIC MESS, just because the highs of this mess were stratospheric compared to the ones the new album has. Still really good, but I miss the chaos.

Death's Dynamic Shroud's Dark Life has SO MANY different ideas going in so many different directions it's kind of a miracle that the album stays so coherent. The colors and the textures are sometimes so complex and layered that just listening to them to try to pick them apart becomes a stim to me. Beautiful.

I only found this album last month but Dimensional Bleed by Holy Fawn is one of the best post rock things I've ever heard since Sigur Ros stopped releasing new music

Exister by The Soft Moon comes so close to being my album of the year. SO close. Among all the musicians trying to become the new Trent Reznor, this guy's the only credible candidate for me, just because he's not afraid to try really weird shit. When I saw him live in October, the last thing he played had a castanets solo over huge electronic beats. And it went hard as hell! I sincerely hope his future stuff will be even better. I'm sold.

But uh. Guys. I'm sorry.

I'm so predictable. Never Let Me Go, Placebo's comeback album, is my favorite album of the year. Of course, when one of my favorite bands ever decided to release new music after nearly ten years of nothing, I was thrilled, but also worried it would disappoint me. The first singles were amazing, but what if? What if the rest of the album wasn't as good? And yet, by the time it was over, I was trying to determine if it was my third or fourth fave album in their discography. Even now, I'd only put Meds and Sleeping With Ghosts above this one. It's distinctly them, but full of new and interesting ideas. I'm beyond happy things turned out so well.

Unelligible Songs

There's a TON of them! Because that year was very good! This is kind of a non-hits rec list of sorts, but you know the drill.

Should I start with some Gecs? I feel like I should start with some Gecs. So here's Doritos and Fritos, Hey Big Man and Torture Me. You're welcome.

While we're at it, if you've never watched any of the recent Electric Callboy music videos, your day is about to get slightly better. I suggest Pump It and Spaceman. Also both are actually good songs on top of being funny.

I might have trashtalked Ghost's new album earlier but Spillways is like Poison 2.0. That's a compliment by the way

I've not always enjoyed what these guys made post-Hot Fuss, but Boy by the Killers should definitely have been a hit.

What I Want by Muna also has this "should have been a huge hit" aura. I'm feeling every line of this chorus in my bones. Best song about delayed adolescence for queer people

Are we making a list of songs that should have been hits? Let me add Metric with What feels like eternity, then

However, American Teenager by Ethel Cain might still have a slight chance of becoming a hit song in the future. I want to believe

Hey do you want some cringe. Cause here's Slaughterhouse by Motionless In White oops

JEZEBEEEEEEEEEEL IF YOU'RE THE HUNTER THEN I'M THE PREYYYYYY

At this point I'm pretty sure I've listened to Precious Hearts by The Birthday Massacre for about six hours over the course of 2022 but since I'm an old idiot who only listens to music through .mp3 files and doesn't use spotify I have no way to check

My very first contact with Bloodywood was Dana Dan, and what a first impression that was. Turn the subtitles on, by the way.

Go_A dropped an absolute banger called Kalyna at the very start of the Ukraine war and it might just be their best track so far.

I am legally obligated to mention The Foundations of Decay by My Chemical Romance. Is it their best song? Hell no. Is it mixed like shit? Yes. Is it way to long? Absolutely. Do I enjoy it? Immensely. Also it had no music video and no promotion. What a power move

Nurture by Porter Robinson, which I mentioned last year as one of my favorite albums in a year full of incredible ones, was still one of my most listened-to albums of 2022, so it feels right to mention a song he released outside of any album this year (Everything Goes On).

Avantasia is back, with a..... an album I didn't like very much, oops, but damn, The Moonflower Society is one of their best songs ever. Long live ridiculous over-the-top power metal with super-serious poetry as lyrics.

Born Yesterday by Quadeca sounds like Sigur Ros trying to make a radio-friendly song, and it sounds absolutely immaculate. Also it's about someone who killed himself just before his birthday and his ghosts deeply regrets that decision

This is not the end by Gareth Emery might be standard EDM, but it's also genuinely comforting to hear these lyrics

I need to put a break here otherwise Tumblr won't let me post this thing. Are you still there? Ok good.

El Alma Que Te Trajo (Safety Trance ft. Arca). Send tweet

It's kind of funny that emo came back a couple of years ago through 8-o-8's and sad rappers with face tattoos. It's even funnier that I genuinely enjoyed some of their stuff. It's even-even funnier that some of them are straight-up doing pop punk stuff now. All of this to say that I love Girl Next Door by Lil Lotus

If you've followed anything in the metal scene this year you already know that Lorna Shore absolutely killed it in 2022. Hell yeah let's put some melodies in deathcore, I'm all for it. Anyway Sun//Eater is great

I should probably recommend some cool music that cool people like before I humiliate myself further by recommending more edgy shit, so this is the perfect time to say that Judgment Bolt, Neon Memories and Messe de E-102 are now permanently etched somewhere in my brain. Seriously please listen to Darklife by Death's Dynamic Shroud if you have the slightest, smallest interest in electronic music I beg you

Ok back to the cringe. Speaking of neons, here's Neon Grave by Dayseeker. I've never liked a song by these guys before so this was a bit of a surprise for me

Also I've listened to it again and again but I still want to cry every time I hear This is what you wanted by Placebo. Not sure why it's my absolute favorite track on an album full of fantastic tracks. Not sure what it says about me. Not sure I want to know

I think I mentioned an Enter Shikari concert. Not sure I can call myself a fan yet, but I spent an ungodly amount of hours listening to their old and new stuff in 2022. Turns out one of my favorite songs they ever made is one of the newest ones, The Void Stares Back. This is exactly the kind of surreal and borderline apocalyptic lyrics I need in my life. I even bought a t-shirt saying "I'm the child with the telescope eyes" at that concert oops

Oh Caroline is one of the best songs The 1975 ever made and, like all my fave songs from that band, it's deeply awkward and embarrassing. It's a guy begging his ex to come back and it gets humiliating. Perfection. Thank you

Just when you thought this list couldn't get worse I'm about to confess I love The Boy in the Black Dress by Yungblud. Can't get the image of a teenager trying to remove his nail polish with his teeth after a teacher told him he looked girly out of my head now. God I love narrative songs so much

We've reached the terminal velocity of musical cringe so here's sTraNgeRs by Bring Me The Horizon because OF FUCKING COURSE I love sTraNgeRs by Bring Me The Horizon. You must be new here. WE'RE DYING TO LIVE AND WE'RE LIVING TO DIIIIIIIIIIE

Also I'm not going to recommend too many the Soft Moon songs but Become the Lies is now a classic for me only six months after it came out, and I've been obsessed with Him (ft Fish Narc, who kills it as the evil twin of the narrator) to the point of making fanart of the mental amv I have for it. Might even upload it after finishing this post, I'm not sure.

Honorable Mentions

Tití me preguntó (Bad Bunny) - I swear I had this song playing in my brain for days and I'm not even sure I like it.

Jour meilleur (Orelsan) - I'm usually not the biggest fan of the guy, but this one is really nice.

As it was (Harry Styles) - Perfectly serviceable little pop tune.

Where are you now (Lost Frequencies) - A great earworm.

Enemy (Imagine Dragons) - Listen. It's bad. But I can't get over the fact that an overly-hated band made a song where the chorus literally screams "EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY ENEMYYYY", it's so much fun to sing along with it

Shivers (Ed Sheeran) - Do I really like Ed Sheeran now. Is this my life. Is this what growing old feels like

Belly Dancer (Imanbek & BYOR) - I'm going to the gym now and this is on their playlist. It's completely brainless but it had a serious chance to end on my actual top ten at some point. I physically can't listen to it without at the very least tapping my foot on the floor.

One Right Now (Post Malone & The Weeknd) - This WAS on my list at some point but I ended up cutting it. Nobody seems to like this song, and I love it for all the wrong reasons. Namely, the fact that a duet between two male singers talking about someone cheating on them sounds like they cheated on each other. And I think that's unintentional comedy gold.

Bad habit (Steve Lacy) - The very last cut I had to make. It's a wonderful song, and I simply adore its vibe, but I tend to lose some interest after 2:20 for some reason. No idea why.

Pretty sure there's nobody still reading this post. Which might be good because there's one deeply humiliating pick on this top ten. Let's do this

THE ACTUAL TOP TEN LIST

10 - Santé (Stromae)

US: Not on the list / FR: #90

I still can't believe this idiot climbed his way out of depression and burnout just to tell every emergency worker to join a union. What a king. Legends only

Also I seriously considered putting it at the top of this list in very early 2022 if the year turned out to be mediocre. I never expected it to be placed so low in the end. That's a good thing, by the way

9 - Break my soul (Beyoncé)

US: #38 / FR: Not on the list

So uh. As far as I know there's still no music video for this one, which is kind of a power move in this day and age, not gonna lie. But yeah. You know me. Can't resist a eurodance diva. And Beyoncé as a eurodance diva is all I ever wanted and more. What the hell happened this year, music-wise, seriously

8 - J'la connais, pt. 1 (Emkal)

US: Not on the list / FR: #89

Okay, the autotune is a bit grating. Doesn't matter.

Look, I usually dislike this kind of songs and singers always talking about girls cheating on them and stuff. But no, this dude right there is singing about people telling him his girlfriend is going to cheat on him, and he basically tells them he trusts her more than them ("Cette fille, j'la connais, eh, mais toi, tu es qui ? On se connaît ?" ("I know that girl, eh - but you? who are you again?"). Very refreshing. Well played, sir.

7 - Thunder (Gabry Ponte)

US: Not on the list / FR: #59

BEHOLD. THERE IS NOW A GOOD SONG CALLED "THUNDER" ON THE CHARTS. AND IT'S COMPLETELY BRAINLESS.

So uh, this one also plays at the gym. It's just some very basic and very commercial EDM. For some reason, it kinda sounds like a pirate song to me, the kind of thing you'd drink to on an adventure or something like that. There's not a lot that can be said about it. The colors are especially trippy, though.

Does it look like I'm stalling for time? Uh, maybe I am.

Oh god, here comes the really embarrassing part.

6 - Bad habits (Ed Sheeran ft Bring Me The Horizon)

US: #13 / FR: #53

So uh. This was in my honorable mentions last year:

And it was slowly exiting the charts when this new version dropped all of a sudden in mid-February, with way more guitars and bombast, and of course Oli Sykes screaming his head out at the end. And it climbed up the charts all over again.

And since I'm a major sucker with no taste, of course I loved it.

Doesn't make up for the fact the lyrics are still very vague and Ed Sheeran is still Ed Sheeran, but clearly that wasn't enough to keep this version of the song off my list. It's enough to make me question my choices, though. Steve Lacy should probably be there instead.

Eh. Too late now.

