| 1 | a crowd of rebellion | "Room key" | single | There's a touching irony to the idea that an old-gen print publication, |
| 2 | Niki | "ジッタードール (feat. Lily)" | ERROR | raised long ago on the conceit that writing about popular music can be as important as news, |
| 3 | TOKYO TEFUTEFU | "double - syoen, tou Ver." | syoen, tou 5 | could garner brief online credibility |
| 4 | IA | "MAIDEN BLUE (IA Ver.)" | single | by lobbing one of its most lucrative current subjects |
| 5 | BABYMETAL | "Mirror Mirror" | THE OTHER ONE | out of context as a critical philistine. |
| 6 | KRD8 | "NADESIKORANBU" | single | Whether Ed Sheeran does or doesn't understand the enduring cultural role of thoughtful criticism |
| 7 | mercuro | "Gekijyouhoukai literacy" | single | I do not really know, |
| 8 | ExWHYZ | "ANSWER" | single | although if you subject a demonstrably competent musician to a simultaneous barrage |
| 9 | ALICETOPIA | "Uroboros Symmetry" | In Dreams | of popular acclaim and critical disdain for long enough, |
| 10 | BiSH | "SPARK" | Bye-Bye Show 2 | you shouldn't really be surprised if they start to side with only one of those. |
| 11 | Finally | "Fighter" | single | I spent 12 years writing music reviews, once. |
| 12 | Kolokol | "Compass" | Compass +1 | I'm probably not going to do that again. |
| 13 | PIGGS | "BOO!SHUT" | single | I think, though, that anybody lining up to score points off of Ed saying nobody needs music reviews |
| 14 | Su凸ko D凹koi | "FuzokujyoTonoKoi" | single | is contributing less-useful noise to our shared cultural experience by smug offense-taking |
| 15 | DIALOGUE+ | "Marutto Jibun Jidai" | Kasuka de Tashika 5 | than Ed is contributing by continuing to play arena shows with a guitar and a loop pedal. |
| 16 | RAINASH | "Reprint of Tragedy" | single | Pretending that streaming hasn't changed the role of writing about music |
| 17 | yuragi | "I Liked You Through The Veil" | single | is obtuse and/or cynical. |
| 18 | Nanawoakari | "忘れないでベイベー" | single | We used to write about music in order to cross a moat of silence. |
| 19 | Motohiro Hata | "Life is Art !" | Paint Like a Child | Not entirely, of course, but anywhere off the summit of the monoculture |
| 20 | Czecho No Republic | "Journey" | single | you had to at least account for the likelihood that your readers weren't listening to the same music you were hearing, |
| 21 | BUCK-TICK | "Mugen Loop" | Mugen Loop +1 | and were vanishingly unlikely to change that while reading, |
| 22 | RAZOR | "GRAVITY EMOTION" | GRAVITY EMOTION +2 | whatever you egotistically imagined about what they would rush out to purchase after the experience. |
| 23 | BabyKingdom | "GAMUSHARISING" | GAMUSHARISING +2 | The craft of describing music in words is noble and refinable, of course; |
| 24 | Kings and Queens | "One Tiny Venue" | single | like portrait painting from life, |
| 25 | MOLA BLUE | "Not Meant to Be" | single | or keeping a coal-fired locomotive running at peak fossil-consuming inefficiency. |
| 26 | poptropicaslutz! | "ready set go" | single | Not all real skills are necessary. |
| 27 | Fire-Toolz | "The Great Allower" | single | We no longer have to write in the space between listeners and music, |
| 28 | JPEGMAFIA | "Fentanyl Tester" | SCARING THE HOES | or even really can. |
| 29 | Brevin Kim | "The Poison's The Weather" | single | We stand to the side, in loquacious disregard, |
| 30 | James Ivy | "L-Trip" | L-Trip +2 | lucky that written language gives us a way |
| 31 | dashie | "let it all out" | single | to bid for the spare senses. |
| 32 | kennedyxoxo | "goodmorning los angeles" | single | What will we do with them? |
