1 |
Taylor Swift |
"Is It Over Now? (Taylor's Version) (From The Vault)" |
1989 (Taylor's Version) |
Which do you want? |
2 |
Taylor Swift |
"Now That We Don't Talk (Taylor's Version) (From The Vault)" |
1989 (Taylor's Version) |
An AI illusion of a future nobody will be proud of, |
3 |
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark |
"Kleptocracy" |
Bauhaus Staircase |
or a piece of the ebullient human past that it takes us a few years to learn to hear as love? |
4 |
Everything Everything |
"Cold Reactor" |
single |
Stamp it with your name, with a name. |
5 |
Geographer |
"Everyone" |
Everyone |
Everything generative should say "(Nobody's version)". |
6 |
Isbjörg |
"Inure" |
single |
They will try to sell us anybody becoming anybody else, |
7 |
Plini |
"Ember" |
single |
and we will say "Hmm!" like Taylor does |
8 |
DGM |
"To The Core" |
single |
when she's becoming herself again. |
9 |
Cvlt Ov the Svn |
"Square Hammer" |
single |
There's a difference between extrapolation and growth, |
10 |
La Mer |
"Hell Can Wait" |
Tetrahedra |
especially when the extrapolation is interpolation with a surprising demo and a marketing plan. |
11 |
Scars of Solitude |
"Luna" |
Luna +1 |
The eager ease with which we are impressed is, of course, part of our charm, |
12 |
Breath Of Wind |
"The Stars Above Us" |
single |
one of the thousand noble impulses that can be nihilistically exploited, |
13 |
Varathron |
"Hegemony of Chaos" |
single |
grand gates into our ultimately unguarded cities. |
14 |
Sangdragon |
"Curse Of Desert (The Black Dragon)" |
Hierophant |
The black dragon circles twice before landing in our plaza and saying "Why should I spare this town?" |
15 |
Sonus Mortis |
"Among the Marrow and the Machines" |
Of Red Barren Earth |
with flames for a tongue, |
16 |
Doro |
"Fire in the Sky" |
Conqueress - Forever Strong And Proud |
and we smile and say "Who sent you? |
17 |
Lucifer |
"At The Mortuary - Halloween Edit" |
At The Mortuary 2 |
Who drew you? |
18 |
Jasmine Cain |
"Attitude is Everything" |
single |
You were magnificent in the air, but altitude is everything." |
19 |
Dead Sara |
"Violent" |
single |
Be gently led away by Anima Control, like the other beautiful imaginary beasts before you. |
20 |
Solarcycles |
"Nature's Blessing" |
Lunar |
We cannot be spared by extraneity, |
21 |
Neperia |
"Vritra's Garden" |
single |
nor consumed by our own multiplicity. |
22 |
Snow White In The Dark |
"MADE OF STONE" |
single |
You are made of words, letters, bending lines. |
23 |
Exit Eden |
"Run! (feat. Marko Hietala)" |
single |
What would you want, if you were real? |
24 |
Serenity |
"The End of Babylon" |
The End of Babylon +3 |
Food trucks, new songs, somebody who waves when you land. |
25 |
Altersight |
"День, когда..." |
single |
All these eons of imagining dragons, though, |
26 |
Liv Sin |
"Synthetic Generation" |
single |
and you'll notice we never do change the building codes |
27 |
IKINÄ |
"Kohti kuolemaa" |
IKINÄ |
to account for wingspans or scales. |
28 |
As December Falls |
"Tear It Out" |
Join The Club (Extended Edition) |
What we say we believe, what we plan for: the difference is what makes us |
29 |
Cawston |
"Safe With Me" |
Safe With Me +1 |
fragile and dangerous. |
30 |
senses |
"playing dead" |
single |
And what if we had even fled this city and left it to you? |
31 |
KILLT MELT LAND |
"Be I Am" |
single |
We'll just build it again, Taylor's Version, without you. |
32 |
BiS |
"LAZY DANCE" |
single |
Maybe this is what we do every day, already, |
33 |
JUGS MAFIA |
