One of my fondest memories of 1987 is riding around with my mother after she bought Kick on tape. She would play Guns in the Sky (the first song), then rewind it and play it again. The funny thing about that was, it's not even the best song on the album. There isn't a bad song on the album. There's no reason to loop the first track... except this song is awesome. The Kick album ranges from amazing to nearly perfect, with no low points whatsoever.

Also, if you're attracted to men and you've never seen an INXS video, you're in for a treat here. I'm not, but even I can understand the appeal here. Michael Hutchence could have been a movie star. He chose to be a rock star, and he chose to be a father. The latter is what led to his untimely demise, specifically when his ex told him he wouldn't be allowed to see his child anymore. He only lived 10 more years after this album came out. If there's a Hell, there's a special place in it reserved for his ex.

Anyway, this album never fell out of my daily rotation, until it was replaced by the Dolby Atmos version on Apple Music. Part of the 30th anniversary edition, it sounds like a brand new recording, and it's in surround sound. With AirPods, it sounds completely different, and yet, it's exactly the same. It just sounds newer.

As for the song itself, it's in response to the American president (Ronald Reagan) saying they wanted to put guns in the sky. That was a real thing. The idea was that these guns would shoot intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying nukes out of the sky before they could reach the American coast, fired from Russia. Of course, the common fear was that they would not just shoot missiles out of the sky. They'd shoot people on the ground. People the government found... inconvenient.

INXS were way ahead of their time with this one. The United States never actually did put guns in the sky, unless you count fighter jets, but the song wasn't talking about that. However, almost 40 years later, we have these neat license plate readers that can find a stolen car or track criminals so they can be more easily apprehended... but of course cops are using them to stalk their exes, and they're being used to track people of colour and people who do not agree with the current administration. (Yes, I'm talking about Flock cameras, and I was kidding when I said they were neat.) We have a lot of technology that could be building humanity up, but instead it's being used to beat us down. So, looking back, could we really have trusted Reagan's guns in the sky?

I generally don't like to get too political, but when it's right outside your door... wait, that's another song.

Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe is an interesting dude. Sure, a lot of 1980s hair metal/glam rock guys can say they partied to excess with women, booze, and drugs. Not many of them can say they died. If they died, they aren't saying anything anymore, because... yeah. Sixx can, because he died of a heroin overdose, but was resuscitated. So, did he actually die, or... was he just really close? I dunno. I'm not a doctor. I'm just over here spinning records. But I do know that Sixx took it a lot further than his contemporaries. And, ten years later, he wrote a book about it called The Heroin Diaries.

In the following decade, Nikki Sixx made a band, Sixx:A.M., with himself, of course, and two guys who toured with Crüe; IIRC their initials are A and M, not sure if that's first or last, but, that's how the band was named. And, a decade after the book, the band released their debut album, The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack. The album was a companion piece to the book. I've tried reading the book, but nonfiction really isn't my jam. (Currently working my way through the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, so if I come across sounding like Mordecai... well, that's probably why.) Though the book didn't click with me, I was a big fan of the album when it came out. Mostly because... as you can guess... I heard this song in Rockband. As a song, it's absolutely worth listening to, and it's one of my favourites, and it's fun to sing as well. The album in its entirety though, is something else. The best tracks don't stand on their own very well, but are essential to the album, like the intro (Xmas in Hell), and the song about when he quit heroin for good and the two weeks or so without it (Girl With the Golden Eyes).

After The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack, Sixx:A.M. went on to be just a normal hard rock band. They released some good stuff, but they didn't really talk much about addiction, to the best of my recollection. They may have, I dunno, but it was no longer the focus.

That all changed in 2020 with Maybe it's Time, when they got up with half a dozen other bands and rock stars, and wrote a song about getting clean, and made it a fundraiser. This may be their best song, but my pick is still Life is Beautiful. It's absolutely worth mentioning and listening, so I'll link to it as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9LKBhktTAM

If the lesson here isn't obvious, it's that you can be defined by something bad. In the 1980s, Nikki Sixx was the bar by which every partying rock star was measured. Then he was the guy who cheated death and got a second chance. Now he's the guy who is helping others get clean. While you absolutely must take responsibility for your actions and choices, you don't have to be defined by your mistakes for the rest of your life. It can be anything, it doesn't have to be drugs. So if you feel you are defined by one big mistake... "maybe it's time" to move on.

This is one of the songs I always wanted to post when I envisioned this community. I hoped by the time I did, we'd have a few hundred subscribers, and this song would reach someone. I still hope that it does. This is the 70th song I've posted daily (except one day when the instance was down, so I posted two songs the next day).

"I used to fall, but now I get back up" is just one of several lines that, if they speak to you, they cut right down to the bone.

Looking at singer Justin Furstenfeld, you'd think he did hard time somewhere. I can't find anything about incarceration on his Wikipedia page; however, it does mention some real hard time he did with addiction, and this song is absolutely about addiction, but it's about overcoming your demons, whether it's addiction, illness, being incarcerated, or whatever you're going through. He's been there, and if you listen to his words here, he will not help you get through them — he will help you help yourself through them. He can't fight your battles for you, but he can give you the tools you need to fight them yourself.

I believe, back when I posted Clock Strikes by ONE OK ROCK, I made it clear that while it was my favourite song by the band, I did not consider it to be their best song. That song is called Be the Light, which is thematically similar to Fear. In Be the Light, Takahiro Moriuchi is singing (entirely in English!) about a national tragedy — it was written for the nuclear plant meltdown in Japan, but it was written to apply equally well to anything — whereas Fear is about personal demons. However, both are about overcoming overwhelming situations through personal strength and perseverance. If you're going through some shit, you should listen to both of them. And I am sure there are others. Those are the two I know.

I really hope this song reaches someone, either because I've mentioned this comm a couple times, or maybe someone sees this, listens to it, and sends it to someone who could use a helping hand.

C-C-C-Combo breaker! Not another Japanese song today. Today we're going to, depending on who you ask, North America or North America... I mean Canada or the United States. Vancouver, British Columbia or Seattle, Washington; again, depending on who you ask.

