| 1 | Hitsujibungaku | "GO!!!" | single | I guess Hitsujibungaku are probably my current favorite band. |
| 2 | Kuhakugokko | "Ghost" | Minus Zero | If I sound unsure, |
| 3 | CANDY GO!GO! | "Time to shine" | single | and obviously I have chosen to sound unsure, |
| 4 | ukka | "Rising dream" | single | it's not because I'm fretting over whether it ought to have been Emma Hewitt or Temperance, |
| 5 | KANKAKU PIERO | "We Still" | single | both of whom I adore enough for a favorite, but their new songs confirm my love, |
| 6 | Superfly | "Ashes" | single | where each new Hitsujibungaku one expands it. |
| 7 | 内田彩 | "まるで元気" | MUSIC | I might have told you I was following them into shoegaze blur, |
| 8 | Kolokol | "Sundance" | single | of which there's a bit in the choruses of "GO!!!", |
| 9 | WAGAMAMA RAKIA | "M" | single | but the rest of this one is painstakingly clear, |
| 10 | BiS | "なまえをよんで" | LAZY DANCE 4 | the bass circling vigilantly around the rest of the notes, |
| 11 | cosmicdust | "bird cries (sadness ver.)" | single | the drums ticking patiently. |
| 12 | 湯冷めラジオ | "フランチェスカ" | single | You find out what you really think |
| 13 | Bearwear | "Glider" | single | when your dreams change into unfamiliar shapes |
| 14 | Otherside | "season" | season/everblue 2 | and you only love them more. |
| 15 | Gacharic Spin | "BakuBaku" | single | I haven't even learned their names. |
| 16 | Ling tosite sigure | "狐独の才望" | single | I keep looking them up when I remember that I don't remember them, only to forget again. |
| 17 | ELFENSJóN | "緋灼の魔女 / REINCARNATE Ver" | REINCARNATE | I do not love them in order to address each member individually, |
| 18 | Divided Island | "Fragile World" | single | in a library or a quiet stairwell, |
| 19 | Secret Sphere | "Aura" | Blackened Heartbeat | or to make a point to myself or the bannisters or chairs. |
| 20 | Secret Rule | "UNInVERSE" | single | What would I say? |
| 21 | Weightless World | "What We'll Become" | Sleepwalker | "We love you where I'm from in Boston, too.", |
| 22 | Enigmatic Entrance | "Rise of The Mortal" | Rise of The Mortal +1 | but maybe it's just me, and I could check and that's why I haven't. |
| 23 | Lodestar | "Shooting Star" | Polaris | I am a guest in their worlds, |
| 24 | Shereign | "Visual Animals" | single | forgetting their names, forgetting most of the translations of their lyrics |
| 25 | We Are To Blame | "I Want This To End" | Duality II | but remembering the structures: |
| 26 | Purple Nail | "Calling" | single | juxtapositions of the real and the possible; |
| 27 | Rioghan | "Sweet Death" | single | conjectural explanations of tangible feelings; |
| 28 | Greywind | "Antidote" | single | Christmas approaching or passing, seen through the windows into a different train. |
| 29 | Blameshift | "All or Nothing" | single | I usually love giddy maximalism in Japanese music, |
| 30 | RinRin | "Tapos Na" | single | just as I do in the other kind of music, non-Japanese, |
| 31 | PARTICLES | "Burn" | Гореть | but this is alt- out past alt-idol, |
| 32 | Glasgow Kiss | "My Own Monster" | single | and loving maximalism isn't an infidelity to minimalism. |
| 33 | Night Crowned | "She Comes At Night" | Tales | We are not measured by the distance from any point, |
| 34 | Vanir | "Twisting the Knife" | single | not our home or your home or the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. |
| 35 | Eramaa | "Luunkehrääjä" | single | We receive joy when we are given joy, |
| 36 | Hinayana | "Slowly Light Collides" | Shatter And Fall | but our hearts also swell when we trade sadnesses, |
| 37 | Shylmagoghnar | "Convergence" | Convergence | or when a stranger wraps up a sadness in green paper |
| 38 | Chronoform | "Mary Celeste" | single | and places it on a window ledge next to an important road |
| 39 | Hyrgal | "Nihil Est" | single | in an unimportant town, or vice versa, |
| 40 | RüYYn | "The Flames, The Fallen, The Fury - Part III" | single | and then all of the things that were foreordained to happen |
| 41 | Vastum | "In Bed With Death" | Inward to Gethsemane | still happen except for one. |
| 42 | Morbid Saint | "Bleed Them Dry" | single | How do we fall in love with people, |
| 43 | Spidergawd | "Dinosaur" | Spidergawd VII | when they are singing, that we do not know? |
| 44 | Maladie | "With One Voice" | single | Or how do we not? Isn't this what singing is for, to dilute the nitrogen very slightly |
| 45 | Genus Ordinis Dei | "For A New God" | single | until our eyes just barely gleam? |
| 46 | Tides From Nebula | "The Haunting" | single | This is what all songs are about, inherently and inevitably, |