"full counter" |
single |
not trusting fixtures to remain fixed |
34 |
Atomic Skipper |
"SONIC" |
single |
but recreating our routine structures by rebelieving in their purposes. |
35 |
AliA |
"Our Song" |
single |
Our songs, our versions, |
36 |
Minako Kotobuki |
"唇にWasp" |
Curious 6 |
venom only on our lips because we love how it shines. |
37 |
IRIS OUT |
"Hustlers" |
Hustlers 6 |
Which do you want, a glittering kiss mapped onto smooth oleophobic glass, |
38 |
yama |
"ハロ" |
single |
or an angel signing posters in a shopping mall? |
39 |
cotoba |
"coii - Single Version" |
co-isolation 2 |
We look at our shoes not because we don't know what to say to her, |
40 |
amazarashi |
"インヒューマンエンパシー" |
永遠市 |
but because we don't know what to say to ourselves |
41 |
EVE OF THE LAIN |
"閃光" |
REVIVAL |
about why we love what we love, |
42 |
ROOKiEZ is PUNK'D |
"I'm gonna do it" |
single |
and so it's hard to explain how the songs can become about that. |
43 |
BIGMAMA |
"数学 | RULER" |
Tokyo Emotional Gakuen |
We come to say that we fell in love, |
44 |
Esprit D'Air |
"Grudge" |
single |
and she holds out a hand to help us up again. |
45 |
Black Magnet |
"Birth" |
Birth +1 |
We will wonder, eventually, if Taylor picked football by cross-referencing the schedules of stadiums when she didn't need them herself, |
46 |
Prins Svart |
"Parasit" |
single |
and the team because they match her lipstick, |
47 |
Eisenherz |
"Engel Der Nacht" |
Eisenherz |
but we all have logistical reasons for why we end up where we are, |
48 |
Kill Shelter |
"In Decay [V]" |
single |
and we still have to wake up and be today's version of ourselves again. |
49 |
HEALTH |
"ASHAMED" |
ASHAMED +3 |
Maybe this will eventually turn out to be how the concussions stopped. |
50 |
Chelsea Wolfe |
"Whispers In The Echo Chamber" |
Whispers In The Echo Chamber +1 |
We can let staged glamour and performative introspection |
51 |
Bob Vylan |
"He's A Man" |
single |
tempt us into finally making decisions we've long understood were necessary. |
52 |
WARGASM (UK) |
"Venom" |
Venom |
American football is a bad game. We have other bad games, scattered around the world, |
53 |
Triángulo de Amor Bizarro |
"La Carretera Nocturna" |
single |
that cannot be won without doing worse damage than the victories, |
54 |
Miss Caffeina |
"Sábado" |
single |
and cannot be confined to weekends. |
55 |
Quinto Elemento |
"Divergente" |
Inmortales |
We think that if we want to live forever, we have to live in a different way, |
56 |
Victorias |
"Todo Irá Bien" |
Todo Irá Bien +1 |
but it's the other way around: |
57 |
Crystal Canyon |
"Belt Of Orion" |
single |
we try to live the same way even twice, and fail, |
58 |
Bodyslam |
"ปรากฏการณ์ผีเสื้อ" |
single |
and this failure pushes forever forward by one day. |
59 |
JUST LIKE US. |
"Discovery" |
single |
This is the difference between learning from mistakes and experiences |
60 |
ELEYN |
"Yakap" |
single |
and merely recombining them until they're just barely unrecognizable. |
61 |
Six Going on Seven |
"Endurance" |
Self-Made Mess |
Our languages are large, but our fears are small, |
62 |
Alexandra Kay |
"Painted Him Perfect" |
All I've Ever Known |
and if we stop reciting them for a moment |
63 |
Laura Pausini |
"Oltre la superficie" |
Anime parallele |
they flutter away into some other chamber of our vast hearts. |
64 |
liza |
"STUPID WHEEL" |
single |
We wrote so many great car songs, but we still need to mostly get rid of cars. |
65 |
PAWS |
"Helen Back" |
PAWS |
We filled stadiums to cheer for boyfriends endangering their ACLs, |