| 33 | Stand and Wave | "Easygoing" | Shamble Into Frame 4 | The canonical rejoinder to Ed's nominal rhetorical dismissal, |
| 34 | SayWeCanFly | "Amor" | Beneath The Roses | reiterated plentifully enough to kind of make his point as much as dispel it, |
| 35 | Dev Lemons | "Dizzy Vision" | single | is that we write about experience to explain its cultural importance and context. |
| 36 | NOILION | "Divine Speed (feat. Foggy-D)" | ELEMENTS 5 | And yes, of course, that's a thing, sometimes done. |
| 37 | As Everything Unfolds | "Slow Down" | Slow Down 5 | Can't Slow Down does it. |
| 38 | A Dark Reborn | "Illusions" | The Flight 3 | Major Labels does it. |
| 39 | Enchantya | "Collective Souls" | single | It's harder, but still doable, at shorter lengths with shorter lead-times. |
| 40 | Asylum Pyre | "The True Crown (I seek Your War)" | Call Me Inhuman | It's also very clearly not what a lot of perfectly good writing about music mainly achieves, |
| 41 | Ignea | "Dunes" | Dunes +1 | or even intends to. |
| 42 | Eleine | "We Are Legion" | single | Most of our experiences are far more experience than culture, individually, |
| 43 | Scarlet Aura | "Rock în sânge și voință" | single | and share a cultural significance with countless similars. |
| 44 | Floor Jansen | "My Paragon" | Paragon | You can explain the use of autotune as a deliberate sonic element |
| 45 | Decadence Dust | "Rejected" | Lighthouse | rather than a surreptitious corrective |
| 46 | LYRRE | "Chariot of Sun" | single | once, |
| 47 | Dragony | "The Dead Queen's Race" | single | but there were a hundred songs that seemed briefly novel for their mechanized discretion, |
| 48 | Smoulder | "Victims of Fate" | single | and now it's just a thing we do. |
| 49 | Ihsahn | "The Observer" | Fascination Street Sessions 3 | Songs outnumber cultures. |
| 50 | Pyramaze | "Fortress" | Fortress +1 | If you only write about one to explicate the other, |
| 51 | Teramaze | "Chaos In The Way" | single | you can afford to hibernate or learn to shovel coal with the years between changes. |
| 52 | Nerve End | "The Big Sleep" | single | We keep writing about music in between upheavals, if we do, |
| 53 | Excalion | "Amuse Me" | Once Upon a Time | because it's a thing in itself, a learnable craft |
| 54 | Magnus Karlsson’s Free Fall | "Holy Ground" | single | with its own capacity for elucidating joy or evoking it. |
| 55 | Arjen Lucassen's Supersonic Revolution | "The Rise Of The Starman" | The Rise Of The Starman +1 | We write into the thrumming spaces around the music |
| 56 | Lion's Share | "United" | single | for the same reasons we dance, or air-drum, or hold hauntedly still: |
| 57 | Hanging Garden | "The Construct" | The Garden | to form a participatory space around majestic inspiration. |
| 58 | Marianas Rest | "Auer" | Auer | A less-glib put-down of Ed Sheeran wouldn't be "I made up my own mind and you suck", |
| 59 | Kalmah | "Drifting in a Dream" | Drifting in a Dream +1 | it would be "nobody feels inspiredly and expressibly more human while your soulless songs are pointlessly humming". |
| 60 | Immortal | "War Against All" | single | Except, as is usually the case, refining your hatred clarifies your own weaknesses. |
| 61 | Keep Of Kalessin | "Hellride" | Katharsis | Ed Sheeran's fans aren't living any culturally impoverished way that substituting Elliott Smith would enrich. |
| 62 | Wormwitch | "Weapons Against Despair" | single | Arguably Ed Sheeran is exactly what you get by turning Elliott Smith's depression down far enough that he stays alive to keep making music, |
| 63 | Mork | "Indre Demoner" | Dypet | but now who's settling for cheap soundbites that don't reward scrutiny? |
