Welcome back to our canter through the Equestrian Trot 100 chart of the most popular My Little Pony fandom songs of 2014. As a reminder, a track doesn't have to have been released in that year, just to have been popular enough to make the chart. As usual, I'll remind everyone of the criteria I use to decide whether a song should be included:
Rule 1: Still available in the same or (1b) similar form direct from the/an original artist.
Rule 2: Available from a third party, with reason to believe the artist is fine with this.
Rule 3: So famous that it would be plain silly to leave it out.
Rule 4: Being unlisted is not, on its own, grounds for exclusion.
Third time lucky today, in that once again in the 2014 series I'm not having to skip a song. At one point I thought I would, but... well, that's explained below. Here's what we have:
90: d.notive – Loveless Lovechild
89: Forest Rain et al – On Our Way
88: PsychGoth ft. Rina-Chan – Lulamoon
87: Aviators – Crash
86: Vylet Pony – Twilight's Kingdom (parts 1 & 2)
You probably know this by now, but beyond the jump break you'll find a little waffling about each of the five songs and YouTube videos to match. Onward!
Rule 1: uploaded to YouTube 16 Sep 2013
Ooh, this is a song I really like, so it's great to see it make the chart. d.notive hasn't been making MLP music for a decade now, but back in the day he was a big deal. His most famous track might have been "Vicious Lies", but I may even like "Loveless Lovechild" more. This is a very accessible piece of electronica, about and from the perspective of none other than Queen Chrysalis, brooding and plotting revenge in the wake of her Canterlot defeat. I don't always like voice-changing, but the first screen version of Chryssy uses it in-show so no complaints here! The song is available on a name-your-price basis on d.notive's Bandcamp, as part of the excellent and also free The Fantasy album. (You get "Vicious Lies" on that, too!)
Rule 1: uploaded to YouTube 11 Aug 2013
"On Our Way" is an interesting one from Forest Rain, who likely needs no introduction! It originated as a song for Journey of the Spark, a planned feature-length fan animation. This never happened for legal and personal reasons.¹ All we ever saw in public were a BronyCon trailer, a few little bits and pieces... and this song. It's a really nice, optimistic pop track that I'm sure would work well in a cartoon but happily stands quite well alone. The character singing is provided by Meredith Sims,² Emily Koch, Madeleine Robison, Mirisha Lottich, and Emily Fajardo. All you really need to know is that the Mane Six are heading for a major event, and this is explained in the lyrics anyway. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the song's history the only HQ version on offer is a 320k MP3 linked from the YouTube description.
¹ The person who headed the project explains a bit in a pinned post on this video.
² Yes, the writer and main VA for (among other things) Snowdrop.
Rule 1: uploaded to Bandcamp 22 Dec 2013
The observant among you may be wondering why I've embedded a video from Deleted Pony Songs, given my four criteria above. Because, happily, this track is still officially available, just not on YouTube! The artist is now known as LaRaikka. I'm very pleased I can feature it, because it's really distinctive, with a strong Russian/Finnish folk feel. A fast dancey song about a Trixie who's decided not to change her ways after all and instead returned to heights of self-confidence, it's sung by Rina-Chan (later a professional VA as Kira Buckland) who was hugely popular in fandom voice work at this time. Pick up the single in HQ for $1 on LaRaikka's Bandcamp.
Rule 1: uploaded to YouTube 12 Sep 2014
Well, would you look at that? A song that actually came out in 2014! We normally know Aviators for synthpop, but this is a harder, rockier piece from the intro onwards. The overall sound is just a tad reminiscent of Godsmack's "Bulletproof" – but "Crash" came out first, and by several years too! This is a Discord track, about his post-reformation self still struggling with his darker inner urges. There's a notable short instrumental interlude about four minutes in. I don't hear this song very often nowadays, but I think that's a shame as it has considerable power. You can pick up the HQ version for $1 on Aviators' Bandcamp.
