| 1 | Sister Shotgun | "Fin Du Monde" | single | End of the world, but not quite the end of the year. |
| 2 | Temperance | "Darkness is just a Drawing" | Hermitage - Daruma's Eyes Pt. 2 | I work on statistical algorithms at Spotify, so I know that "Fin Du Monde" may not catch up, |
| 3 | Within Temptation | "We Go To War" | Bleed Out | in pure math, with some of the Emma Hewitt and Hitsujibungaku songs that had more of my calendar year to work with. |
| 4 | Secret Sphere | "Confession" | single | I tweak equations, lovingly, and then give the speech, again, |
| 5 | Delight | "Whale's Lungs" | Eternity | to myself if no co-workers are around, |
| 6 | Walk in Darkness | "Across the Oceans" | single | that tracking your behavior is not the same as reading your mind. |
| 7 | Valcata | "Archangel" | single | I once proposed that the Echo Nest's marketing slogan should have been |
| 8 | Witchcraft | "Сердце вуду" | single | "We're the Echo Nest. We take your brain out of your skull while you sleep, |
| 9 | Aqvilea | "New World Era" | single | lick it, |
| 10 | A Dark Reborn | "Hopeless" | Last Echo | and then put it back in." |
| 11 | Nekonomicon | "Race of Life" | single | You can see why I'm never left in charge of marketing slogans, |
| 12 | Derdian | "THE GRIN OF REVENGE" | NEW ERA Pt. 4 (RESURGENCE) | but also how the whole enterprise of marketing breeds stylish dishonesty. |
| 13 | Rage Of Light | "Opaque" | Opaque +3 | At the Echo Nest we never got to even touch people's actual ears, |
| 14 | Elegy Of Madness | "Revelation" | XI | never mind their cortices, |
| 15 | Dol Ammad | "Swans of Orion" | single | and even now at Spotify the emotional component of our emotional surveillance |
| 16 | Gåte | "Hamløypar" | Vandrar 5 | is an anti-marketing invention no more literal than the marketing ones. |
| 17 | Intra | "Last Born" | Transition 4 | We do not know whether you play a song because you cannot focus on anything else, |
| 18 | Myrkur | "Blazing Sky" | Spine | or because it attaches itself selflessly to all other distracting noises and drags them with it over a precipice of disregard. |
| 19 | HELGA | "Burden" | Burden +1 | We cannot tell that I'm turning "Fin Du Monde" up louder |
| 20 | Cirith Ungol | "Relentless" | Dark Parade | because I'm trying to discern if there's a volume level at which the |
| 21 | Ankhara | "La Tierra de los Sueños" | De Aquí a la Eternidad 5 | mordant background hiss resolves into individual cymbal crashes, |
| 22 | Therion | "Ruler Of Tamag" | Ruler of Tamag 2 | at which the way-too-precise kick fills betray any timing nuance, |
| 23 | Teramaze | "Blemish" | single | at which the song's implicit threat to tear a betraying hole in the illusory sky |
| 24 | Winter | "Last Thing On My Mind" | Heroes | succeeds. |
| 25 | Atlas | "One More Night" | Built to Last | I suspect that Sister Shotgun have heard HIM and Nightwish and In This Moment |
| 26 | Astral Experience | "Hechizo" | single | and thought to themselves "Yeah, but Generation Terrorists and |
| 27 | Isra Ramos | "Cross the Line" | single | William Gibson and what if Anaal Nathrakh were sentimental and beautiful?" |
| 28 | Fenrir's Scar | "Ruins of My Sanity" | Love | Hate | Hope | Despair | We do not have to dance, tearfully, on the farthest beach, |
| 29 | Zártosztály | "Éltem, ahogy éltem" | single | awaiting the wavefront's transit. |
| 30 | Machinae Supremacy | "WARRIORS, Pt. 1 (Final Stage)" | single | We can run into it, and thus maybe straight through. |
| 31 | 戮-Riku- | "赤い絲" | 赤い絲 +1 | The blazing sky invites us aloft, |
| 32 | Dimmu Borgir | "Black Metal" | single | if we learn its orthography, |
| 33 | King | "Into The Fire" | Into The Fire +1 | and the grace with which we descend again, burned ecstatically wingless, |
| 34 | Allegaeon | "Inhumation" | single | wins us one more night at a time. |
| 35 | Rivers of Nihil | "Hellbirds" | single | We do not have to wait for the robots to tell us how to spend it. |
| 36 | Cailleach Calling | "Glittering Delusion" | single | We do not have to ask them to take the shape of opinions they don't have. |
| 37 | NEMOPHILA | "Master Of Puppets" | single | Math collates, it doesn't transform. |
| 38 | #2i2 | "MONSTER LIVE!!!" | single | The list it will make, of what I will have played most this year, |
| 39 | Zsasz | "Fixed Star" | ∄ | is not an obviation of my love, |
| 40 | Mada Mitakoto no Nai Sekai | "アイデンティティ" | single | it's a statement of accountability. |
