| 1 | Flight of Icarus | "Our Burning Star" | single | I have only sometimes, in my life, had a Favorite Song, and even less often had anything I would nominate for Best Song, which is an untenable concept by its nature. And yet, here it is. Flight of Icarus are a pop metal band from Gothenburg, and this is the first single from their upcoming second album, and it's my new favorite song and I keep playing it over and over and every single time I have the same thought, which is "This may be the best song ever. Ever." It's too pretty and oohs too much if you demand that metal involves aggression, and maybe too dense and overdriven if you demand that pop be gentle, and there are many things I love in music that aren't present in this song, but there is nothing in this song that I do not adore, nothing I want to change, nothing I want them to improve. It's "Dancing Queen", but the Queen is omnibenevolent and she is watching us. It's "Amaranth" but the verses are just as delirious as the chorus. It's proof of our individual humility and our collective immortality. The sun beams at our approach, grateful for the opportunity to shine however briefly on our wings. |
| 2 | Evergrey | "Where August Mourns" | Where August Mourns +2 | And if I had any illusion that my musical curiosity were motivated by an end, rather than a feeling of motion, it would be disspelled by the fact that I do eventually stop hitting Back and allow this week of new music to continue, and am still overjoyed to listen to these other songs that seem merely wonderful. We encompass melanchonic progressive-metal bombast, |
| 3 | Azure | "Mistress" | single | math-rock Supertramp, |
| 4 | Marius Danielsen | "Stars Will Light the Way" | single | galloping battle-hymns, |
| 5 | Kalidia | "Hiding from the Sun - New Version 2021" | Lies' Device | reticent perfectability, |
| 6 | Carmilla | "Nevermore" | single | guttural restlessness. |
| 7 | Arion | "In The Name Of Love (feat. Cyan Kicks)" | single | We are only loosely in control of our most boundless powers, |
| 8 | As Everything Unfolds | "Grayscale" | Grayscale 5 | only uneasily situtated along the spectra of our joys and vulnerabilities. |
| 9 | Torn Between Two Worlds | "The Beauty of Deception" | single | Joy, too, is a response to triggers, |
| 10 | Heart Healer | "Into the Unknown" | single | and thus cannot be trusted as a moral guide. |
| 11 | Rivals | "Strawberries" | Strawberries +3 | The inclination of the path |
| 12 | Alteria | "Nessuna pietà" | Vita Imperfetta | does not determine the elevation of the destination. |
| 13 | Reality Suite | "Triggers" | single | Anthems are not directional, |
| 14 | Persona | "Alpha" | single | just inertial; |
| 15 | Lollia | "Ghost Rule" | single | these joys and angers are elemental, not legislative. |
| 16 | Malcolm Mask McLaren | "ORANGE" | ORANGE EP 2 | But then, this is true of most of the components of our survival: |
| 17 | Hikari Shiina | "Model answer girl" | Model answer girl +1 | we do not eat as a process of perfecting a final bite, |
| 18 | PARADISES | "キモチイイコトシタイ! - REFRESH ver." | PARADISES (REFRESH ver.) | do not breathe in the hope that a flawless breath will be the last one we ever require. |
| 19 | PLANCK STARS | "OWARANAI" | single | The best song humanity has yet sung is merely the first single from an upcoming second album, |
| 20 | BAND-MAID | "About Us" | single | that is how deeply the roots of our power reach. |
| 21 | aLf | "Tenshi no Yubikiri (From "Kare Kano")" | single | We are casually perfect just to get your attention, |
| 22 | MeltnooM | "Jiyu Categorize" | Existence proof | just to remind you of the parameters of our existence, |
| 23 | NELN | "snow light" | single | just to remind ourselves. |
| 24 | Diamond Kobra | "Ephemeral Beast" | single | Most of the time, however, we are imperatively uncategorical, |
| 25 | Scarlxrd | "Apxcalypse" | Dxxm II | fully invested in the specific flaws of a moment. |
| 26 | ONI INC. | "SALMON SHARKS UNITE !" | single | If the best song ever is a sigil of our grace, |
| 27 | blackwinterwells | "circles" | tracing paths 4 | all the other songs are the infinite breaths before and after, |
| 28 | Senses | "don't give up on me" | single | lost between muttering and embodying "don't give up on yourself". |
| 29 | recovery girl | "physical touch" | single | Each breath that doesn't kill us can be categorized, |
| 30 | New Sylveon | "zabivaka" | single | and part of the joy of continuing to live and to listen |
| 31 | CMTEN | "ALONE (feat. RILEY THE MUSICIAN)" | single | is to discover that the imperfections have begun to aggregate into culture. |
| 32 | m1v | "glitter" | single | Anybody can love the best song ever. |
| 33 | luvlxckdown | "should i even keep going?" | single | Anybody can listen once to a song they could loop forever. |