Rule 1: uploaded to YouTube 11 May 2014
I think this is the first Vylet Pony track I've featured in "Sounds of..." – but I'd be astounded if it were the last! It's a very long song, clocking in at only a few seconds short of eight minutes. Whatever Vylet says in the video description about its non-repetitiveness, I think it's maybe just a little bit too long, despite being a fascinating mix of genres and influences. Anyway, no prizes for guessing what the subject of this track is! The lyrics are headed "The Mane 6 Writing to Twilight". Yes, with the strikeout. I'm mildly uncertain about some of the vocals and I prefer the instrumental part 2, but there's not much in it. Pick it up for a dollar on Vylet's Bandcamp.
ooh-hah, Trixie butt? c_c
ReplyDeleteGodsmack? LOL, I'm not sure they were ever relevant, let alone now, but at least they have good taste in who to rip off :)
And surely Vylet's been on the list before? As Musicians of Ponyville? And I think she had another moniker, was it Music by Octavia?
It's "Trixie rocks", fortunately. :P
DeleteI don't really know anything about Godsmack beyond being vaguely aware of "Bulletproof". They're kind of the reverse Shakin' Stevens, in that they're basically completely unknown in the UK. Their best-selling album ever peaked at no. 154 here. :P
And nope. I'm just scanning down the Top 100 listings for 2011, 2012 and 2013 and there's no entry for any of those names. Vylet's TVTropes page (just about stuff under that name, I think) doesn't give any releases before 2014, either.
Oh, they've been around a lot longer than that. c_c The song to know is "Voodoo", and basically nothing else unless you care about the Scorpion King lol
Deleteand huh, I guess Vylet never made a splash before going... whatever the fuck she's doing nowadays, I really prefer her old stuff <_<
Every now and then, I'm reminded of the Journey of the Spark fan project from well before my time, but following your link here was the first time I really looked into it. Not to the extent of watching the whole linked 55-minute history, but scrubbing through the video and reading the linked GDoc of all sourced resources really gave me a full idea of both what it would have been about, and the particular form it would have taken visually and aurally.
ReplyDeleteBeing honest, the story and character arcs sound very atypical for what would have been first concocted in Summer 2012 (Discord freed from stone? Twilight exiles herself after Celestia's presumed death? Her friends set out to find her? Expanding on the changelings? Having the two key villains to that point, Discord and Chrysalis, team up? You don't say…!), though I do praise them for cutting the script length in half so it could actually be realistically animated, and jettisoning all excess characters and subplots beyond the Mane 7, Celestia, Sun and the villains (and for keeping Spike in a pivotal role), for the excess stuff with the CMCs, Shining Armor and Cadance and others sounds like pure "every recurring character must have a role" syndrome common to a lot of early fan content.
As for non-writing aspects, the visuals intended to be in the project, as opposed to the lovely bits of concept art, are very much in the same "finding the show's Flash animation so impressive, let's replicate it" mindset common in early fan content, which let to the C&D for JanAnimations and, seemingly, here too – anything kids could mistake for official content and is popular enough that they might see it is the one thing Hasbro doesn't like.
I also glanced through the novelisation of the script on Fimfic (which itself seems to be lost media, beyond a few select extracts) long enough to get this feeling. Not helped by a 100-page script only coming out to 25K when transcribed without fleshing out to account for the lack of visuals – it felt like it was racing through its content for sure.
But geez Louise, the scope of it all. And that it got far enough to have not only a script several drafts in and a lot of pieces of art made, but one songs written and recorded too (and another eventually made in 2019). And just the effort to coordinate a project of that size when the fandom was shifting and evolving so fast (whereas, later ones were made when it had largely settled). In a sense, a lot of the big visual-audio fan projects after this probably wouldn't have gotten where they did without this paving the path, in its own way. Film and tv history has its share of projects that still impacted the medium in spite of not getting produced, so it's only fitting the MLP fandom would have some of those too.
All only tangentially related to the song beyond it genesis, of course, but hey, when else am I gonna find a space to spill my thought on it?