5 - Numb Little Bug (Em Behold)

US: #32 / FR: Not on the list

I initially put this one higher ; I'm not tired of it or anything, it's just that I don't listen to it as often as some things above it. And it got popular through TikTok, too - I'd ask if the kids are okay, but we all know the answer to that question, I think. I can't get over how brutal these lyrics are for what's essentially a cute pop song. And yeah, that's a huge mood. Do you ever get a little bit tired of life? Yes! Quite often actually! Glad we're all on the same page, at least. It's somewhat comforting.

Imagine how bleak and scary that song would be if it was more serious and less upbeat, though.

Oh. Oh shit.

4 - L'Enfer (Stromae)

US: Not on the list / FR: #46

Guess we don't have to imagine. Guess it already exists. Guess it's on the French year-end chart. And it's absolutely terrifying.

Look, I'm glad Stromae is back. I'm glad he feels better. But uh- yeah. This track is genuinely hard to listen to. I'm pretty sure it's objectively better than the three songs I placed above it, but yeah.

J'ai parfois eu des pensées suicidaires, et j'en suis peu fier (I've had suicidal thoughts at times and I'm not proud of it) On croit parfois que c'est la seule manière de les faire taire (Sometimes you think that's the only way to shut them up) Ces pensées qui me font vivre un enfer (These thoughts that make my life hell)

Yeah.

3 - About Damn Time (Lizzo)

US: #12 / FR: Not on the list

I had a hard time deciding where to rank this song between #3 and #2. Maybe I should say it's a tie. It changes day to day with my mood, really.

But yeah, thank you Lizzo for being a combo breaker in this short series of songs about addiction and depression and death! This one is impossible to resist. You hear it and you just have to move or tap your feet and smile. And-

I'm way too fine to be this stressed, yeah Oh, I'm not the girl I was or used to be, uh Bitch, I might be better

Favorite lyrics of the year? I don't know. Maybe. Amazing, in any case. Thank you for this gift, madam.

2 - That's What I Want (Lil Nas X)

US: #14 / FR: Not on the list

Aaaaaaaaand back to the sadness. Well, not really. The song itself is pretty upbeat. In any case, you've probably seen that one coming from a mile away because of my 2021 Unelligible Songs list:

And yeah! It's elligible at last! I'm so, so happy. And I want Lil Nas X to find love and be happy too. Montero was gay as hell, Industry Baby was a victory lap, but this one? This one is the guy bearing his soul and you can feel it even through the impeccable production and pop sensibilities. Cry your heart out to this upbeat tune, my friend, it's gonna be okay. And we love you.

1 - Meet Me At Our Spot (The Anxiety)

US: #74 / FR: Not on the list

I think I've listened to this one more than any other song this year and yet I'm still not entirely sure why I love it so much, especially considering it took literal months to grow on me. I can't even describe its vibe. Is it melancholy? No, it's too happy. Is it happy then? No, it's too tired. But it has energy, too. Is it romantic? Not really. What is it?

One thing's for sure, whichever vibe it is, I got lost in it for hours, to the point of creating entire scenes set to it in my mind. Which led to drawings. Which led to me inventing characters completely disconnected from the song and writing a story where the initial scene I visualised is only a small one in the grand scheme of things.

There's magic in this song's vibe, and I've been on a quest to transcribe it, and I will probably fail. In the meantime, thank you for meeting me at this spot. It's been a wild ride. See you next year!

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music #eye contact tw #suicidal ideation tw #that's for some of the songs not for me thankfully #this post is a bit late I'm sorry #I had to make most of the gifs myself this time

[johannesviii]

Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2021

A pretty solid year for pop music, all things considered, even if 2020 was juuuuuust a bit better. Outside of the top 100, however, some absolutely incredible stuff dropped this year, and it forced me to make the longest “unelligible songs” list I’ve ever had to make for these posts.

Also I can’t put Blinding Lights at #1 twice according to my own rules, but yeah. Yeah. Still can’t get enough of it.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

No song that I already put on a previous list is elligible.

Of course there will probably be stuff in French somewhere on this post. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound-to-color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

So. Uh. Again. How was your 2021?

Still managed to work from home a lot. Still managed to not catch anything, miraculously. Had to deal with some heavy family drama, but I managed. Also this was the first year I spent without using my deadname for official stuff and yeah. The joy is real. I still miss concerts, and my friends, but hey, they need to stay safe too, so that’s okay. I drew a lot. A looooooot. And I wrote stuff, too. I can’t believe I’m actually writing stories even though “words” are still such a tricky thing for me as a general rule.

-

But oh boy, let’s start with the good or interesting albums that came out in 2021 or in late 2020, because um. Holy Shit?

Coldplay released Music of the Spheres. It’s... not great, actually it’s really bad, but I don’t get the hatred around it, and it has some genuinely excellent singles, and I’m sad none of them is elligible ; see you on the Unelligible Songs list!

I was never fond of Halsey, but the simple fact that Nine Inch Nails contributed to If I can’t have love I want power makes it interesting to me, and there’s some good songs on it (have you heard I am not a woman I’m a god? What a banger). I’ll take it.

Lil Nas X finally has an album, and it’s, of course, Montero, and it absolutely kicks ass, and I hope everyone who kept pretending he was a one hit wonder without any real skills is eating their words now. Because it’s everything I ever wanted from this artist. Too bad my fave song from it has to go on the Unelligible list.

Arca dropped not one, not two, not three but four albums and it was so recent my head is still spinning a bit, to be honest. I’ll talk more about her later, but yeah, for now: Kick ii, Kick iiii and Kick v good

Epica released Omega and I’m pretty much still trying to recover from it too, and the fact it’s in the middle of this list of good albums is very telling about the general quality of music this year. Here’s Abyss of time - Countdown to singularity, you’re welcome.

Sinner Get Ready by Lingua Ignota is impeccable and also absolutely terrifying. That’s it. Send tweet

Porter Robinson released Nurture and I beg you to listen to it in full if you haven’t already. It’s such a great album, with lyrics about overcoming depression and living your life, and struggling to make art but still pulling through, and I can get enough of it. So, so wonderful.

And yeah you expected this but uhhhhhhh Arca also made Kick iii and... excuse me? What is this? Who gave you the right to make that insane blend of musical genres and crank it up to eleven to make it sound almost as abrasive as industrial music? What the f█ck was that. Why can’t I stop listening to it. Why is Ripples so addictive. Why is the last track (Joya) so immaculate compared to everything before it. W H Y

For the life of me, I can’t decide which one of the two final albums I want to talk about is my favorite one, so yeah, f█ck it, you get two “best albums of 2021″. It was nearly THREE because uh, Kick iii exists, but it dropped in December and so it didn’t have as much time to sink in. I’m pretty sure it’s actually better than the other two, but uh. yeah.

The first one is Screen Violence by Chvrches. I swear, I tried to like their previous albums, and there’s a lot of songs I love on them - Under the Tide is one of my favorite songs of all time at that point. But yeah, no, the albums themselves never really clicked for me. And then there was Screen Violence, and I have no idea what happened, but that one clicked for me so hard I’m pretty sure I’ve listened to it half a hundred times since it came out this summer. How not to drown would top my list in a heartbeat if it was elligible. There isn’t a single bad song on that disc. What happened? I have no idea, but I’m so, so glad it exists.

The second one actually came out in 2020, but I only listened to it in full once the physical version dropped in early 2021, and it basically ruled my entire year. Because hi, I’m Johannes, and I have terrible taste in music, and Post Human: Survival Horror by Bring Me The Horizon had exactly ZERO RIGHTS to go that hard. Zero. None. Nada. What the f█ck is this. Oh let’s make an EP where like half the songs are about the pandemic, but with videogame references everywhere, make it sound like basically the entirety of the Scene from 2002 to about 2012, bring Babymetal and Amy Lee and Nova Twins and Yungblud because at this point why not, and just. I don’t know. Light it on fire while screaming “cringe is dead”, maybe?? Only two out of the nine tracks left my current playlist and one of them is an interlude. I think I listened to Parasite Eve and Teardrops on a loop for days. What the f█ck

Uh. Anyway.

-

Unelligible songs. You can see that part as a rec list, maybe? It’s extremely long, sorry. I really loved a lot of things this year, okay?

Let’s go.

I think I should begin this segment with things that were proper hits but didn’t land on the year-end lists, and Diamonds by Sam Smith is a pretty good place to start.

Monsters by All Time Low should have been way bigger than it was.

I was surprised and sad when I realised Drunk (and I don’t wanna go home) by Elle King and Miranda Lambert missed the year-end top 100, and not by much, at that. It’s a lot of fun.

Copied directly from my list of unelligible stuff from 2020: “I still entertain the vague hope that stuff from Machine Gun Kelly will chart higher in 2021 but I doubt it will happen so I might as well tackle it now and say that Bloody Valentine and especially Forget Me Too are both excellent and that it’s a shame radios aren’t playing them more often.” And yeah. I’m very annoyed they weren’t hits in 2021 either.

Coldplay. You all knew this was coming and you already know the songs but ugh, I really wanted to be able to put Higher Power and/or My Universe on the list. I’m a bit sad.

That’s What I Want is my favorite song on Montero by Lil Nas X and I was kind of hoping it would be a bigger hit. Oh well.

If you haven’t clicked on the I am not a woman I’m a god link in the albums list, here’s a second chance to hear an actually good Halsey song. To be honest it’s more like a NIN song featuring Halsey. I know right? What a weird year.

At the opposite end of the spectrum of recs, I Miss 2003 by As It Is pisses me off because I’m the exact type of sucker this was written for, and I know it, and I know I’m basically getting scammed, but I can’t help it. I love it. But yeah, it’s trash. I’m trash.

100 Gecs have a new song called mememe. It’s good. It’s no Money Machine but I’ll take it. Also you have to hear their remix of One Step Closer to believe it. Basically the ultimate culmination of twenty years of Scene culture. We’ve reached the highest point. It’s all downhill from here, folks

Run It by DJ Snake has no right going this hard.

I wanna be your slave by Måneskin has no right going this hard either.

Utopia by The SIDH. I’m not going to say anything else. Just: Utopia by The SIDH. Just click on the link. Please comment if you did, I really want to read some reactions to it.

Hey do you want more cringe. Because uh. I’m not a Vampire (revamped) by Falling In Reverse is great. And I hate the original version. And this one is a serious version, so you already know it’s worse. It still has one of the absolute worst lines in songwriting history according to, uh, me, and that line hasn’t been changed in the new version. But I swear it’s great. I’m not exactly sure why. But I swear it is

Musician by Porter Robinson. Amazing. Fantastic. Immaculate

Look at the Sky, also by Porter Robinson, might be even better? I don’t know. It makes me extremely emotional but also fills me with energy. I cried the first time I heard it. That’s probably a bit humiliating to say. Yeah. I don’t know either.

I don’t live here anymore by The War On Drugs feels like a song that always existed, but no, it’s from last September. What the hell. Who gave you the right to make something so great. Who are you

If there was any justice in the world, Introvert by Little Simz would have been recognised as one of the greatest songs ever made by now. So grand. So beautiful. So intense. Listen to it immediately

Placebo is back, and Placebo is still good, and I’m sorry there’s something in my eye. It’s called Beautiful James. And it starts with “bring me back to life, never let me go”. Yeah. Yeah

Stromae is also back?? And Santé is a song about essential jobs that are badly considered by society. And it’s GREAT. The fact it’s not on the FR year-end list is an outrage.