Heart's best work arguably came out in the 1970s and 1980s, but this song in 1990 is my pick, not because it's their heaviest song, or even my favourite to listen to, but it's the one that really stuck with me. For years I just accepted it at face value of lovers meeting on the highway. By the time that last verse comes around, you're not really paying attention, but once you hear it and get what she's saying, I don't think the song is really fooling anybody who paid attention

For anybody who's heard the song and never really gave it a second thought, and don't want to listen to it again (lest it get stuck in your head again), if you look at it from the ending, it's about a married woman whose husband is sterile. He might not even know, the song isn't clear, but for the sake of their marriage, she goes out and gets pregnant and lets him think it's his. However, she meets the baby's actual father at some event and begs him to not reveal himself as the father and instead just hang onto the memory of the night they spent together. So it's kind of bittersweet. The fucked up things people do to each other. The fucked up things people believe they have to do for whatever reason. And that poor child who will never know her or his actual father. You just have to hope the guy raising them is a decent man, and that cheating on him is the only really bad thing their mother did to their father.

Also, men do this kind of thing all the time, or at least that's what scorned women and the Lifetime cable TV network would have you believe, but let a sister go out and have a night of passion and there's gotta be a whole song about it, followed by people questioning her morals 36 years later (yes, Millennials and Gen-Xers, it has been that long since 1990).

Maybe this time, we can just call it a good song and not look too deeply at why we are like this, and why society makes us do these things?

In lighter news, I was once told that after Led Zeppelin split up, their bassist, John Paul Jones, cofounded Heart. I was going to talk about that, but something told me to look it up — it's not true. That being said, John Paul Jones did produce their 1995 live album The Road Home. So he has been involved with them, but he was not a cofounder, and the Wikipedia page for the band does not list him as a former (or current) member. It's funny, because now a claim like that is easily verified to be true or false, but back then, we just didn't know.

Have you ever had a class or work assignment you weren't really qualified for? Maybe you talked yourself into it and wound up over your head. Maybe it worked out and you learned something. Or maybe your teacher or boss found out you're nothing but smoke and mirrors. Hopefully not. This song comes from a similar story where it all worked out in the end. Sort of.

Thirteen years ago, a Japanese film was released called 言の葉の庭. If you can't read kanji, it was released outside of Japan as The Garden of Words. This movie was only about 45 minutes long, and was about a guy with a foot fetish. Not really, but also technically the truth. He was actually a shoe maker, and meeting a woman in the rain under a bus shelter, he decides that her shoes aren't working for her, and vows to make her good shoes. She falls in love with him. The movie was okay, but where it excelled was its beauty. The film went viral, with the Internet calling it "Anime Wallpaper: The Movie", because virtually every frame of it was worthy of being your desktop wallpaper, and there are some outstanding Garden of Words wallpapers out there.

Makoto Shinkai, the writer and director of 言の葉の庭 was so humbled and awed by the West's reaction to his film, that he decided that his next film would not only be fully translated to English (as the others had), but if you watched in English, the music would be in English as well. This is not something that was commonly done, but he was gonna make it happen. He found Yojiro Noda, a Japanese singer who claimed to be bilingual. Shinkai hired him and his band, RADWIMPS, to do the entire soundtrack for his next film, 君の名は。 . (Isn't it weird how the full-stop has a different glyph in Japanese? The English one is just a dot. The Japanese one is a tiny circle.) Oh, this film was called your name. outside of Japan, though the more literal translation of the title is "what's your name?". Don't ask me why it has a full stop instead of a question mark.

So the trailer released, and if you watched the English trailer, you got the characters' voices in English... and the song was in English. That song, Zenzenzense (lit: "the way, way back") would play in Japanese if you watched the Japanese trailer. And when the movie came out in theaters, if you watched the English dub, the songs all played in English.

That's not why it's the best animated film I've seen, nor is it the reason it's the best film overall that I've seen, but it's pretty damn cool.

Anime purists generally don't like Japanese media being translated to English at all, because that invites more casual fans. The bigger a thing is, the less the purity of its fans, those who love it and believe in it, you get a lot of casuals who could take it or leave it. On top of that, the companies start marketing to these fans, and not the "pure" fans. So there will always be pushback against translation of anime, mostly from basement-dwelling, moon-faced assassins of joy. And so 君の名は。 got extra pushback for the music.

Also, the translation was not very good. Those of us who know English and watched the film in English know the lyrics were not very good. It pushed us to watching the Japanese dub with English subtitles. (I personally prefer to watch the Japanese dub with no subtitles. I've seen it enough that I know what's being said, and I just enjoy the sheer beauty of the film, and I'd rather hear the Japanese voices, because it is a quintessentially Japanese story. At least, until fan subtitles (fansubs) hit the Net. Those were REALLY good. For example, there's a scene where a girl slowly opens her hand to reveal something written on it that she didn't have time to look at before (context would be massive spoilers). In the official subtitles, the entire thing is written out before she opens her hand, killing the pacing the director intended. In the fansubs, the message is slowly revealed as she sees it, so we share her surprise.

So, Europe kind of got shafted in that they were the last ones to get a release. However, because of the pushback against the English songs, they got an option the Americans didn't, they got an English dialogue track with Japanese songs. That made American fans a bit jealous.

I don't think Noda or RADWIMPS were particularly bothered that people didn't like their English songs for 君の名は。 . They got paid, and the movie accomplished what it set out to, it was an amazing film you should absolutely watch, and it reached way more audiences than its predecessor.

Three years later, Shinkai released a new film, 天気の子, or, Weathering With You outside of Japan (but the name literally means "The Weather Maiden"). RADWIMPS returned to do the soundtrack, only this time, watching the movie in English did not get you the songs in English, except for today's song of the day, which still played in Japanese during the film. However, over the credits, it played in English if you watched the English dub. You could also switch to the English dub after watching the film in Japanese if you wanted to hear it both ways.

And, unlike any song in 君の名は。, Is There Still Anything That Love Can Do? had amazing English lyrics.