| 47 | Giuseppe Gilardi | "era moderna" | single | whether they embrace their elemental nature or pretend to be concerned only with mysteriously once-abandoned ships, |
| 48 | Pollen | "Glutamate" | single | but it's different when every other emotional background hum stops |
| 49 | The Dark Atom | "Ocean" | single | and you have to make a decision about what you choose to hear. |
| 50 | Plini | "Still Life" | Still Life +1 | I choose this band I'm not even sure how I found, any more, |
| 51 | Caligula's Horse | "Golem" | single | from a place I've been once and studied just enough to have a very slightly better idea of how tenuously I understand it, |
| 52 | Galahad | "Behind the Veil of a Smile" | The Long Goodbye | but maybe also how fractionally and selectively I even understand everything. |
| 53 | The Grandmaster | "Watching The End" | single | I think I once thought there was a serious way to listen to songs, and some irrelevant number of unserious ways, |
| 54 | Michael Catton | "Faith" | Point Of No Return | and the serious one was clenched scrutiny as a means to memorization. |
| 55 | Kee Marcello | "Still On Fire" | 4-Track EP 4 | Maybe, really, I once thought this was the one serious way to do anything: |
| 56 | Sophie Lloyd | "Won't You Come (feat. Marisa Rodriguez)" | Imposter Syndrome | to learn geometry or collect bottle caps or listen to a guy on my father's radio in our back yard counting the yardlines as Tony Dorsett passes them. |
| 57 | At 1980 | "Back to Me" | single | That kid would be exasperated with me for spending years at evening Nihongo classes |
| 58 | DIAMANTE | "1987" | single | without managing to get to the point where I can understand these songs I'm so clearly trying to love, |
| 59 | Missing Persons | "Gatsby" | Hollywood Lie | and I don't know how I would effectively explain to him that I'm not trying, |
| 60 | LÉON | "Dirt" | single | and that's the answer to both questions. |
| 61 | Pure Bathing Culture | "The New World" | Chalice | I don't think I understood this when I started taking the classes, even. |
| 62 | Mary Timony | "Dominoes" | single | I had gnawing dissatisfactions and nominal goals, |
| 63 | Desire Marea | "Tholakele" | The Baddies of Isandlwana 3 | all of which have since become functionally moot. |
| 64 | Kaleida | "Seagull Nun" | Seagull Nun +1 | If you can copy and paste and spell the word "translate", you can eventually, painstakingly, |
| 65 | Rocío Saiz | "No Estoy Bien" | Autoboicot y Descanso | navigate the music of a mysterious place. |
| 66 | MARLENA | "RED FLAGS" | single | What are you going to do, half-younger self? Learn all the languages in which humans sing perfect songs? |
| 67 | Yana Zafiro | "Lo siento" | single | Half-younger self frowns because they still think discovering Japanese music is an individual transformation, |
| 68 | Ela Taubert | "¿Por Qué No Me Fui Antes?" | single | not the beginning of a change of form, |
| 69 | Karlien Van Jaarsveld | "Als Is Okay" | single | of changes of forms not just for me but for all of us. |
| 70 | RAAF | "Mars se Oseaan" | Mars se Oseaan | But youthful stubbornness is an anticipatory instinct that makes it possible for us to do |
| 71 | Rooksein | "Weet Jy" | single | good things whose truer justifications we will only understand in retrospect. |
| 72 | Klara Keller | "En Varg I Skyn" | En Varg I Skyn +1 | You can't learn all the languages in which there are songs, |
| 73 | Ines | "Taevasse" | single | but this isn't an argument against learning languages, |
| 74 | Lifehouse Worship | "Revival" | Revival | it's just a glorious dispensation to listen to as many songs you can't understand as you can find, |
| 75 | Ricki-Lee | "Ghost" | single | and to learn each thing you learn for itself. |
| 76 | Chione | "Polar Night" | single | You can't hear all the songs, you can't eat all the food, you can't touch everyone's skin. |
| 77 | Nailah Blackman | "Jam Of The Year" | single | Engineers will tell you the only numbers that matter are 0, 1 and whatever, |
| 78 | Baby Queen | "We Can Be Anything" | Quarter Life Crisis | and those are good numbers, |
| 79 | KILLBOY | "SUZY" | single | but so are all the others. |
| 80 | Lulu Simon | "Stay" | single | Learning a little bit of Japanese can give you different ideas about the languages you think you already speak. |
| 81 | Lyncs | "Dancing On The Freeway" | single | Learning a little bit about tournament-level Scrabble can give you different ways to think about games and pride and empathy. |
| 82 | girli | "Nothing Hurts Like a Girl" | Nothing Hurts Like a Girl +1 | Learning what it takes to run 13.1 miles in a snowstorm can change your ideas about the damages your body has already incurred. |