Prada/Rakata by Arca is beyond hypnotic and I didn’t mention it when I was listing her albums, so I might as well do it now.

Is this the point where I can start to list songs from Chvrches’ Screen Violence? I guess it is. So uh. Good Girls, for a start. Also, Asking for a Friend. And Final Girl which would be the best Cure-like song on the album if the absolutely immaculate How not to Drown featuring Robert Smith didn’t exist. What did we do to deserve this blessing

Okay okay now that I’ve linked some impeccable stuff I HAVE to get one hundred percent cringe on main and list a shit ton of Bring Me The Horizon. There’s Parasite Eve which I inflicted on a friend through our chat’s radio and which, according to said friend who has actual taste, “is... uh... certainly a song”, so you know it has to be great. There’s Teardrops if, like me, a major sucker, you really, really miss Linkin Park. There’s Kingslayer if... if what? If what, exactly? If you wish the second Death Note opening was a duet, maybe? If you want to hear a screamo yelp glitching so hard it makes me laugh every time I listen to the song even if I adore it? I don’t know. I’ll stop here before I recommend the entirety of Post Human: Survival Horror, maybe

Wait no Bring Me The Horizon also released a song that sounds exactly like a deranged version of Justin Bieber singing about dying for you, in increasingly more graphic and horrible metaphors as the song progresses, and I also love it to death. It’s called DiE4u and it sounds NOTHING like the previous ones I’ve listed from them, and yes, the title is written like that. It also has a hyperpop six impala remix called DiE6u. I wish I was making this up. What even is this timeline

-

It’s time for a round of Honorable Mentions for elligible songs, containing a couple of guilty pleasures, as it's often the case.

Alors la zone (Jul) - So bad. Sooooooooo bad. Extremely bad. Awful. Terrible. But it makes me laugh so hard. I can’t help it.

Cabeza (Oboy) - Basically, same here. But it starts with the line “Ils ont grave le seum quand j’bois mon Capri-Sun” (”They hatin’ on me when I drink my Capri-Sun”). What else is there to say

Rasputin (Boney M remix by Majestic) - This would be on the actual list if it was an actual, proper remix. But it’s nearly identical to the original song, so it feels like cheating.

Bad Habits (Ed Sheeran) - Oddly listenable for an Ed Sheeran song. Has one of the worst music videos I’ve ever seen, but yeah.

Astronaut In The Ocean (Masked Wolf) - I wish the lyrics made any sense. Like, at all. It’s very distracting.

Médusa (Landy) - Again, oddly listenable.

Wasted Love (Ofenbach) - Very good but missing something? I’m not exactly sure what, though.

Butter (BTS) - Dynamite was way better. Still good, though.

Take My Breath (The Weeknd) - Don’t get me wrong, it’s very good. But it was a pretty good year for pop music, ok ?

Happier Than Ever (Billie Eilish) - If I had better taste, it would be on the list.

Leave the Door Open (Silk Sonic) - If I had better taste, it would also be on the list. Alas, I am what I am.

And now, the actual list. At last.

10 - Beggin’ (Måneskin)

US: #66 / FR: #34

Yes, it’s extremely rough around the edges. Yes, listening to it makes my throat hurt. Literally. Yes, it’s not their best song by several miles.

Yes, it’s still above all the honorable mentions. I swear I’ve thought long and hard about it, and I stand by this choice.

9 - Therefore I Am (Billie Eilish)

US: #25 / FR: Not on the list

I’m not your friend.

That’s it. That’s my review.

8 - Industry Baby (Lil Nas X)

US: #24 / FR: #25

A lot of people seem to think that one is Lil Nas X’ best single. I just think it’s very good, and to be honest, that’s enough to land on this list. Bragging about your success has rarely felt more deserved, let’s face it.

7 - Save your tears (The Weeknd)

US: #2 / FR: #3

Nearly killed by the overplay, but not quite. Not as good as Blinding Lights or Heartless by a mile, though.

That mile still puts it above a shit ton of stuff on the year-end lists.

6 - Levitating (Dua Lipa)

US: #1 / FR: #10

And for the least surprising pick of all, we have Levitating.

And moving on.

5 - Starting Over (Chris Stapleton)

US: #53 / FR: Not on the list

I’m frankly baffled that what’s essentially a folk song has made its way so high up the US year-end list. Not that I’m complaining, because it’s absolutely wonderful in every way, and it’s sincere and touching and aaaaaa. It’s perfect.

Now you might say that if I had better taste, this would be number one on the list, and you would be absolutely right! But, uh, may I remind you I just recommended FOUR Bring Me The Horizon songs on my unelligible songs list?

So... yeah.

4 - Stay (Justin Bieber & The Kid Laroi)

US: #12 / FR: #21

This happened. I actually love a Justin Bieber song now. It also has The Kid Laroi on it, which should also make it worse. But no. It’s stupidly addictive instead. What the hell happened. Why.

Just for this, I’m glad I always give a chance to every single song I come across even if I usually hate their artist’s stuff. Sometimes, it pays off.

3 - Montero (Lil Nas X)

US: #9 / FR: #5

I’m under the impression the whole drama around the video half-eclipsed the fact that this is a terrific song. Listen to that beat. It’s insanely catchy even if it sounds like goddamn flamenco. How does that even work. I’ve had it in my head for months and it refuses to go away and I’m actually happy about that. And yeah, you might have noticed it’s even higher on the French Year-end list. So yeah, radios here loved it even more. What an earworm.

Also the lyrics are extremely gay. Which doesn’t hurt. Thank you for this gift, good sir. We don’t deserve you.

2 - My Ex’s Best Friend (Machine Gun Kelly ft Blackbear)

US: #23 / FR: Not on the list

You knew this was coming. I’m pretty sure some rotten tomatoes were saved just for the occasion. Because it’s Machine Gun Kelly AND Blackbear, Unlikable F█ckboys Extraordinaires, talking about girls and doing what’s essentially textbook punk-rock in a not-very-original way.

But consider this: as this post has already made pretty clear again and again, I have exactly zero taste, and I’m a massive sucker.

Also, this was my default number one until the French 2021 year-end chart dropped this morning, because uh-

Um-

1 - Cold Heart (Elton John & Dua Lipa)

US: Not on the list / FR: #49

Yeah. No. No way I could put anything else above that one. Not in a million years. Have you heard it? Why isn’t it charting higher on the other side of the Atlantic? What the hell are you all doing? Are you all okay?

It’s so immaculate I have almost nothing to say about it. I’m not even entirely sure I could have put Blinding Lights above it in good conscience if I didn’t have that no-repeats rule for my lists. They’re in the same ballpark of endless replayability and perfection, really.

Oh wait, I do have something to say about it: hearing Dua Lipa sing the line “I’m not the man they think I am at home” is free serotonin. Every. Single. Time. I want to stay in that joyful, peaceful disco universe forever. What a vibe.

-

See you next year! If my predictions from 2019 are correct, pop music should get even better somewhere around 2022/2023, so... yeah! I’m hyped.

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music #eye contact tw

[johannesviii]

5 months ago I started to make a super specific alignment chart of “songs about cool clothes” but I never finished it

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music

[johannesviii]

Remember this French novelty song from my 2009 top ten hit songs list?

The guy just made a 2020 parody of his own song 2 days ago. Instead of him being annoyed by vip clubs and pretentious people, it’s about him being annoyed by guys hoarding toilet paper and by people making a queue to buy pasta.

I love him

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #helmut fritz #music #I wrote something about unexpected comebacks in my 2019 list #but of all people I did NOT expect a Helmut Fritz comeback in 2020 #I'm delighted

[johannesviii]

Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2019

The last list, for now. It’s been a wild ride.

Not the best of these lists, but some really refreshing stuff charted that year, and what was good was super good. And also, here’s a barely elligible #1 that nobody seemed to care about for some reason.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

In 2019, my finger was fixed, I dropkicked depression in the garbage bin (with a little help from Eurovision because it was super good and full of hilarious shit), got married, and went on a roadtrip on Vancouver Island (BC, Canada), and that was my first real travel in 13 years. Met a lot of great people, seen amazing places, trees, bears and whales. And planes are also part of the adventure when you’re not used to them (you can watch movies on little screens from your seat now?? I had no idea. I watched so many movies). It was very exciting.

I also saw VNV Nation live in February, for the third time in six years. This time I had enough budget to buy a tshirt. I wasn’t expecting that concert to be even better than the previous two. At that point the new album had only been out for a couple of months and we still knew the lyrics of most of the new songs and Ronan’s face was constantly broadcasting a kind of “...........how” expression (face it guys, we like you. A lot). And they finished with All Of Our Sins and let me tell you, half the club was ready to start a revolution by the time that was over. Super intense.

Ok. 2019 albums! First, let’s talk about some negative things. Coldplay released Everyday Life at the end of the year. It was... uh. It was basically how I stopped loving their new stuff. That’s a very sad conclusion (for now) to this saga. This is exactly what I feared would have happened after Viva La Vida, aka them trying to go back to their earlier sound - except in the meantime we’ve got three fantastic albums with songs full of energy and joy. So I’m not too mad about this, just disappointed.

Within Temptation released Resist, and it wasn’t very good either, but I appreciated the general aesthetic of it. More SF-themed albums in symphonic metal, please. NF released The Search and while I’m still not a fan there’s a song on it that would have been #1 on this list if it had been elligible, so that’s something. And Carly Rae Jepsen released Dedicated and it was super good so why isn’t she getting new hits. Why. It feels unfair. Oh, and Avantasia made Moonglow and that’s the first time I’ve cared about their stuff in like a decade or so. Ghost In The Moon is super good, check it out.

But the big event of the year music-wise, as far as I’m concerned, was the return of two bands I thought we had lost forever. Of course My Chemical Romance reformed, but they don’t have new music yet, so the main event for this post is the return of Tool with Fear Inoculum. It’s not even their best album, but having a pretty good new Tool album in the year of our lord 2019 wasn’t at all something I was counting on. Of course, the hardcore fans are still as insufferable as ever (insert the “you need a pretty high IQ” copypasta here), but it didn’t spoil my enjoyment of it. Come on! Their first album in 13 years! 80 minutes of hypnotic heavy rhythms and weird shit, an album that trolled me when I opened it by playing a music video while I was looking somewhere else (yeah I jumped), and they even managed to land a track for one week on the US hot 100! Again, Tool! On the hot 100! in 2019! Unbelievable. Are we starting to return to the good timeline? I certainly hope so.