| 64 | Breath Of Wind | "Feelings" | single | And isn't that the only aesthetic judgment that matters, or at least endures? |
| 65 | Ne Obliviscaris | "Misericorde I - As the Flesh Falls" | Exul | When you pay attention, does it buy you anything? |
| 66 | Oath Of Cranes | "Puja - Celebrate the Negation of Hope" | single | We do not read about art to be taught the correct response, |
| 67 | Bonjour Tristesse | "Against Leviathan" | single | nor usually to be taught the correct elements of a canonical repsonse; |
| 68 | Usnea | "The Compleated Sage" | The Compleated Sage +1 | we read for the same reason that we listen: |
| 69 | Liturgy | "Djennaration" | 93696 | to appreciate encodings of joy. |
| 70 | Zbava | "Riedegost" | single | We read while listening to appreciate multi-modal encodings of joy. |
| 71 | Kjell Braaten | "Savannah" | The Cabin 5 | The channels persist in emotional time, |
| 72 | Smorodina Reka | "Путь домой" | single | which allows for long books about short records |
| 73 | Cruachan | "The Queen" | The Living and The Dead | or brief illuminations of barely condensed weeks. |
| 74 | Shores Of Null | "Darkness Won't Take Me" | The Loss of Beauty | Failures of synergy are sometimes merely victims of mismatched scale. |
| 75 | Antichrisis | "One Last Time" | single | An 8-second visual loop would have to be pretty dense to reward the amount of scrutiny |
| 76 | A Pregnant Light | "In Gaul" | Capacity For Living | a 3:42 song proposes. |
| 77 | Depeche Mode | "Never Let Me Go" | Memento Mori | A dismissive tweet echoes a couple times before exponential decay takes it |
| 78 | Herbert Grönemeyer | "Das ist los" | Das ist los | and the song remains. |
| 79 | Saltatio Mortis | "Taugenichts" | single | We write about music exactly to liberate ourselves from enforced simultaneity, |
| 80 | Subway To Sally | "Weit ist das Meer" | Himmelfahrt | to make a world in which we are not always required to attend in a room |
| 81 | Killus | "Grøtesk" | Grøtesk | to experience unloneliness, |
| 82 | Viva Suecia | "Últimas Voluntades - Canción Original De La Película" | single | and thus one in which we are not required to trade agency for love. |
| 83 | Carmen 113 | "Lánzame Hacia Ti" | single | Feeling superior to people who don't hate Ed Sheeran |
| 84 | Ed Sheeran | "Eyes Closed" | single | is no more virtuous than hating people who like ice cream |
| 85 | Dulce María | "Pienso En Ti" | single | because there aren't enough flavors for everybody to have one that only they love |
| 86 | Indica | "Vuonna 95" | single | and 30 that only they despise. |
| 87 | Katri Ylander | "Hautaan asti" | single | Do you know how to dance with your eyes closed? |
| 88 | One Blood Namibia | "Kautira" | single | Or in the dark? |
| 89 | Nhii | "Warawa Wara" | single | Or to a pedal loop with something simple and earnest sung over it? |
| 90 | Mychildhood | "The Soil My Perfect Family Theme sonng" | single | To something loved by millions of people you don't know? |
| 91 | Sbahle | "Ubani Obayazi" | single | Or don't understand? |
| 92 | Nthabeleng | "Malome" | Siki e fetang lerato | Arguably Ed Sheeran is to music what vanilla is to ice cream, |
| 93 | Cevuzile | "Kuyashisa" | Isazochomelana 3 | and I'm exactly the kind of person who invariably orders the strangest flavor they have today, |
| 94 | Indiya | "Amaqhaw'ezulu" | Lezo Ntuthwane | but that's only an explanation of how ice cream and music impose different physiology. |
| 95 | Bobomfanawepiki | "Anombamba nibuyenaye" | Mighty Worrior | As these playlists ruefully and correctly suggest, |
