| 1 | BiSH | "Patient!! - BiSH Ver. from BiSH THE NEXT -" | single | I find out too late that BiSH, who will disband after a final show at the end of June, are auditioning for their replacement group, BiSH THE NEXT. |
| 2 | Treble | "Angelus aut Diabolus" | Angelus aut Diabolus 5 | New members may apparently be any age or gender as long as they speak Japanese, |
| 3 | Bray me | "サイダー" | サイダー +1 | and I fit about 2.15 of those criteria. |
| 4 | AIBECK | "EggmaN" | single | My experience of Japanese idol groups is that you do not have to sing or dance particularly well, |
| 5 | buGG | "UCHRONIA" | buGG's PARADE | but you have to believe in your own adorableness with all your heart, |
| 6 | MAD JAMIE | "NO TIME TO DIE" | single | and there too I fit about 2.15 out of 3. |
| 7 | Mada Mitakoto no Nai Sekai | "アスノヨゾラ哨戒班" | single | That's probably not enough. |
| 8 | MOSHIMO | "KOINODHISUMAXTUCHIN" | KOINODHISUMAXTUCHIN +3 | When I sing or dance or play music, my commitment level is less "we are radiant gods" |
| 9 | NoelPasta | "Yes" | single | and more "well, that could probably have been worse". |
| 10 | fhána | "Runaway World" | Runaway World +3 | If I had this life to do over, though, and prescience, |
| 11 | Starmarie | "Fall down song Oshi and Hoshi's Story" | single | I might have realized that nobody who loves idol groups cares what the drummer looks like, |
| 12 | あたらよ | "僕らはそれを愛と呼んだ" | single | and most of the time there probably never was one. |
| 13 | RAY | "Frontire" | single | I speak Japanese well enough to program drums for pop-metal alt-idol backing tracks, |
| 14 | suga/es | "PLAYLIST" | single | and although I don't actually program drums well enough for that, I think it's possible I could have learned. |
| 15 | MY FIRST STORY | "東京ミッドナイト" | single | And I do believe, critically, that we are radiant gods, |
| 16 | Y-xiz | "Devils Bless You" | single | and that music is the form of radiance we retain the power to emit |
| 17 | マチルダ | "『ドラゴンテイル』" | single | after we concede the inability to pull off laser-aligned bangs and mini-skirts. |
| 18 | YOHIO | "naïve" | single | I don't want to be in an idol group any more than I want to be on a professional soccer team, |
| 19 | 内田雄馬 | "1 LOVE 1" | single | but I want them to exist and thrive, |
| 20 | SpecialThanks | "ふたりのうた" | single | and usually I think it's enough to follow and champion the things I love |
| 21 | Galileo Galilei | "ヘイヘイ" | Bee and The Whales | while I do the work where the skills I've actually learned apply, |
| 22 | れん | "フシアワセ" | single | but sometimes I doubt. |
| 23 | DISH// | "エンドロールは悲しくない" | single | Kevin Eires makes a perfectly good Japanese-style idol despite being a Swedish kid whose dad was in Swedish American-style metal bands, |
| 24 | UtaKata | "Kishi-Kaisei" | single | and my dad was a musician and scientist and programmer, even if not all three in combination, |
| 25 | LEODRAT | "Nia" | Near and Dear 3 | so there were other paths. |
| 26 | Age Factory | "向日葵" | single | But there are always other paths. |
| 27 | Mega Shinnosuke | "Isshoukonomama" | single | I am old enough that there are things I know I will not get to do, |
| 28 | This is LAST | "おやすみ" | single | but the part of this that becomes more true with time is the knowing, |
| 29 | SHIFT_CONTROL | "In the Debris" | Make My Name | not the infinite. |
| 30 | kanon | "life" | single | YOHIO notwithstanding, the likelihood of my becoming functionally Japanese |
| 31 | The Brow Beat | "ラブレター" | ラブレター +3 | started out infinitesimal when I was born in Texas |
| 32 | THE MAYTH | "Stake Everything" | single | to a Texan and a transplanted second-generation New England Italian-American, |
| 33 | Winter Wakes | "Lost Cause" | Wide Awake 4 | and took a relatively giant but absolutely negligible jump years later when I became unexpectedly obsessed with Ami and Yumi singing Andy Sturmer's "Love So Pure" |
| 34 | Seasick | "We're Going Nowhere After All" | single | and Aikawa Nanase singing Tomoyasu Hotei's "Seven Seas". |
| 35 | Apebreeder | "Black Is The Last Color" | single | You do not have to become the things you discover you love. |