Unelligible songs, now. The Search by NF would have topped this list super easily. Might be one of the songs I listened to the most in 2019, actually. Now That I Found You by Carly Rae Jepsen, again, should have been a hit, and I beg you to watch this music video if you’ve never seen it. The 1975 released the super unexpected People, which was still good, and also Frail State of Mind. And most unexpected of all, three artists I didn’t care about at all teamed up and made absolute gold: I Think I’m OKAY, by Machine Gun Kelly, YUNGBLUD and Travis Barker. That would have been the second slot on this list if it had been elligible. Or maybe the first, even? Not sure. I’m just so happy this kind of angry but uplifting music is starting to become popular again. I just love everything about this song.

Here’s a short list of honorable mentions!

Roi (Bilal Hassani) - I don’t like this song a lot, but I do like it, I’m glad it was our song for the ESC 2019, and Bilal is a very nice and endearing person, and everyone who disrespects him on twitter is free to come fight me in the pit, where I’m still waiting with that tambourine from my 1992 list.

Con Calma (Daddy Yankee, Katy Perry, Snow) - You already know I liked the original Informer a lot, so I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t pleased to hear this clone of it on the radio.

Breathin’ (Ariana Grande) - Here’s the usual “if I had better taste this would be higher” honorable mention.

Summer Days (Martin Garrix) - In the absence of any new hit song from Macklemore this will do in a pinch.

Circles (Post Malone) - The fact that everyone seems to adore this and I’m over there saying “it’s ok I guess” probably means I will never love Post Malone nor understand the hype about him, and that’s okay, I can live with that.

High Hopes (Panic! At the Disco) - Still elligible. Still good but too borderline annoying to make the list.

How Do You Sleep (Sam Smith) - This year Sam Smith pulled a Viva La Vida and decided to stop making boring music all of a sudden and I’m LIVING FOR THIS. I certainly hope they continue in that direction.

And now, the list.

10 - La Grenade (Clara Luciani)

US: Not on the list / FR: #55

The only semi-filler on the list. I still like it a lot. Don’t have anything to say about it, though.

9 - Panini (Lil Nas X)

US: #40 / FR: Not on the list

Wasn’t too impressed by this at first and it took a while to grow on me, but the chorus is a nice little earworm, and “hey panini, don’t you be a meanie” has a tendency to pop in my head when I read hateful comments on the internet now. And Lil Nas X is just too endearing to be ignored. We’re so lucky to have someone who became famous so quickly and instantly decided to dress like a Jojo character and have the geekiest music videos possible and still be super nice and humble. We don’t deserve this guy.

8 - Dance Monkey (Tones And I)

US: Not on the list / FR: #6

I’m super glad the US are finally getting on the hype train in 2020 because this is a ton of fun. If the voice was juuuuuust a little less grating this would be even higher. Impossible to get it out of your head and somehow in this case that’s a good thing.

7 - Dancing With a Stranger (Sam Smith & Normani)

US: #14 / FR: Not on the list

As I said in the honorable mentions, Sam Smith pulled a Viva La Vida and decided to stop making boring music all of a sudden and I couldn’t be happier about that. This song is still a bit too calm for my taste most of the time, but when I’m in the right mood, it’s just fantastic.

Again, I hope Sam Smith continues in that direction, because if you had told me a couple of years ago that I would start to like their stuff one day, I would have laughed out loud.

6 - Bad Guy (Billie Eilish)

US: #4 / FR: #16

Duh.

I’m not as enthusiastic about When The Party’s Over as a ton of people are, mostly because, well, it’s a slow emotional song with little to no colour in it and by now you’re already aware I tend to have next to zero interest in that kind of songs. Bad Guy, on the other hand, is half hilarious half scary in equal doses, and even if I’m not super fond of the weird outro, it’s still a fantastic, weird as shit song, and I’m really glad Billie Eilish exists. Can’t wait to see where she goes from there.

I’m super glad this song didn’t come out when I was a teenager myself though. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I would have survived if the musical landscape from 16 years ago had been as depressed as it currently is. Thank god music is slowly getting more energetic again in 2020. Let’s stay on that track.

5 - Hey Look Ma I Made It (Panic! At The Disco)

US: #61 / FR: Not on the list

I follow several music critics on youtube and over the course of 2019, I’ve seen undiluted vitriol and hatred against this song (Spectrum Pulse even made a list of his “worst hit songs” of the decade and put this one at #10! TEN!!). And... I don’t really get where it’s coming from? Maybe I’m too literal-minded to see what the problem is with a sarcastic song saying “look I sold out and now I found success again! And it’s not that great!”. I just think it’s a lot of fun. Thank god Todd put it on his best list, at least we can agree on one thing for once.

It is hilarious that after putting so many Fall Out Boy songs on my lists, the one that I love the most from Panic! is the sellout song. Not sure why this was huge while the even better Say Amen wasn’t, though.

4 - Sunflower (Swae Lee & Post Malone)

US: #2 / FR: Not on the list

I usually don’t get the “chill” songs that tend to be successful these days but this one, unlike most Post Malone songs (bar Circles), has lovely pastel colors and a cloudy texture and it’s a really good vibe. It took several months to grow on me but it sure did.

In about ten years, people will listen to Sunflower and be submerged by nostalgia, mark my words.

3 - Old Town Road (Lil Nas X)

US: #1 / FR: #1 (see, everyone agrees for once)

Everyone on the planet already wrote a thinkpiece about this song and yet I’ve only seen maybe one out of five mentioning, just in passing, that the entire song is based on a Nine Inch Nail track from Ghosts I-IV, superbly re-used to make a weird and insanely catchy country hip hop song out of it. Ghosts has been one of my go-to albums to listen to while I’m painting for about ten years now. I’m saying all this because hearing a track from Ghosts on the radio for months was absolute bliss for me, especially in a new and improved version.

Thank you Lil Nas X for everything you’ve been doing and I wish you a long and successful career. You deserve it. I love this and I love you.

2 - Bury A Friend (Billie Eilish)

US: #73 / FR: Not on the list

Hello again, Billie Eilish.

This song is absolutely terrifying and that was before I even saw the music video. This is the soundtrack of your nightmares right there. I’m not even sure it deserves to be so high on the list, but frankly I’m too terrified to care. Maybe Old Town Road should be higher. I don’t know.

Also you have to know that when I’m super tired I go into echolalia mode and automatically repeat words or entire sentences that my brain considers interesting, like “potiron” (pumpkin) or “dramatique” ; and recently, my brain decided “when we all fall asleep, where do we go?”, sung exactly like it’s sung in this song, was its new favorite sentence. So. Hearing yourself saying that to an empty room while you’re drawing or folding clothes or cleaning plates is not a very pleasant experience, and it makes this song extra scary to me.

And now, here’s the last #1 of the last one of these lists (for now), and I’m glad to announce it closes this series of posts in a super fitting way.

Check this out. It’s so perfect in every way.

1 - Walk Me Home (Pink)

US: #99 / FR: Not on the list

Nobody seemed to care about this song over the course of 2019, and it's barely elligible, and I still have no idea why. The music reviewers I follow only either talked about it super briefly when it came out, or not at all. The rare ones who were making top 100s at the end of the year instead of top 10s usually put it somewhere in the middle of their lists. And yet it’s the elligible song I’ve listened to the most.

If you’ve been reading this series of posts for a while now, you probably already know exactly why it’s here, but here’s a quick recap.

The second album I ever bought in my life was Pink’s Missundaztood in 2002, and I loved her music a lot:

I was still really fond of her stuff in 2007:

Then she started to become less interesting and I basically ignored her apart from a brief blip on my radar in 2017:

Meanwhile, in 2012, fun. made some of the best songs of the entire decade before vanishing instantly, and I’ve been mourning them ever since:

And in the middle of last year, here I am, listening to the radio, and suddenly I hear something that sounds exactly like a fun. song, except I’ve never heard it before and it’s sung by a female singer, and, most importantly, it’s 2019 and fun. broke up more than six years earlier. And I’m like, what’s going on. This is so good. What the hell. What is this.

And I hear it a second time weeks later, and I google it, and I discovered that 1) it was Pink singing this, which made it my favorite Pink song in literally more than ten years, and 2) it was, indeed, written by one of the guys from fun., among other people who’s influence is less obvious.

I guess the main lesson from 2019, between newcomers making great music based on dead trends, old groups reforming, and this song, is that nothing’s gone forever, and things you used to enjoy can come back at the most unexpected time and in the most unexpected form.

There’s always, always gonna be new music to love, and it’s just a question of time.

Quick note

And with this, these lists are over... for now.

I don’t regret making them even if they were a ton of work, because that was super useful for a lot of different reasons.

They helped me get a better understanding of my own life’s chronology. That may sound stupid but I tend to link events to the music I was listening to at the time, and putting all that music in chronological order helped a lot.

I rediscovered a ton of songs I had completely forgotten about, and a lot of new ones. My playlist is much richer now and I’m happy about that.

I also discovered a few artists I knew nothing about.

It forced me to analyse two depressive episodes in my life and just because everything was now in exact chronological order, it accidentally helped me pinpoint what caused both of them. Better and cheaper than therapy. Impressive.

It made me realise how important some bands and artists had been in my life, and I relistened to some of their catalogue while making these lists. For some it was really obvious (Indochine, Placebo, Mylène Farmer, My Chemical Romance among some others), and for some others (Moby, Linkin Park, Mika in particular), it was a real surprise.

It made me realise that Placebo might have been huge in France but weirdly enough not that huge in the UK nor in the US. It’s especially striking when you look at their wikipedia page in English then in French and realise how detailed the French one is compared to the English one. Can’t believe Sleeping With Ghosts was a n°1 album here and basically nowhere else. That was the band where that discrepency was the most obvious but it wasn’t the only one like that. Really puts stuff in perspective.

It also helped me realise how cyclical popular music is. 1) trends tend to die near the end of every decade and the worst year is usually somewhere between the 8th and the 9th year. 2008 and 2018 tend to confirm this. 2) For the same reason, some new & interesting stuff appears at the beginning of every decade, and reaches its high point of quality between the 2nd and 4th year of the decade. 3) Basically I’m saying we’ve now passed the lowest musical quality in recent memory and 2022-2023 will have some exceptional music.

See you in December 2020. I have no doubt there’s a ton of great music coming up in the near future.

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music #long post #the last one #I can't believe this is over #I loved making these lists #spider tw #eye contact tw

[johannesviii]

Fuck the punk police! Like what you like!

[image: doodle of OP yelling “I have a tambourine and I won’t hesitate to use it” at the top of their lungs at a punk on a bike (labelled “the punk police”)]

(If you want some context, here it is)

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #replies #anon #this is my general art tag #Anonymous

[johannesviii]

it took me a while, but I finally listened to La tribu de Dana, and now I'm obsessed with french celtic rap (thank you!). also, I looked it up, and in 1998 it was at #14 in my country (the Netherlands). not that I was born yet, then, but I still recognised the song, partly. I love it.

Ahhhhhh you’re welcome! It was such a strange, strange hit and I love it very much.