Here's the English version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Oz8gCJy2-Q As in, 100% of the lyrics are in English. It's a Japanese song in that it's written and performed by people from Japan, but it's an English song in that it's in English.

Noda has gone on to say that it takes about twice as long to say anything in Japanese, so the English translation would have a lot of dead air, so he has to say more to fill that space. It's an oversimplification to compare any two languages that do not have a common base (like say, Italian and Spanish both come from Latin), but his point was that when singing in English, he has to say more, so he's either going to repeat himself, or he'll elaborate (word salad) on a point, and covering that up and making it still sound good is a challenge.

RADWIMPS have other songs that are in English, some of which do not even have a Japanese version (that I know of), such as Light the Light.

And, for the record, Japanese is considered the most "alien" language to English, and vice-versa. Anyone translating between these two languages is doing a heck of a job. There's a reason computers can't do it in real time yet. Like Apple and Google advertise that their earbuds and phones will translate some languages in real time. No one's translating Japanese to English in real time yet. Maybe ChatGPT could do it, but that would be expensive. The free tools absolutely cannot do it right now. So, if you hear Japanese people singing in English, please respect the amount of work they put in to make it so you could understand their words without having to read along with subtitles.

It's hard to pick a favourite MAN WITH A MISSION song, especially when, IMO, their four best songs all start with "M". It was either this, or Merry-Go-Round, or Memories, or More Than Words. They have plenty of other great songs, but it was gonna be between those three and My Hero, which I chose mostly because the lyrics are mostly English. But all four of them are top quality.

MAN WITH A MISSION is one of those bands with a fictional back story. As I recall, they were created by Jimi Hendrix, frozen in Antarctica, and then discovered by a Japanese fishing boat. They are also one of those bands that wear masks. In this case, wolf masks, with different expressions. It's just the masks though, they're very obviously people. They make no effort to hide the rest of their bodies. They aren't full fur suits. They aren't furries, but, they kind of do have fursonas.

Musically, they're kind of like the rap/metal hybrid days in the late 90s, early 00s in the west, with a bit of symphony thrown in. If you've heard them, it's because a lot of their songs have been licensed to anime. This one was licensed to Inuyashiki: Last Hero. Please, make no mistake, I did not say Inuyasha, which is a children's anime about a demon dog (who is the bestest boy, like all dogs). I said Inuyashiki, which is something else entirely.

Inuyashiki tells the story of an old man who feels useless because he can no longer meaningfully help his family, and a young man who wants to be feared by everyone, but he's just a petty criminal. The two both happen to be in a park (and AFAIK aren't even interacting), when they are both instantly killed by a flying saucer which crashes into them. The aliens didn't mean any harm, so they rebuild both men in super-powered android bodies, and then they bugger off to wherever. As the two men realise their powers, they begin to do things. The old man becomes a hero, helping people in need. The young man becomes a terrorist, just randomly killing people for fun. Ultimately, they have to fight each other. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, either. The violence was kind of over-the-top.

Here is the opening theme featuring a shorter version of My Hero: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYciY8Y8Y8s

For reference, this is Inuyasha's opening (NOT the same thing!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6UWhb9dGHQ (There's no official stream on YouTube, so a fan upload is the best we can get here.)

Suerte is Spanish for luck, but you probably know this 2001 Colombian pop song as Whenever, Wherever. I prefer the Spanish-language version, not because I know more than a couple dozen words in Spanish, but I just like how the words sound more here.

If you want the song in English, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weRHyjj34ZE

Shakira gets a lot of credit for her dancing, but I feel it's never quite enough. She doesn't just dance, it's the whole way she moves, it's almost supernatural. It's almost like she can touch her own elbow (of the same arm), or one of those people who are double-jointed and can do weird things, but not quite weird and in fact mesmerising to watch.

I remember when the English version of this song was all over the radio. You couldn't get away from it. What was funny was how they censored the line "Funny how my breasts are small and humble so you don't confuse them with mountains." The very idea that a woman could be content with a body that didn't quite fit the mould of what society considered beautiful had to be censored, lest young girls think they could live happy lives if they didn't have double-D's by middle school. This fucking society, sometimes.

You don't have to have the body of a goddess (or a god) to be content in life, but I do, and I am also content. Granted, that god is Buddha, but I'm still at peace. I hope you find yours.

I can think of at least half a dozen songs by Japanese pop rock singer LiSA that deserve the spotlight more than Shirushi, but I saw this live performance last night and can't get it out of my head.

First thing to note: for a live performance, it's very true to the studio version, at least for the first 90% of it. Second, she fills stadiums in Japan, but as far as I know, has never toured in the US or Europe. Japanese bands don't command such big audiences abroad, so they tend to stay home, and the rest of the world is poorer for it. Third, at the end of the performance, she legitimately breaks down in tears. The band tries to cheer her up with a more upbeat tune, and she tries to hold it together, but ultimately leaves. I'm not sure if this was the last song in her set, but she clearly needed a break after performing it.

The whole song is in Japanese, so if you don't know Japanese, you might not understand why she cries at the end. But, you might if you watched some anime that is in English. LiSA got her start in anime music with the anime series Fate/Zero and her song Oath Sign, but it was Sword Art Online and her song Crossing Field that made her famous. She made the opening theme for what would be, for a few years, the biggest anime series out at the time. The ending theme was done by Haruka Tomatsu, who voiced the main girl in Japanese. (The voice of the main girl in English didn't sing anything for the series, but she voices the protagonist of Cyberpunk 2077 opposite Keanu Reeves and Idris Elba, so not too shabby!) For the second and third arcs (end of first season, beginning of second season), they had two other singers do the openings and endings. One did both endings, the other did both openings, and they were good. For the fourth arc, the end of the second season, they brought back the first two singers, but they switched them around. Haruka Tomatsu got the opening, and LiSA got the ending, and that ending theme was Shirushi.