| 36 | Saydie | "Falkor" | single | You earn them by loving them, |
| 37 | THIRDS | "Butter Heart (JYOCHO, heliotrope)" | single | by expanding your heart to contain more, |
| 38 | Dotty's World | "Miss Mo" | single | not by declaring it previously empty. |
| 39 | Triángulo de Amor Bizarro | "Estrella Solitaria" | Estrella Solitaria +2 | I am probably not going to learn Tagalog or Cebuano |
| 40 | Veintiuno | "La Toscana" | single | even if my love for Pinoy pop punk bands takes me out of the ones who sing in English, |
| 41 | Johnny Garso | "Sálvese Quien Pueda" | Espada y Rosa Hasta que Muera | and my Spanish is certainly no better than my Japanese, |
| 42 | Chusma | "Pitipausa" | single | but today this playlist is temporarily the one by which the most people have discovered Chusma, |
| 43 | Aiko el grupo | "k pesao" | single | who are from Barcelona, anyway, where all I ever learned to do in Catalan is ask for coffee and point at sandwiches |
| 44 | Teleclub | "Al Final Del Verano" | Al Final Del Verano +1 | and almost but not quite get engaged. |
| 45 | Hafensaengers | "Alles aus nichts" | Sehnsucht gedeiht im Dreck | We didn't get engaged in Paris, either, |
| 46 | Silbermond | "Verletzen" | AUF AUF | but we've been back there since, and the Eiffel Tower didn't seem to mind. |
| 47 | Ollie Wride | "Victoria" | single | Towers, walls, bridges; |
| 48 | Suvi Karjula | "Suudelmia" | single | chapels of silence and museums of music; |
| 49 | Cir.Cuz | "Alt jeg har drømt om" | single | not Norway yet |
| 50 | Daniel Kvammen | "Endelaus Sommar" | single | but we'll see. |
| 51 | Wicca Phase Springs Eternal | "Wicca Phase Springs Eternal" | Wicca Phase Springs Eternal | Endless summer, eternal spring, |
| 52 | tmdistant | "need to get out of here" | single | waiting fall. |
| 53 | Fat Nick | "Wishful Thinking (feat. Kxllswxtch)" | single | Fat Nick and Zero 9:36 have a million listeners each already, |
| 54 | Zero 9:36 | "The Fear" | single | they don't need me, |
| 55 | shinigami | "downpour" | single | but if you give up on everything you don't need, |
| 56 | CG5 | "SUPERHERO" | single | you'll be invulnerable and alone. |
| 57 | Breakfast for Dinner | "Talk Things Out" | single | Programming drums isn't that hard, |
| 58 | Tag My Heart | "Enemy" | single | you don't need to wait for me to get better at it. |
| 59 | Holliday Howe | "never meant" | single | We don't program any more, anyway: |
| 60 | Lyncs | "Toolbox" | single | we evoke our dreams by describing how we want to feel, |
| 61 | The Aces | "Not the Same" | I've Loved You For So Long | how we think we want to feel, |
| 62 | As December Falls | "Little By Little" | single | how we think people talk about how they think they feel. |
| 63 | Concrete Castles | "Smile" | single | They closed the last COVID testing site in my town, and it's going to be a cafe now. |
| 64 | Louise Post | "The Way We Live" | Sleepwalker | It was a different cafe before it was a testing site. |
| 65 | Bully | "How Will I Know" | Lucky For You | We cycle through stages of panic |
| 66 | Skating Polly | "Send A Priest" | single | and interludes of coffee and kouign-amann, |
| 67 | Speedy Ortiz | "You S02" | You S02 +1 | volumes of introspection |
| 68 | The Aquadolls | "Any Place but Here" | Charmed | and squalls of escape. |
| 69 | Unverkalt | "Loathe & Love" | single | Sometimes the pall of doom is just somebody else's wayward smoke, |
| 70 | I Am Boleyn | "Driving In The Dark" | single | blowing through on its way to seek its fortune at sea. |
| 71 | Hana Bryanne | "Susannah at the Wedding" | single | Radiance varies in both hue and granularity, |
| 72 | swim school | "kill you" | duality 4 | and the smoke clears but the oceans remain. |
| 73 | Sophie Ellis-Bextor | "Until the Wheels Fall Off" | HANA | You come home from dancing, |
| 74 | Dannii Minogue | "We Could Be the One" | single | or you refuse; |
| 75 | Wiktoria | "Walk Away" | single | that's not the thing that decides your next fate, |
| 76 | Carina Dahl | "Uten dæ" | single | it's whether you say start or stop with a coy twang |