| 34 | Lei | "over my head" | heartsick 5 | We discover our character when we fall in love with the imperfect, |
| 35 | faang | "Satellites" | single | when we return obsessively to songs that are neither perfect nor unique, |
| 36 | Softheart | "When you Smile" | Participation Trophy | when we hear in them our imperfect and ununique selves. |
| 37 | Sullii | "spirit" | single | The deist betrayal is that it takes no courage to love the infallible abstract, |
| 38 | Ryan Oakes | "LET IT OUT" | LET IT OUT +1 | and the work of belief is thus mainly submission, |
| 39 | underscores | "Second hand embarrassment" | single | justified by its difficulty, |
| 40 | June Divided | "If I Knew How To Love" | single | but plenty of bad and pointless things are hard. |
| 41 | Allie X | "GLAM!" | single | So close, so close: "these hard things must be worthy" |
| 42 | W O L F C L U B | "Just Drive" | Just Drive +2 | is plaintively almost "perseverance is an accomplishment in itself". |
| 43 | MELIFLUO | "Ya No Soy el de Antes" | single | The old gods knew that our belief created and sustained them. |
| 44 | Comandante Twin | "Alerta Nuclear" | single | Songs know they are nothing without us, |
| 45 | Street Story | "モンスター" | single | and it is our gift of compassion to allow them to forget this |
| 46 | Ash Code | "Fear" | single | for an unguarded moment, |
| 47 | Bleib Modern | "Sleep" | single | even though we knew we'd find them sleeping. |
| 48 | Sara | "Se osa joka rikkoo" | single | Wake up. |
| 49 | Skyliner | "Break The Surface" | Dark Rivers, White Thunder | It is time for stomping on black ice stretched over the roiling surface of deep water. |
| 50 | Korpiklaani | "Anolan aukeat" | Jylhä | It is time for rituals of redemption, |
| 51 | Incursed | "The Black Hunter" | Baskavígin | for frantic errands in search of the materials for desperate spells, |
| 52 | Wolfchant | "Komet" | single | for burning arcs |
| 53 | Frostnatt | "Det Kommer Til Å Bli Kaldt" | single | above frozen ground. |
| 54 | Heldom | "Vaknan" | single | The old gods repay our conditional allegiance with ambiguous stories |
| 55 | The Ruins Of Beverast | "Deserts to Bind and Defeat" | The Thule Grimoires | we can recast with our own oaths and enemies, |
| 56 | Blurr Thrower | "Amnios" | Les Voûtes | and thus use to alloy new morals. |
| 57 | Moonthoth | "Hymny nocy" | single | They know that the more languages we learn, |
| 58 | Deception (NOR) | "Remission" | The Mire | the higher our towers grow, |
| 59 | Coldbound | "Slumber of Decay" | Slumber of Decay +2 | and the clearer it becomes that higher vantages are not intended for looking up. |
| 60 | Maelstrom Aeterna | "When Light Has Faded" | single | It is time for another imperfectable night that will not break us. |
| 61 | Fenris Vrede | "Dødsriket" | single | The realms of the dead, once mapped, |
| 62 | Andromida | "The Cataclysm" | single | turn out to be uncannily familiar. |
| 63 | Interiors | "Focus" | single | Anthems are not devotional, |
| 64 | Amarionette | "Get Back" | single | which is why you can sing them for anything or nothing. |
| 65 | The Monolith Deathcult | "Gone Sour Doomed" | single | All of these songs are "Dancing Queen" somehow, |
| 66 | KAUAN | "Raivo" | single | shredded and centrifuged and reforged, |
| 67 | KAGAMI Smile | "Orb Floating in Solitary Confinement" | Angel in an Empty Room | or denied to the point of diaphany. |
| 68 | Spoiwo | "Wild Eyes" | Martial Hearts | We think it's part of what defines us that we love the songs that got inside us before we were formed, |
| 69 | Diamantero | "Egyptians" | single | but this is backwards: we only stop being formed when we cease to take input, or breath. |
| 70 | Lizwi | "Isibani" | single | Ancestries await. |
| 71 | Maddie Zahm | "Family Reunions" | single | The old gods always knew that we would end up wearing shirts with their talismans long after they were gone. |
| 72 | Chapel Hart | "I Will Follow" | single | We can't change where we're from, but there's no need. |
| 73 | The Weather Station | "Loss" | Ignorance | We're from everywhere. |
| 74 | Giorgieness | "Tempesta" | single | We are young enough, sweet enough, here to dance, afraid to dance. |
| 75 | 小男孩樂團 | "有你在身旁 Having You By My Side - 義行獎主題曲" | single | The math-rock Supertramp has a south-facing hi-rise room full of orchids. |
| 76 | Ingrid Witt | "Build You a Church" | single | We believe in nothing, but we still build and burn churches. |
| 77 | Fast Animals and Slow Kids | "Come un animale" | single | We sing because we have too much love to stop breathing. |
| 78 | First to Eleven | "Welcome to the Black Parade" | single | Anthems are not prescriptive, and not even strictly redemptive, but we don't need instructions or saving, we just need five more minutes, and then again, and then again. |