| 83 | Winona Fighter | "I Think You Should Leave" | single | Fluency and trophies and marathons do not need to be the goals. |
| 84 | SKIES | "All Those Lights" | Is It All in Our Heads? | You do not have to have goals. Morality is not a grade you are awarded at the moment of your death. |
| 85 | Texxcoco | "Luces en el mar" | single | These playlists, these weeks, are not iterations towards better weeks or shorter years or single bands or single songs. |
| 86 | Femegades | "Toolish" | single | My younger selves made lists in the spirits of envy and destruction. |
| 87 | Katha Na | "Sino ang Sagot" | single | I can imagine them huddled around a turntable somehow extracted from time, arguing over Icicle Works b-sides and trying to decide whether to believe that particular Laurie Anderson albums are obliquely poignant or ambitiously annoying |
| 88 | Prismv | "Toxic cycle" | single | until only 10 joys were left, |
| 89 | Gregory Dillon | "Drive" | Drive +1 | obtusely or maybe carefully not realizing that if you can throw out everything you love except some tiny finite number, |
| 90 | Nick Wilson | "Sunburn" | Sunburn +3 | then you have made your heart almost small enough to keep beating empty, |
| 91 | Wstdyth | "1 Small Step" | single | and you shouldn't be surprised if it spits at you to finish the miserable task. |
| 92 | Gameboi | "John Doe" | single | Maybe I still have a favorite band, and maybe it's Hitsujibungaku, |
| 93 | Rein | "There's No Tomorrow" | single | and I demur, performatively, because I remember the reductive impulses that performative declarations used to be meant to satisfy. |
| 94 | Johan Baeckström | "Always Here" | Here EP 4 | My kid self, who lived in a now-forgotten era before Pokémon, had favorite bands as if, at any moment, I would be challenged to a duel to the death |
| 95 | I Met a Yeti | "Metal Slime" | Time Erasure 4 | by a battle of one-card Pokémon decks. |
| 96 | Persher | "Sleep Well Night Time Forest Rain" | single | My various half-younger selves had different strategies for this eventuality, |
| 97 | Palm Ghosts | "Drag" | I Love You, Burn In Hell | as if enough study could reveal the optimum single card or god or aphoristic encapsulation of correct belief. |
| 98 | Some Days Are Darker | "Downpour" | single | My current diffuse cloud of selves love Pokémon without even the benefit of nostalgia |
| 99 | Softcult | "Haunt You Still" | single | because they evoke a universe constituted out of pre-rational child-logic, |
| 100 | topographies | "Night Sea" | single | but this is really only different from how to love songs in quantity. |
| 101 | House of Harm | "Two Kinds" | single | Today there are 1021 known Pokémon and presumably more that have not yet crossed over to our dimension; |
| 102 | TodoMal | "Antichrist of Love" | single | and there are 191,020,178 songs not counting the ones that haven't yet crossed onto Spotify. |
| 103 | TVAM | "Ephemerol" | Costasol 4 | Plenty of these songs I love and live with for a week are built on premises no less dubious |
| 104 | The Dogs | "This is not your fault" | single | than a pig with a spring for a body who can't stop bouncing because the spring is what makes their heart beat, |
| 105 | Lonely The Brave | "Eventide" | What We Do To Feel | and you frown but most of the things you think you need are just as untenable, |
| 106 | Broadside | "Stranger" | Hotel Bleu | and no more entertaining as an animation on the map. |
| 107 | Pet Symmetry | "Big Island" | single | In 10 years, or 5 or 2, these games will all be fully immersive VR, |
| 108 | Rival Town | "Seasons" | single | and passing hoves of Spoinks will stop traffic and leave trails of tiny indentations everywhere behind, |
| 109 | Paige | "uMngani Wami" | African Child | but the songs will be the same. |
| 110 | Heavy-K | "Jezabela" | single | My favorite new song by my favorite band |
| 111 | Son of Africa | "Sipho Nkente (Elisha)" | single | is the first song on the playlist of the week, |
| 112 | Sifaeli Mwabuka | "Tunajua Mungu Wetu Upo" | single | not its target length. |
| 113 | Thokozani Langa | "UBANG' ISCEFE" | KWABHEDA UMSWENKO | It is a coincidence that in this Hitsujibungaku week I was even worse than usual at conserving my helplessness? |
| 114 | Ngelo V | "Uyoze Awuchithe" | Grootman V1 | Or does love compound? |
| 115 | Mongezi Luthuli | "Akabuye - Radio Edit" | Dear Bubbie | I expect I would have different ideas about something if I knew a little Sepedi or Zulu or Filipino, and I'm not saying I shouldn't or won't, |