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music #anon #Anonymous

[johannesviii]

If history keeps repeating itself, according to these lists I’m making and my calculations, the next Great Renewal Of Pop-Rock Music should happen at some point between 2022 and 2024 and to be honest I can’t wait

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music

[johannesviii]

This decade is about to end and for this reason I recently decided to do some dramatic cleaning in my appartment, Marie Kondo style, and while doing so I found a lot of things I thought I had lost ages ago.

One of them was a perfect little blast from the past proving once and for all that my taste in music has always been both weird and pretty terrible.

See, back when I was like 14, I was just as obsessed with making lists and cataloguing stuff I liked in excruciating details (see my EDAs liveblogs for a more recent example of that), and I decided to keep a monthly list of my own top 30 favorite songs, the ones I would record on tapes, burn on cds and bring everywhere with me in a cd player which didn’t have that “shock protection” thing that you had to pay extra to have on your portable cd player back around 2000 and so. That cd player had dragonfly stickers on it. It still works today somehow. I had to save money for months to acquire it at the time even though it cost something like 40€. Let’s just say my parents never were the generous type.

(16 y.o. Johannes’ top 30 lists: the only place where you’ll see club shit like Benassi Bros right next to some really obscure new wave shit like The Damned Dont Cry by Visage)

These personal top 30 lists were made on lined paper, full of colorful highlights, and also slightly cringy like about everything you do when you’re a teenager, and I’m really glad I’ve kept them, first because they’re kinda hilarious at times, and second because they gave me an idea.

I decided to listen to every single hit song from the US billboard year-end 100 and its French equivalent for every year I’ve been on this Earth (31 and counting) to rediscover old stuff I had forgotten and maybe hear stuff I’d never heard before. And then I’ll make a personal top ten for each year. And I can already tell it’s going to be humiliating at some points first because some year-end charts are very mediocre, but also because, again, I have terrible taste.

That will be my way of saying to past me “Surprise bitch I’m still alive and kicking after all this time.”

I’ll post all these things under Read Mores every time, but I know Tumblr mobile is terrible and often shows the entire post anyway, so if you don’t want this bullshit clogging your dash feel free to blacklist the tag “Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists”.

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music #long post

[johannesviii]

Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2018

I’m kinda sad this series of posts is coming to a close, especially with two mediocre years for the kind of hit songs I enjoy.

I was very depressed in 2018 so I thought maybe it was the reason why I didn’t like most songs I heard, so I revisited the entire catalogue of 2018 hit songs from the year-end lists and... no, it wasn’t just me.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

As I mentioned before I was super depressed in 2018, which wasn’t helped by the death of two family members including one I was super close to, and by catching a mysterious infection on a finger that doctors didn’t seem to be able to cure and which made my left hand hurt all year long, until I had to have an operation in early 2019 to fix the issue (plot twist, it wasn’t an infection, which is why nothing was working). On the plus side, my s.o and I decided to get married but it only happened the next year.

Ok so, hit songs weren’t that good (stay tuned for that), but albums? Some great stuff dropped in 2018. Unfortunately, Eminem’s Kamikaze wasn’t among those great albums and at that point he was basically dead to me. BUT! A Perfect Circle came back, which was completely unexpected! Nine Inch Nails released Bad Witch which contained the excellent and super hypnotic Over And Out! Mike Shinoda released Post Traumatic and every single Linkin Park fan was like “oh god what a mood”! Moby, which I hadn’t liked for years at that point after loving his stuff so much when I was 15 or so, released Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt and it was unexpectedly good! And The 1975 released A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, which, in my opinion, isn’t quite as great as their second album (I refuse to write its super long title again), but still super good. Just like the previous one, a lot of songs had crossover potential and I’m very sad it didn’t happen. Stay tuned for the unelligible songs.

But you know what? The album of the year, at least to me, was always going to be something much darker. Fortunately, the end of the year was when VNV Nation decided to drop its best album of the entire decade, Noire. In these trying times, an album about the fight between light and darkness was exactly what I needed to hear. I was super emotional when I first listened to it. Armour might just be the best song on the album. Collide explodes into a million colors after a super slow start. Wonders is a big mood. Lights Go Out is a super angry song which basically says ‘we’re dancing while the apocalypse is happening because they won’t let us do anything else’, and we need more stuff like this. When is the Future was a super solid first single and yeah, exactly, where is the future we were promised as kids? Only Satellites became one of my fight songs in record time. And All Of Our Sins is terrifying and super good. Just an amazing album all around. I certainly hope they make more in the future, but if they don’t, that would be a super high note to finish on.

As for unelligible stuff, there’s Chun Li (Nicki Minaj) which I found super weird at first, but it grew on me a lot as the year went on. I’m very surprised it’s not on the US year-end list, by the way. And I wish more stuff from Indochine had charted... again, I know. Apart from that, it’s all The 1975. Love it if we made it should have been a hit but wasn’t a safe bet for a leading single so it kind of makes sense. TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME despite its stupid title was a much more convincing hit, and yet, it wasn’t one, and that pisses me off more. And It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You) is one of their best songs ever. Catch me on the right day and I’ll call it better than The Sound, even. This should have been a hit. I’m so angry it didn’t happen.

But hey! Their new album is getting released in just a couple of days! Maybe 2020 is finally going to be their year? Wait and see.

Holy shit there hasn’t been a shorter list of honorable mentions since my 2008 list.

Remind Me To Forget (Kygo) - Good but (ironically) a bit too forgettable to be on the list.

Later Bitches (The Prince Karma) - So bad it’s good at its finest right there. Not enough to put it higher though.

High Hopes (Panic! At The Disco) - Tiptoes the line between good and super annoying too much to be higher. Not even the best song on the album (that would be Say Amen (Saturday Night)). Not sure why this was more popular.

Sicko Mode (Travis Scott) - God I want to love this song so bad. I tried so hard and it never completely clicked for me.

Next To Me (Imagine Dragons) - Believe it or not, this was the last cut from the list. I sincerely hope that Imagine Dragons will make good music again in the future and that their new songs will stop sounding like a person dragging themselves accross the wet sand of some post-apocalyptic beach covered in ashes.

So how do I know this was a bad year for hit songs? Well I not only struggled to find ten songs for this list but also struggled to find a suitable #1. Then I just went “I’m gonna put the only 2018 song I ever put on my mp3 player at #1 by default.” Does it make 2018 as bad as 1990? I’m not so sure. The top 3 I made for 1990 contained two songs I absolutely adored, including one of my favorite songs of all time. On the other hand, it was a bit easier to find ten songs I liked (not loved) in 2018. So... I don’t know.

I should also mention that Bohemian Rhapsody made the French year-end list again, at #83, and that is hilarious, but putting it on the list feels like cheating. Consider it to be an alternative #1!

10 - Finesse (Bruno Mars)

US: #14 / FR: Not on the list

I know. Everybody likes this song. I’m no exception, and I love its aesthetic, but I also like it wayyyyyy less than 24k Magic.

9 - New Rules (Dua Lipa)

US: #16 / FR: Not on the list

Basically, same thing here. I like it but I’m using it mostly as filler for this list. The lyrics are pretty great, though.

8 - This is America (Childish Gambino)

US: #51 / FR: Not on the list

This would be much better if the radio version had kept the gunshot sounds from the music video, but on the other hand it would have been pretty terrifying to hear gunshots on the radio while driving, so eh... this was probably the right decision to make. Apart from that, this song and this video have already been analysed by countless people on the internet and I don’t see what I could contribute after all this time.

7 - Sweet but Psycho (Ava Max)

US: Not on the list / FR: #42

This sounds like a song from the bygone era of Bad Romance and to be honest, it would have been annoying several years ago but in 2018 that was genuinely a refreshing blast from the past.

6 - Speed (Zazie)

US: Not on the list / FR: #74

To be honest, I never expected Zazie to show up on one of my lists again, but 2018′s general quality forced me to do it. This is a song that starts super slow and keeps getting faster, and it’s mostly about overcoming depression. Everything I needed that year.

5 - Let You Down (NF)

US: #29 / FR: Not on the list

I don’t think I know a single other person or critic who likes this song, and yet it charted super high. I don’t love it, and the chorus is grating, but there’s some damn powerful lyrics in there, and a lot of it is extremely relatable.

What can I say, in this day and age, if you give me a super-watered-down version of early 2000s Eminem, I’ll take it.

4 - Marry Me (Thomas Rhett)

US: #76 / FR: Not on the list

Yeah, it’s a slow emotional song and I tend to dislike those, but I heard this song only maybe four times in total and it destroyed me every single time.

No, I don’t have anything else to say about it.

3 - Un Été Français (Indochine)

US: Not on the list / FR: #67

I do not like this song’s chorus, it’s a mess and a half. There’s a lot of much better songs on the 13 album. 2033 should have been a single. But this is the one which charted instead. And you know what? I’ll take “super messy and clunkily written song about how the far right is gonna destroy this country if we let it exist any longer, sung over a nice tune” over everything I mentioned previously on this list.

In a better year, this wouldn’t have climbed higher than the honorable mentions. But yeah, I’m not gonna repeat my entire 2017 lecture about Indochine. It takes a lot for me to dislike one of their songs. Even at their weakest, their hearts are in the right place.

2 - Flames (David Guetta & Sia)

US: Not on the list / FR: #13

We’ve finally reached the songs I genuinely love and uh, yeah, there’s only two of them. This is sad. But this song is a lot of fun! And the music video is absolutely ridiculous in all the best ways.

It was also a super useful song to me. You’re being super sad and unenergetic, you’re climbing into your car to buy some food, you’re turning the radio on and suddenly you’re hearing “Go, go, go, figure it out / Figure it out, you can do this / So my love, keep on running / You gotta get through today / There my love, keep on running / Gotta keep those tears at bay / Oh my love, don't stop burning / Gotta send them up in flames” over a super good beat and yeah, definitely. You can do this.

1 - La Même (Maître Gims & Vianney)

US: Not on the list / FR: #1 (!! holy shit quality wins for once)

This might just be the weakest #1 I’ve ever put at the top of one of my lists, since the only criteria that put this one there was “this is actually on my mp3 player and none of the other songs are”. Also, somehow, I only discovered it last year even though it was the biggest song of 2018 in my country, apparently...

Even so, that’s a fantastic song with great lyrics and a wonderfully catchy tune and that would have been enough to put it at #1 on its own, I think. But look at those lyrics! (here’s a rather good translation) It’s about how society judges people by their looks in public. The chorus literally goes “If what I am bothers you, well, tough”. That’s even the title. And I like the music video a lot, with this white box in which people are put and as soon as they aren’t in it anymore you notice how different they act or look, like the buff guy who turns out to have prosthetic legs, or the grandma who turns out to be covered in tatoos. Simple but cool idea.

It may be a weak #1, but it’s an extremely useful song, because having “si je vous gêne, bah c’est la même” (”if I bother you, well tough”) turning in your head like a playground taunt, it really does wonders for your confidence.

And to think some French friends thought making these lists would make me hate Maître Gims’ music once I discovered it.

Next up: the last list?! It’s been a wild ride.

