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===TIER 4: Hey now, these are pretty good
(12) USA -- Sycamour {Calm Down Juliet (What A Drama Queen)}
-- The loudness wars have been decided, and loud won :V I actually like this a fair amount; there's a lot going on and it sounds good for pretty much all of it. Your quest to find to find the "one for everyone" is a success in my book! Probably the only entry in any contest where I unironically liked people tearing their vocal cords out. That said, it doesn't really matter what your song is about, but pitching "fucking" into it breaks the immersion for me. I acknowledge this is probably just my own hangup. Look, take your frigging 12. 4.95/6
(10) Chad -- Ghost {Cirice}
-- This is a serviceable Meliora-era Ghost song - all the doom you could want, but if you're not in it to feel the tone, it just kind of occurs. I have a lot of respect for Ghost because they understand how to make a song flow, so their songs rarely feel like they overstay their welcome. However, I feel like this song never really progresses when the lyrics do; I don't know if that was the point (i.e. sticking to a single vision of how the song should sound) or just a lack of imagination. This video is silly and self-aware and I appreciate its cheek.
My original thought for submitting Ghost was
Zenith, but I elected not to because I thought people would think it as dull. Listening to it now, I forgot how much it grooves and I really feel like I dropped the ball on not following through with giving Tha People what they want. Sorry - I felt some previously un-experienced level of awful during the whole week of submissions for RL reasons
Anyway, this is one of the rare times when I've actually heard of the artist and song ahead of time, so I admit I may be biased. 4.8/6
(8) Belarus -- Melodicka Bros {Through the Water and the Waves}
-- I mean, I'm in on the joke and in concept this is a great idea. The rendition of the opening guitar solo is really good, and the rest of the song is quite pleasant. The problem is that it never progresses due to its minimalist nature, so it does start to wear by the time it hits the five-minute mark. In other words, this is another song that I'm not rating as highly as I could not because it's bad, but because I want it to be moaaaaaaar. I think that the original song has the material for a really spectacular cross-genre cover that could surpass this. Glasses boi slightly bothers me because I can totally see myself (physically) doing what he's doing, and I feel like I've wasted my life.
4.7/6
===TIER 3: I was wrong; no large mid-tier this time
(7) The Netherlands -- Daisuke Ishiwatari {Smell of the Game!}
-- Oh wait, I recognize this name from somewhere? The effect of the vocalist not letting English proficiency get in the way of TRUE SOUL ENERGY is honestly more comical than it likely wants to be (assuming they care about non-Japanese audiences :V ). That bridge is very strange, the musicality throughout kind of goes some very questionable places, and even after reading the lyrics I have no idea what this song is supposed to be about. Well, that's what happens when you make a mono-red song. I wanted to like this song more than I actually did. 3.7/6
(6) Finland -- Poets of the Fall {Carnival of Rust}
-- This sure is a strange concept for a song. Tempted to rate lower because it seems like it glorifies la vida incel, but I don't really have to because it isn't really remarkable in any respect... but I'll rate pretty much anything smooth and listenable better than average. 3.4/6
===TIER 2: All right, here comes the middle of the pack
(5) Poland -- Saint Phnx {Bury a Friend}
-- I was hoping for variety in pitches, but ah well. This is reasonably listenable but also nondescript af. Maybe not having a knowledge of the original song hurts? 3/6
(4) Costa Rica -- Metronomy {The Bay}
-- This is another song that I want to like, but it feels like it's carefully designed to keep the listener from doing so. Like, this is a large number of bad artistic decisions away from being catchy af. Because of that promise, this is my favorite entry I don't really like, and I want to rate it higher than the stuff below it, so here it is. 2.8/6
(3) Solomon Islands -- Radio Birdman {New Race}
-- I feel like I've heard this before? And yet I haven't. Maybe it's a Cars song with slightly different sound quality? This is the archetype for "mediocre but listenable" - nothing I want to listen to intently, mostly inoffensive background music but I'd rather listen to nothing at all than this - and while I don't want to give it points I'm kind of have to. This really didn't need to go on for as long as it did. 2.75/6
(2) North Korea -- The Buoys {Timothy}
-- <inhales> BUOOOOOOOOOY
The song's okay. Generic '60s rock (technically 1970, close enough), back when rock rolled. Kinda catchy to have in the background if you ignore the high strings in the chorus but I've never liked name songs. I'm assuming the band never found success later because the vocalist has a certain whininess to his voice. 2.7/6
(1) Kosovo -- Capsule {Hello}
-- I liked it a lot more on my first listen than my second, partly because of the sweet new-gen Kirby vibes. The second time I mostly found it jarring. I had difficulty deciding where to put this tbh. 2.5/6
Principality of Hutt River -- Racoon {Love You More + Laugh About It}
-- That lonely 'c' bothered me for 8 minutes and 31 seconds. 2.3/6
Turkey -- The Misfits {Skulls}
-- Remember, violence against women isn't cool. 2/6
===TIER 1: You know, you don't HAVE to submit these styles
Uruguay -- Adrianne Lenker and Buck Meek {Indiana}
-- As with the Big Thief song from several contests ago - but even more so - this is another style that doesn't work for me at all. What IS it with high-pitched slightly-off-key vocals on overly emotional acoustic guitar? 1.8/6
Djibouti -- Veil of Maya {Subject Zero}
-- 1.7/6
Australia -- Flowerkid {Boy with the Winfields and the Wild Heart}
-- 1.6/6
Iraq -- Bon Iver {10 d E A T h b R E a s T (Extended Version)}
-- You owe me new headphones.
1.3/6
Comoros -- Greta Van Fleet {Anthem}
-- 1.2/6
Iceland -- glass beach {glass beach}
-- I... I don't know what the appeal of this style is. I don't even know what quality it is that I lack, the quality that the rest of the human race has that makes this sort of musical desperation palatable. The musicanship is decent; the sound quality isn't. It goes downhill in the second half, and it was already pretty downhill. The whininess put it right where it belongs in this list. 1.15/6
Portugal -- Naseer Shamma {Al-Amiriyya/L'Abri d'Al-Amiriyya}
-- 15-minute entries are forbidden. Simulating a frigging
air raid
with an oud requires some serious skill and I respect that, but I sense I'm too literalist to get into the rest. I feel like this is a good thing to know about w.r.t. random trivia, but I don't know what to do with it in a song contest. I'm ultimately rating it at what I've defined to be "would not listen to again", and that happens to be here. 1/6
Japan -- 猫叉Master {REcorrection}
-- Yep, going the quiet 'n' contemplative route again. You need it; it builds character. This song is super-cute and technically quite impressive in the sense of how well the exposed sections are handled to produce their emotional effect. (The lyrics are moody and depressed, if you're wondering.)
Nekomata Master has a very distinguishable style, and this song actually has none of it. A much more recognizable song by this artist would be
Beyond the Earth, their debut. Maybe I should have submitted that; as far as heavily sample-reliant video game music goes it kind of rocks, and the quiet types don't really seem to play well here.
I play this on loop when I do setup design, and wish it was longer than five minutes.
1.3/6