| 116 | Iskhothane somaskandi | "Abanikazi bombay' mbayi" | single | but meanwhile, the words and songs we know represent both their own meanings and all the things that could be meant. |
| 117 | Ama Yellow Bone | "Umhlaba" | single | Listen to the next song not as if, if it is perfect, it will be the last one you need. |
| 118 | MORWETLA WA DIKWENA | "Moloinyana" | single | Pick a favorite band, if you want, like a kiss for this moment: |
| 119 | Ba Bethe Gashoazen | "Parachute" | single | not because you would want no other kiss in any other moment, |
| 120 | Anıl Piyancı | "Bi Çare Yok Mu?" | single | but because you would choose this same kiss again no matter how many times you were allowed to repeat this moment, |
| 121 | Mr Traumatik | "Chemistry" | single | and once is the only perfect number for every moment, |
| 122 | julek ploski | "Empath café" | Matcha latte, Contemplation | because it's the only one that understands how individual moments become perfect by embodying unrepeatability. |
| 123 | Jacaszek | "Eirḗnē III" | single | I have a favorite band because maybe you'll ask me, and I'll have some way for our conversation to begin. |
| 124 | NHK | "Yesod - 基礎" | What You Know | My kid self will, if you don't, and if I step out of the time machine and he frowns and says "Who's your favorite band?", which he will, and I say "I come from a future where we love all songs equally and essentially for how they express the infinite varietal human potential for joy." he's definitely going to kick me in the nuts and run for the Time Police. |
| 125 | Megan Thee Stallion | "Cobra (Rock Remix) [feat. Spiritbox]" | Cobra (Rock Remix) [feat. Spiritbox] +1 | Wait, ow, come back. Let me explain how metalcore and gothic symphonic metal and rap are all going to develop in different directions only to end up in the same place. |
| 126 | Dimmu Borgir | "Perfect Strangers" | Perfect Strangers +1 | Let me explain how the singer of your 15th-favorite band is going to end up making one album as the singer of your 2nd-favorite band, and this is part of how some maybe-Satanic Norwegians named after a volcano in Iceland will do a magnificent cover of a song you already know in a style you can't yet imagine. |
| 127 | Zac Brown Band | "Enter Sandman - Live at Wrigley Field, Chicago, IL, 09.14.2014" | From The Road, Vol. 1: Covers | Let me explain about 2% of what's going to happen to country music, |
| 128 | Captain Black Beard | "Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)" | single | and how the bands you're slightly embarrassed to like |
| 129 | Judicator | "Mandy" | single | are going to turn out to be part of the same history as the ones you dread. |
| 130 | Chin Up, Kid | "My Own Worst Enemy" | single | You will be less often embarrassed, but also less often sure and more often sore. |
| 131 | Lion's Share | "Life on Mars?" | single | Not only have we not landed on Mars yet, but we haven't even mastered the art of not turning against good ideas if idiots say them aloud. |
| 132 | Nanase Aikawa | "Rusty Nail" | ROCK MONSTER | By the time you discover Japanese music, you will have missed entirely golden generations of it, but just be patient. |
| 133 | Sunrise Skater Kids | "I'm Not Okay - Japanese Version" | I'm Not Okay 3 | New generations will join you where you are. |
| 134 | First to Eleven | "Run to the Hills" | single | They'll have their own songs, which you'll love, and vice versa. |
| 135 | The Animal In Me | "Paint The Town Red" | single | Let me explain how borders exist to demarcate spaces of possibility, not separate incommensurate dimensions. |
| 136 | Halocene | "Amaranthine" | single | Let me explain how you don't have to do everything in a completely new way. |
| 137 | Rain Paris | "Summertime Sadness" | single | You aren't really listening, but it doesn't matter. You don't need an elaborate preview of a future you're about to make. |
| 138 | Our Last Night | "Bring Me To Life" | single | Sorry for the way this started. I do have a favorite band. They're three women from Japan named Moeka, Yurika and Hiroa, and the band's name is the Japanese translation of "sheep literature". The music is slightly sad, but in a hopeful way, and that's something you'll learn to like without unlearning how to like heavy metal. |
| 139 | Juliana Madrid | "Let Go" | single | I'm going to go back through this door now. You will reach the same future, it will just take you more doors. You won't need my help or advice for any of the ones between you, now, and me, here. Here? One last door. One last wish for you. |
| 140 | Emma Hewitt | "LAY ME DOWN" | LAY ME DOWN +1 | Put your hand on the last door. Open it. On the other side? More doors. |