Both of them poured their hearts into their respective themes. Tomatsu, because the arc was focused on the character she voiced, and, to be absolutely clear, we're talking about the adaptation of Sword Art Online, Vol. 7, Mother's Rosary, the peak of the series to date (there are about 25 volumes now). If Mother's Rosary was its own, standalone anime, it would either be my favourite anime, or it would be top 3. As it is, it's a big part of the reason I rate Sword Art Online as high as I do.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure LiSA knew the story before writing the song. The book isn't long, and while I don't understand Japanese and I don't know what she's actually singing, the song will forever be tied to that story, and if you knew the story, you'd probably understand why, however many years later, performing the song brings the singer to tears.

What I will say is that while the main guy is off doing main character stuff, the main girl hears about this woman challenging anyone to a duel, and after more than 50, she hasn't been defeated yet. She's quickly becoming a legend, so the main girl decides to head on over there and see what all the fuss is about. She faces the duelist in battle, and gives it her all, but the duelist calls a draw when she's down to just a sliver of life. (The whole story takes place in a virtual reality video game. They can leave at any time, and dying in the game, unlike in the first arc where it's a death game, just means they start over in town.) Then takes her and they run off together. The duelist tells the main girl she's actually recruiting for a quest. The quest isn't that important. What is, is when the duelist calls her "sis" a couple times, catches herself, and leaves. The second time, she stays gone, and everyone tells her to not pursue it. But, her boyfriend is a national hero, and a hacker, so he's able to track her down in the real world. Then he tells her to stay away, but she can't. And that's when shit goes sideways.

In addition to that, the main girl is dealing with her mother, in real life, who is telling her that online connections don't matter, and she needs to focus on her school and professional lives. That story plays out to a very satisfying conclusion, inspired by the events of the first story.

The show (I mean, those seven episodes that adapted the book) was excellent, but somehow, the book was just a little better. I didn't physically read the ink on paper; rather, I had Cherami Leigh (who voices the main girl in English) read it to me, via the audiobook. There's ever so slightly more to the story in the book, though I wouldn't say the show missed anything important. I wonder if she was able to make it through the reading without shedding a tear. I certainly wasn't, and I wasn't voicing the characters.

If you have Crunchyroll, or some other service that carries it (Netflix used to, not sure if they still do), do yourself a favour and watch the fourth arc of the anime. You don't have to watch the stuff that comes before, though, it can be helpful as background. Maybe watch a recap of the first season on YouTube. Anyway, go to the second season and watch the 18th episode, Forest House.

Maybe someday, someone will adapt that book into a standalone film, somehow. I'd love to see how that looks.

And on a much lighter note, the author wrote a prequel to Mother's Rosary in Sword Art Online, Vol. 22, Kiss and Fly, which is a collection of short stories. It starts with Yuuki, the duelist from Mother's Rosary, playing a different game. They call it Serene Garden, but it's basically Animal Crossing in VR. Except for the name, that's literally exactly what it was. Plus multiplayer. There's... a bit more to it than that, but you should not read the prequel (it hasn't been animated yet) before reading/seeing the main story, since, you know, it kinda gives up the main story's twist, since it assumes you know it.

So hey, there's your homework. Read Mother's Rosary or watch the anime adaptation and get absolutely wrecked (thereby learning why LiSA breaks down in tears at the end of the live performance)... or go play some Animal Crossing and heal your soul while you work for Bells to pay the capitalist swine raccoon for your home loans... or just go fishing and bug catching.

Was gonna skip today because I slept in, but I just learned that the bassist for L7 passed away recently (side note: fuck cancer). This was a song I enjoyed singing in Rockband. I don't have anything else to say about it, but this song probably would have been posted eventually just because it was so fun to sing, and it's fun to listen to; I always like when it comes up on the playlist.

Addendum: I saw another music comm posted this song (I browse /all, so I see all), and I'd already kinda decided to skip today, maybe post before bed or something. So it immediately got upvoted just because I like the song. I briefly thought of just crossposting it here, because it's a great pick. Then I kept scrolling and saw that Jennifer Finch had passed, and then it was kinda a done deal. There's no official stream of the music video, which is why we just get the audio here. The other post didn't have it in HD, anyway.

Been too long since I posted a song from the 1970s. Any day I post a song from after the 1970s, it's been too long since we looked at the 1970s. The 80s is my favourite generation of music for pop and rock (90s for R&B and country), but there's something special about the 1980s.

I almost didn't post this song after all. I generally prefer to post official streams because I believe the artist should get the money from the stream, not some rando who reuploaded it. However, in this case, apparently there was some controversy over Journey's change in vocalist (I was not aware of this until today), and they re-recorded all their classic hits with the new guy... and pulled all their classics, replacing them with the new versions. The new guy sounds good and I wish him/them all the best, but that new Wheel in the Sky ain't the one I grew up with. I could enjoy it on its own merits, but it's still not the one I grew up with. The one I linked, is. This one is the one they recorded with Steve Perry in 1978, and it will forever be the definitive version. I'm all for bands remastering and reimagining their old music, but don't take the old version from the old guys. That will set you at odds with the fans every single time. The exception is if a band member did something bad and you want to cut them out of the royalties. I discussed this at length in the Song of the Day post about Lost in Paradise by Japanese band ALI, but also referencing Lostprophets. That's different. To the best of my knowledge, Steve Perry did nothing wrong. So his version is the one we're talking about here.

Going back to the late 70s, through the 80s and into the 90s, Journey was one of those bands that was always there. They had songs that were good, and they had songs that were great. A few of them were timeless. If you want to make the argument that Don't Stop Believin' was their best song, I wouldn't fight you on that. It's another of the great ones and I absolutely love it. It's also very slightly overrated, having been practically mythologised. It absolutely deserves every bit of praise it receives and I will not argue against it being their best song, but I like Wheel in the Sky a bit better. If I hear either of them, though, my day's gotten a little better.

When Rockband 2 came out, when music became interactive in the late 2000s, I was not really surprised they went with Any Way You Want It. That was kind of the big single, but I wouldn't call it great. It's a crowd pleaser and it probably sounds great in the stadium, but it's not one I'd pick if I could hear just one Journey song in a day. It was okay. As the designated singer (I did not have the coordination to play even a plastic guitar, or the stamina to do drums, let alone the coordination), I never complained about Any Way You Want It getting picked. I may have even picked it once or twice, because again, you have great Journey songs and you have good Journey songs. This was a good one.