| 96 | Karyendasoul | "Jacaranda" | single | I would eat all of the ice cream flavors if there were any way for it to not make me fat again, |
| 97 | Thembelani Mbilini | "Ezulwini" | Ngena Noah | and the "again" is neither idle nor unrelated. |
| 98 | Artwork Sounds | "Awesome God" | single | Vanilla ice cream is awesome. Vanilla is a lovely and unmistakable flavor, |
| 99 | L.A. Guns | "Diamonds" | single | and we are probably lucky to live on a planet that supports it. |
| 100 | LeBrock | "Can't Breathe" | Can't Breathe +3 | I don't think we need to head off into space on generation ships |
| 101 | Hoity-Toity | "G.W.I.F.O.T.Y." | As Above 5 | to verify that other worlds have completely different flavors they have contrived to regard as mundane, |
| 102 | Royale Lynn | "Redneck Rockstar" | single | but even were we to land on one and find it teeming with indistinguishable redheaded loop-pedal dullards after all, |
| 103 | Alana Springsteen | "if you love me now" | TWENTY SOMETHING: Messing It Up 6 | no amount of sharing can nullify joy from outside of your heart. |
| 104 | MEG MYERS | "A NEW SOCIETY" | TZIA | I try to make these playlists shorter. |
| 105 | Jai Wolf | "Want It All (feat. Evalyn)" | single | I spend all week trying, and I could have flicked out Ed, |
| 106 | Sophie Ellis-Bextor | "Everything is Sweet" | Everything is Sweet +1 | or all but one of those maskandi songs I would assuredly fail to re-identify or tell meaningfully apart |
| 107 | Hemliga Klubben | "Tänk om vi dör!" | Tänk om vi dör! 5 | on any discerning exam. |
| 108 | Christina Novelli | "Heavy" | Heavy +1 | Grim discernment is a skill you can teach yourself, |
| 109 | Sena Şahin | "Bambaşka" | single | but not in itself a productive craft. |
| 110 | Joker | "Şerefe" | single | You can't consume all of the joy. |
| 111 | Wednesday | "TV in the Gas Pump" | TV in the Gas Pump +3 | I don't sneer at the vanilla ice cream, |
| 112 | Ginebras | "Billie Max" | ¿Quién es Billie Max? | I leave it behind with a painfully wistful regret. |
| 113 | Kate Davis | "Fructify" | Fish Bowl | I ate what I could, knowing it was not enough. |
| 114 | Bully | "Days Move Slow" | Days Move Slow +1 | I tried to get sick of more of these songs, but I ran out of time. |
| 115 | BLOXX | "Television Promises" | single | Ed is fine. Taylor flies her jet too much, but her songs are good. |
| 116 | MALKA | "Flashlight" | single | If you want to read Minecraft fanfic or play Wii badminton while you listen to music, |
| 117 | Komisarion Koirapartio | "Haudatkaa minut kuin majesteetti" | single | instead of having it put into richly informed cultural context, |
| 118 | SKAAR | "As Far As We Go" | Mad Woman, Pt. 1 | then please feel welcome here as well as strange. |
| 119 | Let's Eat Grandma | "From The Morning" | single | That's a skill you can learn, too, |
| 120 | Katie Gately | "Howl" | single | the craft of feeling both welcome and strange, |
| 121 | Oakland Rain | "Edderfuglen - Dikt av Ibsen" | single | an antidote you can auto-synthesize to the jaded terror |
| 122 | Tielle | "by your side" | Light in the Dark 6 | of liking something you weren't supposed to enjoy. |
| 123 | Janelle Kroll | "I'm over being cool" | single | If I had to bet on it, I'd bet that Ed said something more complicated, or more contextual, |
| 124 | Dorthia Cottrell | "Harvester" | Harvester +1 | and isn't at all confused about the power of words coexisting with music. |
| 125 | Ásgeir | "Dans nos rêves" | single | But he's also smart enough, and familiar enough with the oceans around our islands, |
| 126 | Cruel Diagonals | "Penance" | Fractured Whole | to ask the fish, politely, to self-identify, |