| 77 | Symphony Of Sweden | "Bad Thoughts" | single | or a determined roar. |
| 78 | Lancer | "Fan The Flames" | single | I learned guitar the same way I learned Japanese: |
| 79 | Gloryhammer | "Fife Eternal" | Return to the Kingdom of Fife | barely, as a way of listening only semi-wordlessly |
| 80 | Primal Fear | "Another Hero" | single | rather than a form of heroism. |
| 81 | Sylvania | "Aunque Mi Alma Se Desgarre" | single | But this is the difference between a journey and a crusade, |
| 82 | Sylosis | "Poison for the Lost" | Poison for the Lost +1 | and why we need not tour ruins in order to rebuild them, |
| 83 | Omnium Gatherum | "Sacred" | Slasher - EP 4 | nor churches to believe. |
| 84 | Dååth | "Purified by Vengeance (feat. Mark Holcomb, Periphery & Mick Gordon)" | single | We are not purified by vengeance, |
| 85 | Minas Morgul | "Trümmer" | Nebelung | nor made whole by the recapture of fallen cities. |
| 86 | Atlases | "Eyelids Of The New Dawn" | Between The Day & I | We do not purify, we begin again. |
| 87 | The Anix | "Vitamin D (feat. Kellii Scott)" | NIGHTVISION | We are never rebuilt, we are only fortified. |
| 88 | The Monolith Deathcult | "I Spew Thee out of My Mouth" | single | Ostensibly anti-radiant art measures the spaces between the rays of light, |
| 89 | Johnny the Boy | "Endlessly Senseless" | Endlessly Senseless +2 | but to the same end, |
| 90 | Thantifaxath | "Solar Witch" | Hive Mind Narcosis | and at the same cursed remove. |
| 91 | Hemina | "Revelations" | single | Progress is abstrusely calibrated |
| 92 | Soen | "Unbreakable" | single | and frequently predicated on willfully selective denial. |
| 93 | Anubis Gate | "Dissonance Consonance" | Interference | We pretend to be better subsets of ourselves |
| 94 | Lacuna Coil | "Never Dawn" | single | in order to triangulate the space between despair |
| 95 | Metopia | "New Dawn" | single | and determination. |
| 96 | Inraza | "Crowning" | single | The difference between idol groups and metalcore bands is mostly semantic, |
| 97 | Linx | "The Hunter" | single | but the difference between anything is semantic, |
| 98 | Dahlia | "Fix Me" | single | we talk inevitably about the space between us |
| 99 | Tales of Time | "Little Hope" | single | in order to adjust its pressure so that we draw closer or apart. |
| 100 | Brightstorm | "Powerful" | single | When we feel impatient, we blast that space apart, |
| 101 | A Dark Reborn | "Last Echo" | Ritual 3 | and then whirl it dramatically back together with majestic gestures. |
| 102 | Hellscore | "The Eagle Flies Alone" | single | Sometimes the wind blows the smoke the wrong way, and gestures that should have been majestic turn out to look ridiculous. |
| 103 | Ekaterina Shelehova | "Ateş and Moon" | single | The trick to performance is reaching proactive peace with this uncertainty. |
| 104 | Zbava | "Věk Bohů" | Kult Dubu | So, too, the trick to mythology is accepting storytelling as a contraposition of justified fears |
| 105 | Gealdýr | "Grimnir" | Vígríðr | and metaphorically palliative remediations. |
| 106 | Myrkur | "Ragnarok Tema" | Ragnarok | In the end, the promised lands are abandoned or immolated, |
| 107 | Violet Cold | "Love Designer" | single | but we inhabit the spaces between the ends, |
| 108 | Thisquietarmy | "Hiatus I" | Hiatus | the interminalities between convulsing origin |
| 109 | Breath Of Wind | "Sunset Rays I" | Sunset Rays | and apocalyptic, entropic calm. |
| 110 | Loather | "Mortuary" | single | I could probably have learned to play black metal drums, too. |
| 111 | Einar Solberg | "Splitting the Soul (feat. Ihsahn)" | 16 | I understand grim, arhythmic persistence |
| 112 | Javier Segura | "La 'iilah 'iilaa allah. No hay más Dios que Dios" | single | and nihilism as a texture. |
| 113 | 071 NELLY THE MASTER BEAT | "Lesibana" | single | But not as a lifestyle. |
| 114 | Bukeka | "Sizophumelela" | single | If it seems briefly novel to be bringing drum-programming back to the people who invented drumming, |
| 115 | Mukosi | "THAIDZO - Radio Edit" | single | you've forgotten that there is only one people, |
| 116 | Thabiso Lameslow | "Majerina Mama" | single | and it is us, |