We got a Journey 3-pack later, but no Wheel in the Sky. I never found out why they didn't get it. I imagine it had something to do with the licensing. We got Don't Stop Believin', which was great because that's widely considered their best song. We also got Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) and I forget what the other one was. We didn't play those two as much (too slow for our drummer). I certainly bought the whole pack, though.

I wanna say one of the Guitar Hero games got Wheel in the Sky, but I couldn't swear to it. Guitar Hero was made by Harmonix, the people who made Rockband, but they left the franchise after Guitar Hero 2 because they wanted to add drums and vocals, and the publisher, Activision, said no and put their foot down. Guitar Hero made at least two more guitar-only games: Guitar Hero 3, and Guitar Hero: Van Halen. After Rockband ate their lunch, they begrudgingly added drums and vocals to Guitar Hero World Tour and Guitar Hero: Metallica, but they poorly implemented them, and from what I recall, vocals never quite worked, and drums weren't that much better. Most plastic drummers and singers stuck with Rockband. So, I think Guitar Hero World Tour or the fifth one had Wheel in the Sky, but if I couldn't sing it, I wasn't interested, and singing never quite worked in Guitar Hero.

Oh well. We still have the song. Until Journey copyright strikes this and we're stuck with the remake on YouTube.

Here's the remake, if you're curious. It really is quite good... and it was recorded in 2007. It's a modern Journey song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gmf4OVHhc9g The new singer is Filipino, and I don't know much about him, but he really does nail Steve's tone. He didn't have to lean that hard into the old style. He's not doing us old heads any favours, we're just gonna listen to the original. Still, I'm thankful they kept the spirit of the original. I'm not at all mad that it exists. I'm just never gonna reach for this version. Listening to it now because I may never listen to it again, just because the original exists.

Note: This is the Song of the Day for 18/7/26. The other one is for yesterday when dbzer0 was down, at least it was down when I was able to get online, so I was unable to post one. I had one in mind, I just had to wait until today to post it. This one is today's.

I've been waiting to drop this song for a while. YouTube saw I was playing a lot of female-fronted rock bands, like Nightwish and Within Temptation, and a lot of female Japanese singers, and maybe Google got wind of me saying that all the best rock music was coming out of Japan these days since the west has collectively ignored rock in favour of pop and rap.

I've watched a few videos by this band, and I like what they're doing. They're having fun, and they aren't selling their sexuality. They don't wear makeup (or, if they do, it isn't excessive), they aren't showing a lot of skin, they're just having fun and playing good music, like it should be. I don't like girls who rock because they're hot, I just like hearing the words they write from their perspective, and I like the sound of a girl's voice more than a guy's.

I don't much like their name though. They call the band "Kid Sistr" (like, little sister) and they're saying things like "Told me bout the girls you wish you dated, while I’m lying with you naked, memorize the posters in your room" (second verse of the song). Little sister where? West Virginia? Alabama? The name doesn't fit the tone of the music. Or I'm missing something.

Either way, I like the music and I would definitely see them live if they came to my area. They sound like 90s alternative rock from 1994, right after Kurt Cobain effectively disbanded Nirvana and everything was kinda influenced by grunge but also kinda not grunge, like Counting Crows and Collective Soul. Most of their songs would fit in just fine on my 90s playlist. We all woulda loved these gals when I was in high school.

So, here's to good music that takes you back to a simpler time.

CW/TW: Domestic violence, spousal abuse

Note: This is for yesterday, 17/7/26, because dbzer0 was down the whole time I was online, and was unable to post.

Have we done country yet? I don't think we've done country. I don't really like country music. I could go into why, but it wouldn't scratch the depths of the entire genre of country music and I'd likely alienate some people, and I want everyone to feel welcome in the music comm. But that's not why I'm posting a country song. Truth is, there are quite a few country songs I do like. But this isn't really one of them. Not exactly. Because what I do like quite a bit more is Southern Rock. Lynyrd Skynyrd is the obvious one, they're like the free space on the Bingo card, or Free Parking on Monopoly. Everyone likes Skynyrd, right? Figured as much. But I thought Green Grass and High Tides by the Outlaws was a better Freebird, though they're both good. There's Allman Brothers, there's CCR even though they're not really southern. Then you can kinda lump John Mellencamp in as well, though he's more midwest. Think of southern rock as a great big lawn, it doesn't matter where exactly you are on it, southern rock is a pretty broad brush. However, that lawn has a fence, and on the other side of that fence is country music. Close to that fence on the other side is country that rocks a bit, and that's where today's (yesterday's) song of the day can be found.

The Thunder Rolls is an interesting song. It's an even more interesting video... now that you can watch it. See, this video got banned from CMT (Country Music Television, the music video station that played country music) for its portrayal of domestic violence. It's even more interesting because the video tells more of the story than the song does... if you're listening to the studio version of the song. Which is what plays over the video. So to catch you up (the "tl;dw" crowd who don't like looking at videos for whatever reason), it's about a man who cheats on his wife. She's up late waiting for him, and she's bruised, meaning he's beaten her before. And she's getting plastered. Oh, and their daughter is watching, and she's little, like 7-9 years old. He comes home, she smells the other woman's perfume, she calls him out, he beats her... and that's the song. The video shows more, though, and that's probably what got the video banned.

For the rest of the story, we need the live version. This is taken from his Double Live album, and this is the way I've heard it. You'll want to jump to around 3:30 in the video, if you just want the extra bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-bl4HAqKdQ

You'll notice the crowd goes nuts when he starts singing again, because this part's not on any (other) recorded version of the song. After being beaten, she runs into the bedroom, takes his gun from the dresser drawer, and shoots him dead.

