Sounds of 2015, nos. 15 to 11

You'll doubtless have noticed the lack of a "My Little Repeats" this week. I just haven't had the time, what with various things including the PoniesOnline virtual convention. I might have squeezed it in had it been a normal FiM episode, but as it's the Rollercoaster of Friendship special I thought it best to leave it for a little while. Don't worry, it'll be here before too long!

Back to music, and it's the last edition of this series before we get to the top ten. Exciting, eh! Oh, be like that then. I think it's exciting and it's my blog, so there. Here's the usual reminder of my inclusion criteria; for this week, Rule 3 is still not being automatically applied.

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. 

Last week I managed to feature a full set of five tracks. This week, as happened fairly recently before, I got all the way to the end and then found I needed to skip. It's frustrating, but the track in question just wasn't famous enough for Rule 3. So, here's the list:

15: PrinceWhateverer – Frailty
14: Animated James – Winter's F***ed Up
13: µThunder & FritzyBeat – Sinking Ships (remix)
12: EileMonty & David Larsen – I am a Parasprite
11: skipped

There's your list of songs. Now to see what they actually sound like!

Starlight turns ten

Season 5 of Friendship is Magic began exactly a decade ago, on 4th April 2015, with "The Cutie Map". Widely seen (including by me) as one of the best episodes the series ever produced, this also marked the debut of Starlight Glimmer. Opinions on that vary rather more, although personally I like her even as a reformed character. Whatever your feelings, the double episode itself remains, I think, a classic. Since Hasbro has been nice enough to upload it in full to the official YouTube channel, I can legitimately embed it on Louder Yay, so here it is!

Ponyfic Roundup 533: RNG Choice Edition

Read it Later story count: 89 (nc)

Words read this week: 22,153

I forgot to update this bit earlier – oops! Anyway, this time the stories I read were largely determined by the random number generator. I say "largely" because I did have a slight restriction, over and above my usual ones such as stories needing to be incomplete. For today's edition, I only allowed one Mature fic. Here's the list:

Liable for Content by Sarcasmo
Sentinel by Xenos
The Truth That Lies Within by Ps3luver
We Can't All Be Friends by Awesomo3000
Fear Itself by saarni

★: 0 | ★★: 3 | ★★★: 2 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

Sounds of 2015, nos. 20 to 16

We really are getting to the sharp end of things now, as we move into the top 20! As a reminder this chart was decided through votes from people following Equestrian Radio at the time. I'm afraid I'm not entirely certain of the precise voting mechanism, but that doesn't really matter for our purposes. Here's the usual reminder of the inclusion criteria:

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. 

Last week, I had to skip one of the five tracks that made the chart. We're not quite at the point just yet where Rule 3 will apply across the board, but it doesn't matter this time: a full five tracks today!

20: SlyphStorm ft. 4EverfreeBrony & Midnight Melody – Soldiers of the Night
19: PrinceWhateverer – Your Own Sky
18: Silva Hound ft. Odyssey Eurobeat – Come Alive
17: MandoPony & MegabyteBrony – Spitfire (Give It All You Got)
16: ponyphonic – Applejack

So, we've reached the end of the introductory stuff, which means we can get on with the actual point of all this: the music!