| 41 | ExWHYZ | "As you wish" | single | Even the fanciest math does not generate a gift future, |
| 42 | Aquarifa | "rakuen" | single | it can only offer a experimental diagnostic interpretation of the past, |
| 43 | FINLANDS | "東京エレキテル" | 東京エレキテル +1 | and a veiled scolding about what would become of all our half-realized ambitions |
| 44 | クレナズム | "see you again" | Whisper of the heart | if us and their volitions were raptured out of their skulls while they slept |
| 45 | RAY | "Materie" | Camellia | but this time left empty and dry in the morning. |
| 46 | Task have Fun | "Vibes" | single | The Echo Nest was named long before I arrived, but the pertinent humility of "Echo" is admirable. |
| 47 | Shiina Natsukawa | "ラフセカンド" | single | None of these noises begin when we hear them, |
| 48 | Anly | "好きにしなよ" | 26ml | none of these wars spontaneously combust. |
| 49 | The Lightning Kids | "Youth" | single | If a meteor hadn't interrupted the dinosaurs, |
| 50 | Moyka | "Nobody" | Movies, Cars & Heartbreak | they too would have eventually evolved to contentiousness, |
| 51 | Poppy | "Hard" | Hard +3 | and maybe we'd have their songs to tell us how they resolved their temporary impasses |
| 52 | Ljung | "Bleed and bloom" | Bleed and bloom | of predation and plumage, |
| 53 | Emeli Sandé | "All This Love" | All This Love +2 | and a playlist to summarize the geologic era, |
| 54 | Charlotte Sands | "get over it" | get over it +1 | except without the data from the final two centuries, |
| 55 | Geena Fontanella | "Normal Life" | single | because we want to beat the competition to the press, |
| 56 | Oakman | "Missed Connections" | single | and anyway, in geochronologic boundary seasons everybody switches to listening to songs about |
| 57 | Middle Kids | "Dramamine" | Dramamine +3 | bright lights in the sky, |
| 58 | Sløtface | "Fight Back Time" | single | diving towards earth, |
| 59 | CHROMA | "Over The Hill" | Ask For Angela | pulling, surely, sleighs full of toys and candy. |
| 60 | Snarls | "Big Fish" | single | If you throw up the sash, in the middle of a winter night, |
| 61 | Giordana Angi | "Foto - Versione in Italiano" | single | the lustre of mid-day is a very bad sign. |
| 62 | RAAF | "Die Sonskyn en Die Reën" | Die Sonskyn en Die Reën | End of the world, but not quite the end of the poem. |
| 63 | Respekt | "Jää 2009" | single | It's not a haiku, this is not a top 10. |
| 64 | Parkes | "Evasión a Barcelona" | single | The math, bless its earnest machinations, keeps counting until we tell it to stop. |
| 65 | Efecto Mariposa | "Despertar" | single | Everything you've loved enough to hear is in there somewhere. |
| 66 | La Paloma | "La edad que tengo" | single | We have reached an age of choice, |
| 67 | Lonely The Brave | "Long Way" | Long Way +3 | but real choice this time, |
| 68 | Chief | "someone to love" | single | not a Choose Your Own Adventure hedge-maze |
| 69 | A Story Told | "Heaven Doesn't Care" | Mundane Magic | in the meticulous garden of a scenically crumbling tourist castle. |
| 70 | BOYS LIKE GIRLS | "STORY OF A LIFETIME" | SUNDAY AT FOXWOODS | We have to choose, now, |
| 71 | Knuckle Puck | "A New Beginning" | Losing What We Love | not between different fables of the same three gods, |
| 72 | Exat | "Alles was sie wollen ist Angst" | Alles was sie wollen ist Angst +1 | but how 8 billion unbound variables combine. |
| 73 | THE MAYTH | "struggle" | single | For your next song, you could choose one nobody but the singer's mother has ever heard. |
| 74 | Age Factory | "Blood in blue" | single | The Business used to end somewhere, far away from us, |
| 75 | Hiroki Nanami | "Micro Universe" | DAYLIGHT | in rooms with lawyers and posters of the previous dinosaurs of the year. |
| 76 | Novelbright | "ODYSSEY" | single | Now, at least in some states, |
| 77 | Unknöwn Kun | "4 Minutes" | 4 Minutes +1 | anybody can buy a meteor of their own, |
| 78 | ROTH BART BARON | "MOON JUMPER" | ８ | and carry it with them into a defenseless and welcoming town. |
| 79 | Modern Chemistry | "Finally Drifting" | single | The dinosaur faction who believed in our unalienable right |
| 80 | Pure Bathing Culture | "The Sun" | single | to attribute guardian sentience to the flickering overhead lights |
| 81 | Blind Delon | "Flashback" | single | voted to put the T-Rexes in charge of the nascent bureau of lens grinding, |