Also note, Garth Brooks doesn't really like technology much, so there aren't official streams of any of his music on any service. For a minute, he was exclusive to Amazon Music, but I think he's even pulled out of that. I have Garth Brooks on Apple Music, but only because I have a handful of his CDs. I have Double Live and a few others. So I've just dropped the .m4a files onto Apple Music, and I can stream them and put them in playlists and it all just works. There's a trick to doing that with Spotify (maybe it's gotten easier?). Not sure about other services. Garth Brooks is a solid argument for having your own copy of music you love. Don't let a musician decide you can't hear their music after you've paid for it. Learn how to back up your CDs, and, for fun and completion's sake, those of your friends and family; share, and share alike. When I was a kid, once I got into backing up CDs, I demanded that my mother and brother hand over all their new CDs so I could back them up. They did, because it only took breaking/scratching one CD and having to buy it again to learn the lesson. Half of my mother's CDs are burned, but they're in the packaging of the legal copy she bought. She's just old, and takes shitty care of her discs. So she gives them to me to back up, then enjoys the music. When the disc gets damaged, I replace it, because the studio won't. Not even for the cost of the disc and shipping and handling. They want you to buy a second copy at full price. That's madness to me. How many times do you need to pay for something? When others get things for free? You paid for it, you should get to enjoy it on your terms, not theirs. I'm an iPhone guy, and I subscribe to Apple Music. I also have an old Android phone with a memory card that is full of music, and the internal storage has a lot, too. (I do have Apple Music on that phone as well.) Of course I also have the music on my Mac. So I have backups. And portability. The Android phone has a headphone jack, so I can jack straight into most cars and play the music directly. Suffice it to say, that old Android phone holds its own against the much newer iPhone.

Technology should work for you, not the other way around. Own your devices. You decide what they do and when, not the other way around.

This video says it was posted 2 weeks ago. This song is not from 2026, it's from circa 2009. This is the first opening theme to what some anime sites rank as the greatest anime of all time... though, that's largely because its fans review bomb anything that comes close. Still, while Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood IS pretty damn good, it's also a bit cursed.

The problem started with the first series, simply titled Fullmetal Alchemist. The anime caught up to the books, and instead of going on hiatus and waiting, the showrunners just made up the second half. What they wrote was pretty good, but it wasn't what the author wrote, so fans were divided. It also used the old 4:3 aspect ratio as shows were starting to adopt 16:9 (fun fact: the first popular show to do so was Babylon 5 way back in 1992!). It also looked decent, but also looked kinda rushed. It was decided that they would make a second series after the books ended.

Brotherhood should have been one of the best anime series ever, but it started out with an all-new episode, original to the show and not based out of the books. Then you got nine episodes that summed up what the first series already covered. Like a recap episode, but there were nine of them all in a row. From episode 11 onward, they adapted the second half of the books. So once you got past the recaps, it was a solid series, but many of us would have preferred if they just adapted the whole thing over again.

Then the lead actor went and got himself canceled for sexual harassment. I've said this before, and some people think I meant someone in the Japanese dub. While I do know about 50 words in Japanese and I can say a few things, English is the language I know, so unless I explicitly state I'm watching something in another language, bet I'm watching it in English. It's kind of weird to watch shows and movies in languages you don't know, but to each their own — it's really weird to judge others for watching in their native language. And yet it happens all the time. Anyway, the less said about that guy, the better.

Still, when the anime made its triumphant return, this is the song that announced it. Each of the first dozen or so episodes opened with this theme, and the actual opening theme is pretty damn cool. Here's what that looks/sounds like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-Jr5JW-EMQ

Now, for people who had never seen the original, the animation was top notch for its day (and even holds up almost 20 years later), and it was just a 90 second hype machine. For those of us who had seen the original and knew the characters, it was even better. I once watched a 20+ minute deep dive on the video that went over all the references and all the little things you'd miss if you weren't paying close attention, and maybe even if you were.

Going back to the song itself, back when CDs ruled the music world, music was a lot more expensive in Japan. If you're an American or British, you might know some of your favourite bands had "Japanese editions" of their album with more tracks, sometimes a bonus DVD... it's because to get Japanese citizens to buy music, they — especially foreign (to them) record labels — had to include more content. It was common to include extra tracks. CD singles often came with a DVD with the music video on it. When YouTube got popular, they were not going to just put the music video out so anyone could watch it for free. But they also wanted that global audience, which was already getting the anime OP. So, they released "Short" versions of music videos, and that's all we got for the longest time. The video would fade out after a minute and a half. As streaming took over, the big players began adding music videos to their offerings (Apple Music does this and so does YouTube Music). So, they reluctantly gave up the video. Those of us on Apple Music had access to the full video for a while. But, you still had to pay. Recently, they've began putting out the videos on YouTube for anyone, because there's really no point holding them back anymore.

However, at the end of the day, it's still a Japanese song by a Japanese artist, that is fully in Japanese. So you don't know what she's saying. It sounds cool, though. So, Fullmetal Alchemist has another interesting distinction. It's been fully translated to English. The first step/phase of translating anime is subtitles. It's not optimal, but you read what they say on the bottom of the screen. This has an advantage if you're hard of hearing (like my old ass). Second step is a translated dub. Technically all the language tracks are dubs because ink is silent. There's no original language of ink and paper. So they record the sound, the music, and the voices separately. The localisation studios (in California and Texas in the US) simply isolate the voices, have their voice actors speak the translated lines with the same cadence, and swap the Japanese track out for the newly minted English one, and boom, you get anime in English.

The last phase is really rare. Everyone just accepts that music doesn't have to be translated. There was one anime I know that did. Kimi no Na wa. or your name. or, in its original Japanese, 君の名は。 (also my favourite film, ever). The director saw the West's reaction to his previous film, and he wanted to do something different. So if you watch in English (even the trailer!), the songs all play in English. And of course if you watch in Japanese (also the trailer), the songs play in Japanese. Europe got a special version where you can watch in English and still get the Japanese songs, for whatever reason. (Kinda defeats the purpose if you ask me.) I've never heard of this being done before or since. However, the anime film Koe no Katachi (A Silent Voice) uses My Generation by The Who, and reportedly, the new anime series Chainsmoker Cat is using Breed by Nirvana. So those songs are just in English anyway. The Japanese audience just gets subtitles.