| 117 | Phobla on the beat | "Location Hala Hitt" | single | and programming is only an extrapolation of what we already know. |
| 118 | Naleboy Young King | "Sephiri" | single | I can enter into this jump-step autotune bliss |
| 119 | Ba Bethe Gashoazen | "Sekoloto 2.0" | single | exactly the way I ascend into idol reveries, |
| 120 | Hitler SA Massive Production | "Ba botse Nnete" | single | despite knowing even less Sepedi or Zulu than Catalan, |
| 121 | Charle Blue Wa Africa | "Maphodisa (Official song) Charle BlueWa'Africa x Krusher KR" | single | by moving my frame of reference for joy into the middle of its acoustic space |
| 122 | Nkosazana Daughter | "Amaphutha (feat. Master KG, Lowsheen & Murumba Pitch)" | single | so that it can spin me around. |
| 123 | Prince Kaybee | "Oh Boy" | single | Languages you don't speak are probably easier than liking something that calls itself "Hitler SA", |
| 124 | Gillian Baci | "Don't Stop Believing" | single | but there's no South Detroit in Nigeria, either. |
| 125 | Majozi | "I'll Be There" | single | If they need to remake Friends in South Africa, their theme song awaits. |
| 126 | Amabunjwa | "Angikaze ngakona" | Onkomoziyophuza | Maybe they did this already. Friendship is not a New World innovation. |
| 127 | Somkhathi | "Ndixelele" | Uthunyiwe Wena 4 | There are new worlds, and this one is the only one that isn't. |
| 128 | Khaza | "Angizenzi" | Angizenzi | I was a pretty good Texas middle-school cellist and my dad could fingerpick a little; |
| 129 | Skweletu | "Ngiyazondlela" | Nonakele | I like to think that means I could have been a successful maskandi session-bassist, too, |
| 130 | Tzusan | "Dhukit" | Lead Wetsuit Schematics | in one of my countless slightly different lives. |
| 131 | Ben Folds | "Clouds With Ellipses (feat. dodie)" | What Matters Most | Ben Folds could have been climate-policy negotiator. |
| 132 | Gwilym | "dwi'n cychwyn tân" | rhan un 6 | Our most mordantly united kingdoms may one day float magnificently apart: |
| 133 | Eolya | "Something More" | Something more - Suis la route 2 | Wales, Catalonia, Basque Country, |
| 134 | Lanterns on the Lake | "Vatican" | Versions Of Us | every city a tiny new nation of hilarious statistics and particular reasons for emitting or escaping smoke. |
| 135 | Cowboy Junkies | "Flood" | Such Ferocious Beauty | How many borders will it take to convince us of how little they divide? |
| 136 | Kristin Hersh | "Dandelion" | single | We wrestle our inspirations into submission, |
| 137 | death's dynamic shroud | "You Are Burning Me Up Like This" | single | conflating creativity with the compression of chaos. |
| 138 | Melt Motif | "This Is the End" | single | It works for rocks, I guess: the diligent extrapolation of pressure, fire or decay. |
| 139 | ChuggaBoom | "What's My Age Again?" | single | In life, though, we don't have that much time. |
| 140 | Broken Peach | "Walking On Sunshine" | single | Joy belongs to moments, not legacies. |
| 141 | Omnium Gatherum | "Maniac - Cover Version" | Slasher - EP 4 | Discipline is overrated as a prerequisite, |
| 142 | Skar | "Blinding Lights" | single | underrated as an adaptation. |
| 143 | Fame on Fire | "Fast Car" | single | We polish our machines, not noticing that their radiance is entirely reflective. |
| 144 | Billy Cobb | "You Belong With Me" | I Stole Every Song | We envy each other when everything we have is shared. |
| 145 | Andie Case | "Welcome to the Black Parade" | single | The world already has our heart, is made of our hearts. |
| 146 | First to Eleven | "Wendy Clear" | single | Fast cars, fast boats: we don't have to always be trying to get away. |
| 147 | Aline Happ | "Wasted Years - Celtic Folk Version" | Branching Out | Another city beckons glitteringly in the night: across a border, across a sea. |
| 148 | Ranthiel | "Sound of Silence" | single | We are many things, but none of them are silence. |
| 149 | PRIZM | "Go Your Own Way" | Go Your Own Way +1 | How can we give or refuse a world that is sometimes pale and close in our atmospheres, but always bright and vast in our songs? |