This week's "Sounds" will take us into the top third of the Equestrian Trot 100 chart from a decade ago. You'd think that by this point all the songs would be at least moderately famous to this day, but these charts do tend to throw up some surprises. Remember what was number one on the 2014 list? As I type this I don't actually know what this week's selection will throw up, so let's go and see! First, though, the inclusion rules:
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.
We've had a couple of weeks now with all five tracks able to be featured. At the very top end of the chart Rule 3 will probably apply anyway, but that doesn't kick in just yet. Never mind, we get all five today anyway!
35: Aviators ft. GatoPaint – The Surface
34: Black Gryph0n & Baasik – Tell Me
33: PrinceWhateverer – 12115
32: Sim Gretina – I'll Fly (remix)
31: BassBeastJC – The Magic Inside/I am Just a Pony (instrumental cover)
That's all the introductory bit done and dusted, so it's time to move on to the actual music. Here goes!
As Aviators explains in the YouTube video description of this excellent collaboration with GatoPaint, "Under the Surface" as seen on the video is a mistake: that was an older title that should have been edited out. This dates originally from the very end of 2014, but not uploaded to YouTube until a few weeks later. It's a fairly hard rock song based on Aviators' headcanon for Discord, especially what Aviators calls his "psychopathic demigod" side. It's interesting when Aviators moves a bit away from his usual synthy stuff, but I think the switch of genre works very well here. Be warned that, very unusually for an Aviators track, there is a little swearing. Happily, he's made both the original version and a Clean Edit available on his Bandcamp. They're $1 each.
Rule 1: uploaded to YouTube 27 Jul 2014
Not for the first time in this 2015 chart, we have a song by Black Gryph0n and Baasik that was actually released as part of the smash hit IMmortal album from the previous year. In fact, the same thing happened last week! "Tell Me" reached no. 31 in 2014's chart, and it was only a few places worse off for 2015. This is a song about Derpy, as that Ponyville Town Hall thumbnail might suggest. The authors say it has "lots of symbolism", but I'm rarely much good at spotting that. Catchy and well produced, though. Available in HQ for 99¢ on Black Gryph0n's Bandcamp.
This track by PrinceWhateverer has almost no informative text on his Bandcamp page. "Personal song" is all we get beyond the lyrics themselves. I have seen possible explanations of the meanings of the song and its title, but I don't know for sure whether they're correct. I'm reluctant to speculate here about a track specifically marked as personal – although the music itself is public, and a good example of emotional rock even if we're inevitably missing some context. The video above is a third-party upload as the artist's own is no longer on YouTube. Since it's on Bandcamp I can still feature it here. You can buy it for £1 on PrinceWhateverer's Bandcamp.
This one marks a rather sad milestone: I think this was the very last Sim Gretina remix of an MLP track, though I stand to be corrected on that. As several people say in the YouTube comments, this one has notes of both Aqua and Eiffel 65 in its apparent inspirations. The artist's only comment in the text is, in full, "beep boop" – quite hard to argue with, but not immensely illuminating either! I'm not sure it's really my favourite Sim Gretina remix, but then "I'll Fly" isn't my favourite show song either, so it fits I suppose. There's no HQ upload that I can find, not even a third-party Soundcloud upload, so I'm afraid you'll have to make do with the version you get on YouTube.
Still-active-outside-Pony American artist BassBeastJC provides this string-heavy version of Lena Hall's extremely popular song from "The Mane Attraction". This cover actually appeared more than three months before the episode premiered, thanks to the show song getting a sneak preview at SDCC that summer. It looks like this may have been among, if not the first fan cover, which probably explains its high chart placing. In truth it's been overtaken since, and though pleasant to listen to I think the balancing between instruments is a bit off, with the strings tending to overwhelm the rest. Slightly to my surprise, there is an HQ download: it's $1 on BassBeastJC's Bandcamp.
You know, I've always thought BlackGryph0n's music hid Christian allegories. <_< Like, I'm not very good at spotting that kind of thing, save that I've listened to enough avowed religious music to see certain lyrical motifs show up. Though I don't think it applies to this song.
ReplyDeleteI swear I've never heard any of these songs before, but that's not the case since I own IMmortal. c_c Guess they didn't hit my spot.