So, when I say Fullmetal Alchemist has been fully translated... it's only half true. There is no way to watch either series with the songs in English. However, American cover artist/YouTuber AmaLee has recorded every. single. Fullmetal Alchemist song. in English. All of them from both anime series. She released an album called Equivalence that has all of them. All the openings. All the endings. So now we know what they're saying. So here's the (unofficial) English version of Again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-WRihrquec

Going back to the original video, though. The video starts out awesome and it stays awesome throughout. I like to tell people, check out this video and cut it off when it stops being awesome. Usually right around the 4:57 mark.

I'm a little unclear on how I discovered Tranquility by Japanese composer Sawano Hiroyuki (featuring Japanese singer Anly on vocals). It wasn't how I typically discover new Japanese music, which is I watch a new anime series, and Shazam the opening or ending theme, add it to my Japanese music playlist, and listen to it a bunch, and branch out to the artist's other songs. I think it was a recommendation by either Apple Music or YouTube because I listened to similar music. It quickly became a favourite.

I later learned that this song is the ending theme to a season of a space sci-fi anime called Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These (the latter being Latin for "The New Thesis"; this is a remake of a much older anime simply called Legend of the Galactic Heroes), which I ended up watching (and discovering even more cool music). However, after a few seasons, I guess they ran out of budget or something. The last season that they put out isn't translated to English, and I'm pretty sure they stopped making them after that. Anyway, it's like Star Wars without the Jedi magic, or maybe Star Trek with more focus on war than exploration. If you like tactics and strategy, I remember it had a bit of that as well. The description I gave sounds boring, but I enjoyed the show, the parts that were translated, anyway. I do like Japanese media, but I don't actually know Japanese. Maybe 50 words? Not nearly enough for a conversation, or to watch anime in Japanese.

As for the song... it's simply about how we as a people keep fucking up and killing each other, and we should stop and explore our common ground. In a nutshell. Seems like pretty much any series out there, they show you a monster, but the real monster is us. We can't get along if we perceive a difference in one another. Like what's been going on in the Middle East. Look, I'm not a real political guy, and I know there's more to it, there has to be. But, the way this friendly Atheist sees it, you got Christians (in the US), Jews (Israel), and Muslims (most of the Middle East). In summary, all three religions worship the same god. (Yes, the Muslims call him Allah, which is just Arabic for "god" — Allahu akbar literally just means "god is good" in Arabic.) They're still talking about the same guy. Where they differ is the importance of Jesus. One said he was the son of God and a sacrificial lamb for the sins of Man. Another said he was a heretic and executed him for his crimes. The other said he's a prophet. So, it's kinda ironic the ones saying he's a savior and the ones who killed him are allied against the ones who said he's just a prophet... almost like nobody higher up really believes all this...? Anyway, it seems that if they were true to their faith, they wouldn't be killing each other, let alone committing genocide. But again, what do I know? I just spin records and hope for the best.

I remember growing up, my mother had a couple hundred records, and when it was my turn to pick one, Willy and the Poor Boys was one of my go-to records. You really can't go wrong with CCR. I don't think they ever recorded a bad song.

Not too much to say about it, other than, this was what rock n' roll was back in my day, between these guys, John Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen, and a few others. Guys who sang about folks just trying to get by and live to see another day.

I don't think I was alone in thinking these guys were from Louisiana, New Orleans, that whole area, but they're actually from California. Go figure.

After yesterday's SOTD, I figured I'd post something a little silly and lighthearted. This song was so stupid and funny and we all loved it back in... 2008? 2007 according to the video. The song is the ending credits to the video game Portal, which I believe was originally conceived as a Half-Life 2 mod, but then it became its own thing. The game was basically a tech demo and was released as part of The Orange Box with Half-Life 2, its two expansions, and Team Fortress 2, though it also was released on its own via the company's new PC gaming storefront, Steam (which has gotten much bigger since). Portal has been given away or discounted to under $1 multiple times to the point where almost every Steam user has a copy of it.

I'm assuming a few people still aren't familiar with it. If you are, you probably already know everything I'm about to say. For those who don't... it was set up like a first-person shooter, and you wake up in a glass room, and you're introduced to the concept of the portal gun. At first you don't control it. Then you get the gun, but you can only make one kind of portal (orange or blue). Later, they unlock its full potential. One trigger fires one kind, the other trigger fires the other. A portal can only be placed on a smooth, flat surface, and some surfaces don't qualify. Anything that goes in the orange portal comes out the blue portal at the same speed and orientation — and vice-versa (it doesn't matter which one you go in, you'll come out the other). You also had a thing on your feet that completely negated fall damage. So you were tasked with completing various obstacle courses with the power of portals.

If you didn't know how to use a game controller, this game would happily teach you. In fact, I was always a keyboard/mouse guy, and this game taught me the game controller. There was this level with a pit of acid, and pillars of increasing height. The exit was about a mile or so up. There was also a deep pit that just led down to a floor. So what you had to do was simple, as long as you were good with a controller. You'd put portal A in the base of that pit, and portal B on the first platform in the acid, which was at your level, but you could not quite jump to it. You would then jump into the pit, which makes you fly out of the first platform. While at your apex, you would have to carefully aim at the next platform up and fire portal A at it. This way, when you fell back down into portal B, you would come shooting out of portal A, higher up. You'd have to then look for the next platform up, and fire portal B at it, slingshotting yourself higher and higher. What usually happened was, you'd fire the wrong portal and wind up standing on the platform. So you'd just aim down at the starting area, shoot a wall with one portal, and then drop the other one at your feet, ejecting you back to the starting area, where you'd begin again.