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music #long post #eye contact tw #fire tw

[johannesviii]

Top 12 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2013

The best year in a trio of awesome years for hits. So awesome, in fact, I had to leave several excellent songs out of the list, even with two additional slots, and limit the list to songs I actually put on my mp3 player at one point or another.

What’s that? People usually call it a bad year? Well screw them.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

The year I stopped working in Paris, found a job closer to home that finally made me feel helpful in the grand scheme of things, and I finally had more free time. Goodbye daily trains. I also went to some concerts! This never happened before.

2013: also the year when just about every band and artist I liked decided to make a good album. Except Depeche Mode. Depeche Mode made Delta Machine. It wasn’t great. But, uh, let’s see, Placebo made Loud Like Love (with the fantastic A Million Little Pieces), VNV Nation made Transnational, Daft Punk made Random Access Memories... Nine Inch Nails came back with Hesitation Marks, which is pretty great with a couple of fantastic songs. Lady Gaga made the vastly underrated ArtPop! Even Eminem made a pretty decent album! Eminem! In the year of our lord 2013! And The 1975 made their debut album. They would eventually become one of my favorite bands of the 2010s, but not yet, though. And Indochine redeemed themselves by releasing Black City Parade, their absolute best album of the decade.

However, despite Indochine’s excellent effort and the return of Nine Inch Nails, the album of the year, at least to me, was Kveikur by Sigur Rós. At that point, I had been following their stuff for ten years, and this album still blew my goddamn mind. It’s so heavy and dark and so different from what they had been doing since Agaetis Byrjun. It’s loud and textured and industrial and yet, there’s so much light above the dark. They out-NIN’ed Nine Inch Nails. There isn’t a single track I don’t love on this album. It’s their best one in my humble opinion.

As far as unelligible songs go, boy, where do I start. Uh. Copy of A and Came Back Haunted (Nine Inch Nails), certainly, A Million Little Pieces (Placebo) as I already mentioned, Memoria and College Boy (Indochine - I’m actually shocked they aren’t on the French top 100), Chocolate by The 1975, and most infuriating of all, Castle of Glass by Linkin Park, which is imho their best song of the 2010s. Oh well.

But there’s still a shit ton of stuff which was elligible but didn’t make the list. Here’s a lot of honorable mentions. There were like ten more of them initially, mind you.

Sirens Call (Cats On Trees) - You know how in just about every top ten post I’ve made so far, there’s a song where I’m like “if I had better taste this would be higher”? This is this song for 2013.

Don’t You Worry Child (Swedish House Mafia) - Catchy but borderline annoying. Still very good.

Counting Stars (One Republic) - This is so happy and catchy. More songs like this nowadays, please.

I Cry (Flo Rida) - Still elligible. Still great. Still not on the list.

Ho Hey (The Lumineers) - Same thing here, sadly.

Animals (Martin Garrix) - I called Bangarang from the previous list a perfect stim song, and this is in the same ballpark. Not as good, but great shapes and colors all around.

Berserk (Eminem) - That song has a lot of really bad lines, but also a lot of much needed energy, it’s a ton of fun, and I love the “say f█ck it before you kick the bucket” part of the chorus. I was so glad to hear Eminem having fun again. Would certainly have made the list in a more mediocre year. Not the most infuriating thing I had to leave out of the list, though.

Radioactive (Imagine Dragons) - THIS IS IT THE APOCALYPSE OH WOHO no I don’t have anything intelligent to say, it’s just great.

Best Song Ever (One Direction) - This is my favorite song from that band. It might be because it sounds suspiciously like Baba O’Riley. If you think I’m gonna complain about people ripping off good songs, please check my entry about I Gotta Feeling by The Black Eyed Peas a few top 10s before this one.

Wait. Waiiit. What if the “best song ever” they can’t remember in the lyrics WAS Baba O’Riley?? Wouldn’t that be the best meta song ever? What do you think? I mean, that one could indeed claim the title of best song ever.

Get Lucky (Daft Punk) - I know. I know. But I couldn’t put it on the list. It’s not my favorite song from the album, it was overplayed, and even if it’s extremely good it stays roughly at the same level for the entirety of the song. I love it, but I had to draw the line somewhere and cut the list. I didn’t want to make another top 15.

Carry On (fun.) - This was the last cut from the list. It was a really painful one. Not my favorite song from them, but still very, very good.

There’s been lists where I had to put filler. If I had to put actual grades to them, some songs I put on some lists would get a 6/10 or even a 5/10 for really bad years (looking at you 1990). Sometimes, I had to put stuff I’d grade 7/10 as high as #3.

If I had to grade this 2013 list according to my personal taste in music, #12 would get an 8/10, #11 would get a 9/10, and everything in the top ten would either be a 9,5 or a 10. No joke. That’s how good that year was for hits.

Let’s go.

12 - My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light’Em Up) (Fall Out Boy)

US: #40 / FR: Not on the list

There you have it. Three songs from a band I consider pretentious asshats ended on my lists. Including this one, in a year where I decided to severely limit my options for songs. And at the time? I thought it was just an okay song, way too slow but okay. Not great. At all.

It took it about three whole years to grow on me, and it also took me a while to actually know what it was about, and as I said previously, framing is everything ; knowing this song basically said “we’re back, and we’ve changed, and you’re not gonna like it so you’re gonna feel betrayed and you’re gonna burn your old posters, and in the end you’re also gonna betray us” makes it a lot, lot better. I especially love the “Burn everything you love then burn the. ashes” line with the weird pause for emphasis.

It just goes stomp, stomp, stomp. It’s heavy. You can’t dance to it. You can’t even have fun while listening to it. But you can certainly stomp along, and feel angry, and, yes, betrayed, and three years after 2013, I certainly needed that kind of song. A lot. You know exactly why.

11 - Burn (Ellie Goulding)

US: Not on the list / FR: #54

I discovered Doctor Who at the very, very end of 2013, and for some reason I associate this song with Martha’s journey during the year that never was at the end of S3, trying to convince the entire Earth to fight back against the Master. That’s all I have to say about this song. It’s great.

10 - Instant Crush (Daft Punk ft Julian Casablancas)

US: Not on the list / FR: #26

So yep, Get Lucky isn’t my favorite song on Random Access Memories, and thank you French charts for allowing me to put this one on the list instead.

Like a ton of people, I couldn’t figure out what the chorus was, apart from a couple of isolated words, and that felt exactly like being 10 and trying to decipher songs with my limited English. And then I checked the lyrics, and they were mostly variations on “I don’t want to be alone” and they rhyme “go” with “go”, so, uh, nothing of value was lost that day. And it still sounds fantastic.

9 - Applause (Lady Gaga)

US: #37 / FR: #66

Yes, there’s some really stupid shit in the lyrics and the theme of the song itself isn’t particularly inspiring, but that chorus is a happy burst of fuzzy bright angular shapes, and it’s so energetic it feels like you could phase through walls by sheer force of will while listening to it. It would be even higher if the lyrics were better, I swear.

8 - Papaoutai (Stromae)

US: Not on the list / FR: #4

And the boss of cleverly written hit songs strikes again. Pretty sure that one, like Alors On Danse, is well known even if you don’t speak French. As I understand it, apparently French teachers like to use it in class. But yeah, just in case: it’s a song about his absent father. My favorite part:

Un jour ou l'autre on sera tous papas (One day or another we’ll be dads) Et d'un jour à l'autre, on aura disparu (And one day or the next, we’ll be gone) Serons-nous détestables? (Will we be despicable?) Serons-nous admirables? (Will we be admirable?) Des géniteurs ou des génies (Parents or geniuses) Dites-nous qui donne naissance aux irresponsables? (Tell us who birthes irresponsible people?) Ah, dites-nous qui, tiens (Ah, tell us who ; weird) Tout le monde sait comment on fait des bébés (Everybody knows how to make babies) Mais personne ne sait comment on fait des papas (But nobody knows how to make dads)

And it’s also horribly catchy. And it was kind of a meme here. It was everywhere. I’m surprised it wasn’t even higher than that on the French year end top 100.

7 - Underwater (Mika)

US: Not on the list / FR: #70

Why do I love this song so much even though I usually hate songs like that. This is the kind of romantic bullshit Robbie Williams does, and for the record I absolutely hate Angels, and Underwater even sounds a bit like Angels, and it also has the same kind of corny central metaphor. So. Why do I love Underwater again? How can I justify this? I’ve got no clue.

We don’t deserve Mika.

6 - I Need Your Love (Calvin Harris ft Ellie Goulding)

US: #56 / FR: #51

By now you must all be extremely tired of reading me describing songs in visual ways but this song is the sound equivalent of some sort of light show mixed with Dance Dance Revolution patterns. It’s incredibly kinetic and full of joyful, glittering energy, and I love it so goddamn much.

As a 90s kid who loved eurodance, I’m incredibly grateful this kind of music still exists and is still charting.

5 - Treasure (Bruno Mars)

US: #30 / FR: #23

Speaking of nostalgia. Well, not really, since I wasn’t born in the era this is trying to mimic, but still. I don’t have anything to say about this, apart maybe from the fact this is the song that finally made me like Bruno Mars.

4 - Hey Brother (Avicii)

US: Not on the list / FR: #18

I already mentioned how much I loved Avicii’s music when I briefly talked about Levels, and Hey Brother is even better. As you might know I have a little brother and as it is often the case with siblings we fought a bit but we also shared a lot of things, and games, and weird private jokes, and yeah that song can occasionally make me cry a fair bit if I’m being honest.

Also, it’s kind of my main theme song for Charley and C’rizz, so, yeah, it’s just another layer of Feelings(tm).

3 - I Will Wait (Mumford & Sons)

US: #52 / FR: Not on the list

As you might have noticed, there’s one genre that is conspicuously absent from my lists as far as the US hit songs are concerned, and that’s country. I’ve got nothing against country music, I just rarely find it visually interesting. Now I do like folk rock on the other hand, but its big era is long gone, and it’s quite rare to hear anything from it in the charts nowadays. I liked Ho Hey by the Lumineers, but I always thought it was a little bit too slow.

And then I found Babel by Mumford & Sons at the library, gave it a try, loved it, felt like discovering a modern band version of Bob Dylan with simpler lyrics, and this isn’t my favorite song on the album and it’s still at #3 on this list. Quality, man, just quality.

My favorite song from the album is Lover of the Light, by the way.

2 - Can’t Hold Us (Macklemore & Ryan Lewis)

US: #5 / FR: #8

Sometimes you need angry fight songs, sometimes you need energetic fight songs, and sometimes you need happy fight songs. And when something combines the last two, it’s like you caught a star in a Mario game and you’re f█cking unstoppable.

If Macklemore doesn’t get more hit songs at some point in the near future I’m gonna punch a wall.

1 - Roadgame (Kavinsky)

US: Not on the list / FR: #44

This song has no music video. It was still an enormous hit.

As you may recall, I already said once or twice that I liked to hang out at the disc store after class while I was in highschool and uni, and it still happened regularly after I started to work. Even nowadays, if I had a really, really bad day, there’s a good chance I’ll go there and spend at least an hour there just listening to stuff.