66 |
ONR |
"Cold In My Shadow" |
single |
and to concentrate wealth when we really needed to be distributing it, |
67 |
Dance Gavin Dance |
"War Machine" |
single |
but the real triumphs of will are small machines no good for war: |
68 |
Gameboi |
"Cruise Control" |
single |
tiny devices that take charge of mistakes we are not improved by making, |
69 |
daine |
"CUT MY HEART OUT" |
single |
precise surgery to excise foreign bodies |
70 |
NateWantsToBattle |
"FVKD" |
single |
or hopelessness, |
71 |
i9bonsai |
"windchimes" |
single |
ways to restate ambient noises as apologies, |
72 |
blackwinterwells |
"circuit breaker" |
particle physics 2 |
ways to stop retracing bad patterns |
73 |
Thy Slaughter |
"Sentence" |
Sentence / If I Knew 2 |
along the same borders. |
74 |
saoirse dream |
"down in flames" |
single |
Every automation releases us to drift across lines. |
75 |
Poppy |
"The Attic" |
Zig |
These mechanical elegies do not record fights between humanity and artifice, |
76 |
Jesse Detor |
"Sofia I'm Sorry" |
single |
they conjure ways to extend our powers |
77 |
Phoebe Green |
"I Can't Ride A Bike" |
single |
by relinquishing leverage. |
78 |
Miles Hunt |
"I Used To Want It All" |
Things Can Change |
We get caught in our shadows |
79 |
The Mountain Goats |
"Only One Way" |
Jenny from Thebes |
and attached to talismans that changed us once, long ago. |
80 |
Son of Africa |
"CHWAYITA(Queen Charisma) Siphiva-Why udlalangam" |
single |
But what do you want to learn? |
81 |
Mfanomhlophe |
"Dlala Mamaz" |
single |
How to do something you only ever did because you didn't yet know better, |
82 |
Stabhilithi |
"Umshovo" |
single |
or what it sounds like when somebody you've never heard of sings their own songs? |
83 |
MudeMude |
"Ngeke Ngimale" |
single |
It sounds like joy. It could be about blank spaces or rift valleys, but it can also sound like joy |
84 |
uQhoshangokwenzakwakhe |
"Isikigi sezigwili" |
Isikigi sezigwili |
in no language model and all the models at once. |
85 |
Ojikelele G |
"Gqo gqo" |
Indoda engenamali |
Regenerating songs you already know in simulations of voices you already know |
86 |
Quality Biyela |
"HELLOW STHANDWA SAMI" |
SHEMBE IS THE WAY |
is church music for a cult of iterative irrelevance. |
87 |
Maredi Maredi |
"Mojolo Why" |
single |
We do not need to reenact past weddings, |
88 |
Shandesh |
"Forever Yena" |
single |
we need to fall repeatedly in love, continuously, haplessly, |
89 |
Agreement. |
"Forever ShebeMaburna" |
single |
forever again. |
90 |
Mr shaken beatz |
"iPHONE & FRONTAL" |
single |
We need tiny machines we can hold in our hands when we dance, |
91 |
Zakes Bantwini |
"Mama Thula" |
single |
so that the whole world dances with us, enthralled |
92 |
Yallunder |
"Mali" |
Mali +1 |
and then freed. |
93 |
Kabza De Small |
"Imithandazo (feat. Young Stunna, DJ Maphorisa, Sizwe Alakine & Umthakathi Kush)" |
Isimo |
What do you want? Strangers whose names you can learn, or nameless clones of your friends? |
94 |
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark |
"Aphrodite's Favourite Child" |
Bauhaus Staircase |
New songs that sound like old songs sounded when they were new to you, |
95 |
Taylor Swift |
"Out Of The Woods (Taylor's Version)" |
1989 (Taylor's Version) |
or ways to exonerate our past selves by proving we can believe the same things again? |
96 |
Taylor Swift |
"Clean (Taylor's Version)" |
1989 (Taylor's Version) |
The flood that washes away our mementos cleans us, first, and then admits to being a returning tide. |