| 82 | Palm Ghosts | "Automatic For The Modern Age" | single | and they got tiny grasping claws and lying gaping jaws and self-righteous unpreparedness. |
| 83 | Corbeau Hangs | "Bloodlust" | Optograms | If only they had 360 million songs to tell them all the stories about themselves, |
| 84 | SUDS | "The Great Overgrowth" | The Great Overgrowth +2 | true and false and irrelevant and prescient, |
| 85 | Talltale | "I’m In Love With Everyone (But Only a Bit)" | sunshower | and Sabertooth earbuds to fit their adorable scaly ears. |
| 86 | Days to Waste | "Wait For Me" | single | Have you heard this one? |
| 87 | Drippin So Pretty | "Stay Away" | Flirt With Death | It has a muted but inexorable beat, |
| 88 | Donovan Woods | "I'm Around" | single | and presents a compelling arguement that we need to develop a robust space program, quickly, |
| 89 | Imogen Clark | "If I Want In" | single | or maybe it just says you shouldn't feel like you have to marry somebody you've known since you were ten, |
| 90 | PJ North | "I'll Be Tonight" | single | but you might anyway. |
| 91 | Josh Abbott Band | "What Were You Thinking" | single | The list of the boys you've kissed |
| 92 | Sleaford Mods | "Under The Rules" | MORE UK GRIM 6 | is not the extent of your experienced or potential love. |
| 93 | Darque | "Amaketango" | More Life | Tweak one divisor just a little bit, |
| 94 | Inkos'yamagcokama | "Ifoni" | single | and everything changes: |
| 95 | Mabhlukwe | "sicel' isgqoko seGucci" | single | what your failures signify, |
| 96 | Sabelo zandlezinhle | "Uvumelekile" | Ngihlala no Gogo | what your body is capable of, |
| 97 | Zondwayo | "LUNGEZA NGIHLANYE" | FOREVER THINA FT MNIKEZWA & NIKKI | whose orbits you will now cross. |
| 98 | Kamza SA | "Borukhu Bja Makhi" | single | The meteor burns a cautionary streak across the upper edge of the sky, |
| 99 | Sihle Msomi | "Entabazwe" | single | bringing the Cretaceous to a emotionally symbolic close, |
| 100 | Magic System | "Akwaba" | single | and initiating what we will come to refer to as Hyperpop. |
| 101 | We Are Messengers | "God Be The Glory" | single | Three gods get together in the clouds and decide to reacquire and remodel the Mount as a shared arena for the biggest possible music, |
| 102 | 打倒三明治 | "不要再聽那些你討厭的歌" | single | with a pivotable stage so the music can echo towards the river or the sea or the quiet stars. |
| 103 | Control T | "旅徒" | single | The solution has 8 billion factorial states, |
| 104 | Bad Rabbits | "Beatdown" | Garden Of Eden | which is the evasively scriptural way of saying that it is not made of walls |
| 105 | Vince Clarke | "White Rabbit" | single | or wishful disbelief. |
| 106 | Kuggur | "Nattsand" | single | End of the tectonic plate, but not the playlist. |
| 107 | Dawn Richard | "Your Love / Legends" | The Architect 3 | Curiosity includes playing songs when you think you know what they're going to sound like, |
| 108 | Nhii | "Midas Pulse" | single | and how you're going to feel, |
| 109 | Honour | "Giz'aard ($uckets)" | single | and trying higher values of the things you feel certain should be lower, |
| 110 | Aïsha Devi | "Mind Era" | Mind Era +2 | because maybe the fireball in the sky is full of presents, after all, |
| 111 | Maria BC | "Amber" | Spike Field | a little smoky but only the very outer layer irretrievably charred. |
| 112 | Judgitzu | "L'or Des Fous" | Sator Arepo | Or maybe the meteor is made of gold, and if we can land it safely, all 8 billion of us will be rich. |
| 113 | RAY | "kayoubi no ame" | Camellia | All of our stories give us ways to talk about how we think, |
| 114 | Gåte | "Ulveham" | Vandrar 5 | and what we imagine must be precious, |
| 115 | Temperance | "In Search of Gold" | Hermitage - Daruma's Eyes Pt. 2 | and how we make it precious by yearning for it. |
| 116 | Ninja Sex Party | "Let's Save the Earth" | single | End of the week, but not yet the world. |
| 117 | Judge & Jury | "Disarm" | single | Your karate instructor only has to protect you from the easiest injuries. |
| 118 | Dolly Parton | "Wrecking Ball" | single | The blazingest fall is not deliverance, it's us, |
| 119 | Soulvapor | "Never Gonna Give You Up" | single | and you wouldn't get this from any other sky. |
| 120 | The Haxans | "Ways To Be Wicked" | single | So many ways to be not quite sure, |
| 121 | Tulip | "Thriller" | single | but the air this morning smells like flowers, still, again, maybe long enough, maybe enough. |