So here I was, one fine (actually bad) day, and this song was playing, and I was mesmerised, and for the first time ever, I felt the need to find a vendor and ask what was playing. I found one and the guy instantly beamed and went “oooooh I picked that album to play it in the store today! :D That’s Kavinsky, he’s great, here, have a listen” but it was already getting late so... I trusted him and basically bought the album blind.

Best decision ever. On top of being one of the best albums of the 2010s, OutRun is a concept album presented as if it was the soundtrack of a movie that never existed, about a young guy getting killed in a car crash in 1986 and somehow fusing with his car mentally and reappearing as some sort of technological zombie in 2006. And Roadgame is one of the best songs on the album if not the best. Well, my favorite song on it is actually Testarossa Autodrive, but you get my point.

I was like “there’s no way this is going to be big”, and I was dead wrong, thankfully. As a big fan of electronic music full of lights and flashes and colors but with dark overtones, I couldn’t be happier about this being one of the sounds of the year. Just fantastic stuff.

It’s 2020, man. Please drop that second album. We’re ready to have our minds blown all over again. Just do it.

Also, thank you random vendor from the disc store.

Next up: I have no idea why some people call 2014 a really bad year for hit songs tbh

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music #long post #eye contact tw

[johannesviii]

Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2017

Not a very good year for hit songs. Still better than the next one, though.

And a very satisfying #1 that launched an entire infodump about a specific band. I’m not even sorry.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

2017 might not sound super distant, but it’s already distant enough to analyse what started to happen to me that year with some clarity. This is when I started to lose some of my energy and motivation. A lot, in fact. Everything suddenly felt exhausting and this whole “what’s even the point of anything” mentality started to fall on my shoulders. And you know what, at first, while making these recaps, I had no idea what started it all. Was it that super rare infection I caught in early 2018 and almost made me lose a part of a finger? Was it both my grandfathers dying in mid 2018? Was it the general state of the world? But no, I did some digging and noticed this general exhaustion actually started right during summer 2017 and I was like what the f█ck happened in summer 2017? That summer was fine?

And then it clicked. I know exactly what kickstarted my spiral into about 18 months of depression, and it’s got nothing to do with health or family. It’s something that shouldn’t have affected my life in any way, and that I kinda tried to ignore at the time, and some of you might even find me overdramatic or cringy for letting it affect my life. But yeah, as I’ve realised while making these lists, Linkin Park was actually a super important part of my life, so it makes perfect sense: what started it all was Chester Bennington killing himself. Clearly, someone who had contributed so much to convince me that life was worth living and who suddenly decided it wasn’t worth it, that had a huge impact on me, whether I wanted it or not.

Aaaand now I’m crying again. Great.

Anyway. Uh. Important albums that year! Yeah so uh. Depeche Mode made Spirit and it wasn’t good, and so I kinda lost faith they would ever make a great album again, but I did realise one of my teenage dreams and saw them in concert in the Stade de France in July 2017 (it was huge. Going home after that felt like waking up from some sort of hypnotic trance. They even played Walking In My Shoes, one of my absolute favorite songs from them, along with a video featuring a trans person going to work and I started to bawl my eyes out in the middle of the f█cking crowd). Nine Inch Nails also made Add Violence and continued to be super good, and Indochine made 13, and while it wasn’t nearly as good as Black City Parade, it was also better than La République des Météors, so I was pretty happy about that. EDIT: Forgot about Under Your Spell by The Birthday Massacre, which blew my goddamn mind, but still not as much as the next album I'm gonna talk about.

But the defining album of the year, to me, was Mike Oldfield making a sequel to my favorite album from him, with Return to Ommadawn. Of course it’s not as good as Ommadawn. But still. If Ommadawn felt like discovering a new strange country full of weird folklore and forests and mysterious buildings, Return to Ommadawn feels like going back there half a century later and seeing things in ruins and wounded people, but still trying to seek beauty and joy in a partly destroyed landscape. It makes perfect sense considering the circumstances that surround the making of this thing, and it was the only way to make a good sequel to such a legendary album.

Unelligible songs that piss me off... uh, actually there’s only Cut to the Feeling by Carly Rae Jepsen. Why wasn’t it a huge hit. Come to think of it, why hasn’t any Carly Rae song been a huge hit since Good Times. This feels unfair.

Time for some honorable mentions, then.

Feels and also Slide (Calvin Harris and a lot of other people) - Got nothing to say about either of these songs, but they’re both pretty good.

Katchi (Ofenbach) - Nice little earworm.

No Roots (Alice Merton) - Super surprised this was a hit. Good.

OK (Robin Schulz ft James Blunt) - That’s a James Blunt song in the year of our lord 2017 and it sounds actually good??

What About Us (Pink) - Really caught my attention and made me wonder if I should listen to Pink again after a long streak of mediocre Pink songs.

Congratulations (Post Malone) - I find the song mostly boring but the guest verse ending with “uh, Malone... I gotta play on my phone...” is the stuff of legends and that got a chuckle out of me every time I heard it.

Glorious (Macklemore) - I’m glad this was a hit here but at the same time it’s not my favorite song from him. The music video is adorable, though.

Fly (Odyssey) - Nothing to say about that one.

XO Tour Life (Lil Uzi Vert) - The fact that I was regularly humming this is either a sign of quality or yet another sign I was depressed as shit.

Devil in Me (Purple Disco Machine) - What a great artist name.

Symphony (Clean Bandit) - Nothing to say here either, just good sound all around.

Attention (Charlie Puth) - 2017: The Year Charlie Puth Made A Great Song.

All Stars (Martin Solveig & Alma) - The last cut. It was on the list at some point. I really like it a lot, though.

And now, the list. The stuff I genuinely love starts at #6 and things that are still on my mp3 player to this day start at #4.

10 - Chained to the Rhythm (Katy Perry)

US: #73 / FR: #10

I just love the concept of a Katy Perry song about how Katy Perry songs are happy nonsense distracting you from actual issues. What can I say, I’m a sucker for meta stuff.

9 - Water Under The Bridge (Adele)

US: #88 / FR: Not on the list

An Adele song projecting actual positive energy!? That automatically goes on the list.

8 - Praying (Kesha)

US: #67 / FR: Not on the list

You know I mostly dislike slow emotional songs regardless of how good they actually are. I will, however, make an exception for this one even though I very rarely listen to it considering how emotionally taxing it is. That’s definitely a fantastic song, though.

7 - Viens On S’aime (Slimane)

US: Not on the list / FR: #53

“Listen, we love each other, f█ck it, f█ck their words and their decorum, listen, we love each other, f█ck it, f█ck their ideas and what they’re saying”. Well said, dude, well said.

6 - There’s Nothing Holding Me Back (Shawn Mendes)

US: #23 / FR: #91

That’s a very good song for running and that is becoming increasingly rarer, so I’ll take what I can get.

5 - Paris (The Chainsmokers)

US: #42 / FR: Not on the list (that’s irony for you)

Unlike Closer this is an unrelatable song about rich young people that can afford to live in Paris just “to get away from [their] parents” but honestly that’s the only negative thing I have to say against it. It sounds fantastic.

4 - Castle On The Hill (Ed Sheeran)

US: #40 / FR: #50

We’ve now entered the realm of songs that are still on my mp3 player to this day. This is the only Ed Sheeran song I’ve ever liked, and I love it. It sounds like a lost U2 song. Maybe from a strange dimension where U2 became more fragile and emotional instead of more pretentious.

I have no idea why this guy keeps making such boring stuff when he’s got that kind of song in him. I have no clue.

3 - Something Just Like This (Coldplay & The Chainsmokers)

US: #5 / FR: #19

Hey so Coldplay is still on my lists, apparently. It’s a bit too slow, some lyrics about superheros don’t make much sense, and the drop isn’t super good, but my god, that guitar near the end makes everything worth it. Just amazing colors and textures all around.

It’s not even my favorite song on that EP! I think Miracles (Someone Special) is even better, but eh, this one is a close second.

2 - 24k Magic (Bruno Mars)

US: #16 / FR: Not on the list (#13 in 2016 but I put it on the 2017 list instead)

Am I the only one to like this more than Uptown Funk? It’s so much fun to sing along to it. And unlike Uptown Funk, it’s making me feel nostalgic for an era I actually (vaguely) knew, the super colorful and ridiculous early 90s. My s.o loves it too and when it comes up on the radio or on our playlists you can bet we’re both going PUT YOUR. PINKY. RINGS UP. TO THE. MOOOOOOOON like two idiots.

This is the song I could have put on the previous list but elected to put on this list instead since it was elligible for both years, by the way! Since 2017 was less good than 2016, I thought it would be more interesting to save such a great song for later.

It would have topped the list too, if it wasn’t for something I didn’t expect to be elligible before reading the French year-end list.

Strap yourselves in, because I had no real opportunity to talk about this band at length in the posts made for the years when it was the most relevant in my life, so this is going to be quite long.

1 - La Vie Est Belle (Indochine)

US: Not on the list / FR: #44

As you already know if you remember some of my previous lists, Indochine is a band I started to love right in the middle of the absolute worst years of my life. These guys had been around since the 80s as a super successful new wave band, then became very unpopular and went underground for about twelve years in the entire 90s, then one of them died, then every member except the singer basically rotated, and then they suddenly re-emerged in 2002-2003 with Paradize, a monster of an album, full of energy, sinister themes and weird provocative songs, and an entire generation of angsty teenagers (me included as you can guess) embraced it wholeheartedly.

And all of a sudden Indochine was the favorite French mainstream band of local young punk/goths! So many kids with the Indochine logo in highschool. Nowadays the band is mocked and well-loved in equal doses by just about everyone, but I suspect it’s just because we’ve all grown up.

Placebo, Linkin Park and Indochine were the bands that ruled my entire world in 2003/2004. My mother hated all three of them, because of course she did, but especially Indochine, because according to her it was partly their fault if I was gender non-conforming. See, she used to say, they had put all kinds of bad ideas in my head and now I was all messed up.

...Holy shit, that’s a lot of blame to put on a ridiculous new wave band who’s first hit song from 1983 is just a long nonsensical list of shitty old Bob Morane pulp novels.

But here’s the problem. Even if Indochine kept having hit song after hit song, those were never the best songs on their albums. Here I am, 31, making these top ten lists since last December, and becoming more and more frustrated to see none of my favorite modern Indochine songs are elligible. My favorite Paradize singles were Mao Boy, Popstitute and especially Marilyn (god, this song rocked my entire year alongside Placebo’s The Bitter End. 2003 was such a fantastic year for dark energetic hit songs)? Too bad, the biggest hits were J’ai demandé à la lune and Le Grand Secret. Alice & June had four fantastic singles? Too bad, none of them is elligible! Same thing for the entirety of Black City Parade. Oh, but that song I hate from La Republique des Météors is elligible, I guess!