| 127 | Arooj Aftab | "Haseen Thi" | Love In Exile | but then also cut the head off of the tiniest one and throw it back among the others |
| 128 | Karfagen | "Birds, Pt. 1" | Birds | to cross-check the suspiciously prevalent claims of non-shark benevolence. |
| 129 | Exploring Birdsong | "Pyre" | Dancing in the Face of Danger 5 | Left too alone, too ungoverned, we allow the inevitable azonal construction of castles on hills, |
| 130 | Spirit Adrift | "Death Won't Stop Me" | single | in which our loneliness then resounds. |
| 131 | Botanist | "Epidendrum Nocturnum" | single | The kingdoms drawn in around these grave errors of solipsism |
| 132 | Thy Catafalque | "Néma vermek" | single | can choose to be synchronized in mob envy |
| 133 | Nathan Wagner | "Silver Linings" | single | or unified by compensatory protest ballet. |
| 134 | Elevation Worship | "More Than Able (feat. Chandler Moore & Tiffany Hudson)" | single | If I, as an atheist, can learn to love mordantly reverent groupsong, |
| 135 | Byrdy | "Seen Better Days" | single | then I'm pretty sure you can learn to hear Ed Sheeran less patronizingly, |
| 136 | Acadence | "Gauntlet" | single | no matter how integral to your personality you think avoiding the loopbeat has become. |
| 137 | Through Mists | "A Breath After Surfacing" | single | Sometimes when you scrutinize things you realize that the crash cymbals are fake and always exactly the same volume. |
| 138 | Skindred | "Set Fazers" | Set Fazers +1 | Like everything else, that only becomes an abraded flaw or a revealed charm |
| 139 | Bernth | "Never Make It" | Never Make It +1 | once the muscles in your face decide which direction they're going to pull. |
| 140 | Arcana | "king of alcatraz" | 17 The Star | The fact that you can explain a culture of austerity |
| 141 | Rachel Nusbaumer | "Triomphal Castle" | single | doesn't mean you have to occupy it. |
| 142 | Drew McDowall | "ARVAL" | single | Castles on hills, moats of silence, thrashing sharks, predictable and unpredictable noises: |
| 143 | Mathias Grassow | "LYRANIA 12" | LYRAMOS | these all outlive their original myopic purposes and are remanded back into our care. |
| 144 | 58918012 | "&" | Red | We could stage a reductive tournament to pick the next Elsa, |
| 145 | URTH | "Hethor" | The Claw of the Conciliator | and allow the castle to retain its isolated nobility, |
| 146 | MONO | "Lucia" | Heaven Vol. 1 3 | or we could watch the ballet about balistraria |
| 147 | Mimir's Well | "S I R I U S" | single | and then turn the castle into a museum of elaborate regret |
| 148 | taennya | "sorbus" | sorbus | and a theater of restorative redemption. |
| 149 | Regal Lily | "リッケンバッカー - With ensemble" | single | Take a song you distrust, or already love, and give it to a string quartet, |
| 150 | Demi Lovato | "Heart Attack - Rock Version" | single | or some other attentive machine of transformation. |
| 151 | Saxon | "Tales of Brave Ulysses" | More Inspirations | Steam engines turn out to have been a terrible idea, |
| 152 | Sirenia | "Twist in my Sobriety" | single | but we made the best bad decisions we knew how to make. |
| 153 | The Animal In Me | "No Scrubs" | single | I don't want to meet you nowhere, |
| 154 | Soviet Soviet | "In Between Days" | single | I want you to come down here and dance with us in the weird, unresolved spaces between the eroding castle heights and the rising sea levels. |
| 155 | The Regrettes | "Dancing on My Own" | single | So far away; so near. |
| 156 | KAYLA KING | "Flowers" | single | The things you hate echo punishingly in your head. |
| 157 | The Foreshadowing | "Such a Shame" | single | I believe in escape. |