So we’re in summer 2017, and my life is completely different now, and Indochine releases La Vie Est Belle (I’m linking the album version and not the music video because it has some violent themes in it). I’m in my car doing some errands and the local radio goes “hey new song from Indochine” and I’m like “oh shit, gotta hear this” and then two minutes later “oh wow, that is super good. Won’t be a hit though”.

And yet, it was a hit! It became huge, even! And at that point I was already loving that song even though I thought it was just a super good but tragic love song about a significant other dying too young.

And then, about a month later, the wordplay of the first line finally hit me with the force of a semitruck. It’s not a love song. It’s a song about the singer’s dead twin. Who died in 1999.

It’s such a devastating, beautiful song, and yet it’s full of energy. I. adore. it. It’s exactly the kind of song you need to continue to fight and to live and to help other people in this day and age. “Life is beautiful and cruel, it looks like us sometimes” indeed. And it’s one of the best on the album, too!

So yes, 15 years after I first fell in love with this band and after they helped me during super dark times, finally, I can put one of their songs at the top of one of these lists, hands down, no debate whatsoever.

That probably sounds ridiculous but it’s genuinely making me feel extremely emotional.

Next up: I thought music sucked that year because I was depressed but I relistened to it and no it wasn’t just me

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music #long post #eye contact tw #suicide mention tw #I can't believe I'm almost done with these lists #that was a wild ride guys

[johannesviii]

Still 5 top ten lists to make and I’m already crossing my fingers to be able to put Blinding Lights by The Weeknd on my 2020 list, seriously why is this song so good

#music #Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists

[johannesviii]

Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2005

16 to 17 years old. Finished public highschool, started public university in September. Looking back at 2003-2005 feels like looking at ten years of my life condensed in three. Exhausting.

Also we’re now past the halfway point of these lists! And this is another exceptionally good year for hits.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

So I finished highschool that year. I met my best friend ever in late 2004 and we even had some sort of small crew back then! I had a bit of a crush on her but alas it wasn’t meant to be. I don’t know who invented the term ‘friendzone’ but they got its meaning completely wrong because staying friends basically forever with someone you love can be a fantastic thing. Things weren’t rosy nor perfect that year, of course, and I still was miserable at home, but I’m not sure where I’ll be today without her. She's amazing and she still lives nearby nowadays. Shoutout: if you read this, E., you pretty much saved my life.

I was still making tapes and burning CDs, still using my trusty portable cd player, and always listening to stuff while drawing during recess, sitting in a corner and doodling stuff in my sketchbook on the floor like a weird gangly goblin.

I had already started to buy Rock Mag in August 2004 but it really became my monthly ritual in 2005, and it lasted until autumn 2007. A reliable source of posters to cover my walls. At that point they were almost completely covered with paintings, drawings, torn pages from magazines and posters of Linkin Park, Mylène Farmer, Placebo and Indochine.

I also had a better access to the family computer and was a bit more involved online. Might explain why the number of singles I was buying plummeted.

It’s time once again for some (ok, many) honorable mentions!

Beverly Hills (Weezer) - I don’t even know why I like this but I do.

Bouger Bouger (Magic System) - I never understood why it was cool to make fun of these guys in my country. Their music is so happy and fun.

Holiday (Green Day) - My brother loved that band and listened to it a lot, and I was 100% fine with that.

Wake Me Up When September Ends (Green Day) - See above.

Gabriel (Najoua Belyzel) - That is so-bad-it’s-good at its finest right here.

Candy Shop (50 Cents) - As a sucker for terrible puns (HA, get it?? I’m sorry I’ll get out immediately) I can’t help it, I love this.

Love Generation (Bob Sinclar) - Stay tuned for more of this guy on another list.

Listen to Your Heart (DHT) - The original is better, but it was really nice to hear that again on the radio.

We Be Burnin’ (Sean Paul) - Not my favorite but still damn good.

Bad Day (Daniel Powter) - I even bought the single. What can I say except “relatable”.

All About Us (Tatu) - I bought that single as well. Almost made the list.

Le Bateau Blanc (Karol) - The last cut from the list. Not even kidding at all. I’m still not sure if Keane deserves to be on the list more than this to be honest.

Like it happened previously with Placebo not being elligible at all, it is a complete outrage that Precious by Depeche Mode isn’t elligible for this list. Like, what the f█ck. Playing the Angel was one of the defining albums of the year to me. I’m not even sure it would have topped the list, maybe #2, but it still feels wrong.

There’s another band who’s complete absence from this top feels kinda painful to me, considering how much I loved their new album at the time. Indeed, no single from Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge by My Chemical Romance is elligible for this list, and it feels wrooooong, man. I love I’m not okay and especially Thank You For the Venom, but even Helena would have been nice. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

For some unfathomable reason, Get The Party Started (Pink) and, even more unexplainable, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me (Culture Club) recharted in France in 2005 and both made the year-end top 100. The fact they are both elligible but all the stuff mentioned above this paragraph isn’t makes no sense whatsoever.

And now, the actual list!

10 - Everybody’s Changing (Keane)

US: Not on the list / FR: #48

Pretty great even though it’s not my favorite Keane song. That would be Crystal Ball. It’s fantastic and as a person who is scared, above all, by existential horror, the music video is terrifying. Sadly, it’s not elligible for my 2006 list, so Everybody’s Changing will have to be its slightly less good proxy for 2005.

9 - Et Si En Plus Ya Personne (Alain Souchon)

US: Not on the list / FR: #100

This has to be the most borderline non-elligible song ever put on one of my lists. But I’m glad it is still elligible. Remember the song on the 1993 list that I called an “anticapitalist ballad”? Well that’s the same guy. And this time it’s a song about how religion can cause both beautiful things and war, and how “the sky might be empty” because of us. It’s great. Here’s a translation. You’re welcome.

8 - F█ck Them All (Mylène Farmer)

US: Not on the list / FR: #62

Aaaaaaaaand unfortunately for everyone including myself, she’s back. Not her best song by a mile (told you it was all downhill after C’est Une Belle Journée didn’t I), but still pretty damn good, and that music video where she’s destroying bird-like scarecrows is amazing so here’s a bonus gif.

7 - Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Green Day)

US: #7 / FR: Not on the list

My brother LOVED this band and listened to it SO MUCH. And yeah, they were very good and that song might just be my favorite one from them. I don’t have much more to say about it, you all know it already. Let’s move on.

6 - Sugar We’re Going Down (Fall Out Boy)

US: #40 / FR: Not on the list

Again, it feels wrong that both Fall Out Boy AND Panic! at the Disco were elligible for this list but not My Chemical Romance. I was never a fan of these two acts, at all, and their supposed rivalry was kinda hilarious to watch from afar. With a bucket of popcorn. While listening to Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge and nodding sadly, of course.

This is still a great song, mind you.

5 - Feel Good Inc (Gorillaz)

US: #37 / FR: Not on the list (really? wtf happened)

Again, I live with someone who loves Gorillaz, so I claim overexposure.

It’s still #5 on a list based on a very, very good year.

That’s quality for you.

4 - Speed of Sound (Coldplay)

US: #57 / FR: Not on the list

A new chapter in the ascension of Coldplay from “Johannes hates this band” to “this is one of the best mainstream bands we have”. An epic saga, years in the making, and Speed of Sound was basically the last scene of Act One. Not my favorite song from X&Y (that would be Talk), but still really good. Hell, I even bought the single, and goodness knows I wasn’t buying a lot of singles anymore in 2005.

Holy shit, half of these are Benassi Bros garbage. None of them are elligible, though! Dodged a bullet there, didn’t I.

3 - Numb/Encore (JayZ + Linkin Park)

US: #93 / FR: #75

What a blessed mashup. For a few magical months in 2005, all the punk goth kids and the hiphop kids were united under this song’s banner and it felt like world peace had been achieved. It could have pissed off everybody but no! Everyone loved it instead!

“But Johannes, this is just Numb all over again with different lyrics. You can’t keep putting Linkin Park at the top of your lists forever.” Sadly no, I can’t. I know. It’s only #3. Don’t yell at me. Also, the next two songs are genuinely better, at least in my opinion!

2 - Lift Me Up (Moby)

US: Not on the list / FR: #31

I heard this on the radio and bought the album, Hotel, on the grounds that Natural Blues from 2000 was one of my favorite songs ever and than it wouldn’t hurt to actually own an album of that guy after all that time (”all that time” being only five years, but please keep in mind the past three years had felt like ten, and in my mind, they still do ; trauma is one hell of a thing). And a couple of days later that year, we went to Disneyland for my brother’s birthday, and I only had a small bag that could contain my cd player, and the earphones and nothing else. So I could only put one cd in it and that was it.

So I picked Hotel, and I basically retreated inside of it whenever my mother was starting to talk aggressively, which happened a lot in the various queues. So in the end, I listened to that cd a LOT that day and every single time, it would calm me while still being energetic enough to keep me enthusiastic for the various Disneyland rides.

Lift Me Up is energetic but cold, aerial but distant, uplifting but sinister. It was the perfect song for someone who was, at the time, trying to tone down their aggressivity and anger and trying to be masculine but in a softer way, while still staying themselves and not giving up the fight. I absolutely adore this song. It’s perfect.

It instantly joined my list of favorite songs ever that year.

1 - Mr Brightside (The Killers)

US: #16 / FR: Not on the list (this feels so wrong)

If I had to make a top ten of the hits of that entire decade, this would be #2. No debate whatsoever.

Because holy shit.

I was already sold on that band after hearing Somebody Told Me on the radio, which sadly isn’t elligible for this list (I instantly loved it, first because it was catchy as hell, but also because I love the chorus “Well somebody told me you had a boyfriend / Who looked like a girlfriend / That I had in February of last year", because as you already know I tend to be extremely literal minded and my immediate conclusion was “wow you two dated the same trans guy before and after he was out of the closet” and that was highkey relatable and no you can’t change my mind). So I bought the album about two weeks after, mostly blind, because the cd store was playing it and also because Rock Mag said it was great.

That was an understatement. Hot Fuss is one of the best albums of the entire decade and you probably know that already. The first song, Jenny Was a Friend of Mine, floored me right after putting the cd in the player and it felt like the album already reached its peak and there were still 12 tracks after that.

The very next track was Mr. Brightside. And. How do I put this.

There’s like a dozen interpretations possible for this song, and most of them are something like “this guy is so anxious and paranoid he’s gonna break up with this girl because he keeps imagining her cheating with another guy and it might not even be real.”

Now might be a good moment to remind you that at the time, I had a crush on my best friend, and was still firmly in the closet. And this song starts, as everyone knows, with “Coming out of my cage and I've been doing just fine“.

So... yeah. This is the song that accidentally convinced me the closet sucked and did nothing to deter bullies anyway, and that after more than three years of feeling mostly miserable, I should try to be myself and screw the consequences. I know it wasn’t the original intention behind that song. But still.

Godspeed, The Killers. I owe you one, guys.

Next up: Still not able to put Indochine nor Placebo on a list, OP is this close to punching a wall

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music #long post #eye contact tw