The neat thing about Portal was, like Dark Souls and Souls-like games, there was no easy mode. It was just what you got. That said, it wasn't terribly difficult to beat Portal, or even its sequel, which was a full-fledged game in its own right. What was neat about Portal was, in the final level, they told you to get on this platform and ride it to the end of the line, where you would be given cake as a reward for your testing. However, if you know the first thing about Portal, you know the meme "the cake is a lie." Your usefulness at an end, you were being discarded. However, if you took everything you'd learned, you could escape at the last minute, getting out of the testing area and into the warehouses that held the testing chambers, ultimately confronting the mastermind behind the tests and battling for your freedom. Of course, if you'd played the Half-Life games, you probably had some idea what was waiting for you outside. The song's line "Maybe you'll find someone else to help you / Maybe Black Mesa / That was a joke, haha, fat chance" tells you that Black Mesa, the corporation behind the events of the Half-Life games, exists in the world of Portal, and is somewhat of an antagonist and/or competitor to Aperture Science, the company behind the Portal experiments. (You wouldn't want to trust, or be backed by, either of them.)

Hilariously, at the end of the game before the credits roll, they show you the cake. The cake was real all along. It just wasn't for you. It's also a cake you can actually make, just don't follow GLaDOS's directions. Do not put broken glass in a cake! But no, it's just a Black Forest cake. So it's two round cakes with whipped cream frosting (and/or chocolate shavings, and/or raspberry compote (or strawberry if you favour that)) in between. The cake is frosted with the same whipped cream frosting, and then covered with chocolate shavings. Then, make six "puffs" of the whipped cream frosting, and top each with more chocolate shavings, and a berry you used the compote of. That's a Black Forest cake (traditionally with raspberry). Now if you wanna be REAL fancy, set aside some Wilton Buttercream (recipe easily found online) frosting you used for another cake (it makes a lot), divide it in two, and dye half orange, and the other half blue. Now get two L-shaped stands that have a mirror on the back. Cut the cake perfectly in half and place on the stands, so that when looking in the mirror, you see a complete cake. I hope you see where this is going! If not, take your orange and blue frosting, and make portals on the glass (a big arc) so the cake appears to be going through the portal. (My wife has done this for me. It was AWESOME.)

I probably should have put content warnings on some other songs. I haven't heard this song in a couple years. I didn't even remember the name, I just remembered it was that one that really stood out on Only Revolutions. When I saw the title, I knew it was the one I wanted. When I heard the lyrics, I thought "I'd better put up a warning." The song is about enduring domestic violence between partners. But if you don't really pay attention, it's just an outstanding alternative/post-grunge rock song.

I remember one time many years ago, some ignoramus on Reddit or maybe some forum said that if foreign accents were so special, why did UK bands sing with an American accent? I never really thought much about accents, but I did think a lot of musicians from both sides of the pond sounded similar. Biffy Clyro was my counterpoint to that argument. They're a Scottish band, specifically, and they sound Scottish.

Anyway, maybe a Scottish person can explain the phrasing here, but it doesn't make much sense. "Our future is for, many of horror." It's almost like he's saying "our future is, for many, one of horror", but the pause is definitely after "for", not before it, and "many of horror" is spoken without pause. I think I get what he's trying to say, but the way he's saying it isn't the English I was taught. It's like Shakespearean English. You get it but it's not the (King's/Queen's or Yankee) English you were taught.

I've tried to listen to other Biffy Clyro albums, but I don't care for most of them. I really do like Only Revolutions and it has many songs that click with me, but their other albums don't. It's like Muse, some of their albums just don't work for me, but I like others (more than one). I tend to favour their older work, with The 2nd Law being the newest one I really liked. The one or two before it were also good, but I like a lot of their older singles as well. Mentioning Muse, I feel, begs the question of, "did you like Radiohead?" and that's a tough question, because people tend to really love Radiohead, or just not care about them. And I liked the singles, like Karma Police and Creep. Never actually sat down to listen to them, I thought they were too quiet (this from a guy whose favourite musician now is Enya, but back then I was more about heavy metal). So no, I wasn't going to be a huge Muse fan either. And I feel like Biffy Clyro is in there somewhere, I'm just not really sure where.

So, if you've never heard Scottish rock: now you have. And now I want some bangers and mash. Wait, is that Scottish, or just northern English?

Today's song of the day comes to us from Korea and the multimedia project Alien Stage. Sometimes written as ALNST, Alien Stage is basically a gay Korean version of Dungeon Crawler Carl. Aliens destroy the world and take the few survivors and make them perform for entertainment. That about sums up the plot of both of them. If Dungeon Crawler Carl had a theme song (not counting the songs mentioned, e.g. in the third book/Iron Tangle), I probably would have posted it by now. My wife is a big fan of Alien Stage. I don't really get it, but that's not important. I do enjoy it, I get something out of it. The performances the aliens force the humans to perform is music. They do duets, and whoever the aliens like better moves on. The other person is typically executed.

If you want to hear the song entirely in English (as the original is mostly in Korean), my favourite Asian song cover artist, AmaLee, has you covered here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ebTaNe9aiU

Now, if you're curious about Alien Stage, this is where you start, as far as I can tell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQlVtAiFARI (Note that it plays a different song, My Clematis. Blink Gone is featured later.) Also, if after a few episodes (they're only a few minutes long), if you're lost — you're not alone. I gave up trying to follow the story and just tried to enjoy the music. I think that's fine, too. I think there's more to the story elsewhere, I'm not sure if it's a webtoon (vertically scrolling comic book format popular in Korea) or if there's some kind of fan fiction repository that goes into its canon, but there's apparently a heck of a lot more than the YouTube videos. Note that there is also a lot of detail in the videos themselves that a lot of people miss. It's these fans like my wife who watch them multiple times and pick up details they missed before.

VIVINOS has since stopped working on Alien Stage and has begun work on a new project called Zombie Stage which seems to be kind of the same thing? But all is not lost for ALNST fans, as it's getting an anime adaptation. So hopefully this will gather all that information spread out everywhere and make a cohesive narrative the rest of us can follow.

Bonus: I picked this song because yesterday was Friday and I really wanted to show out walking out of work. So as soon as I stepped outside, where my time and personal space was actually my own, this is the song I wanted to blast on my way to my car (fortunately no one was around to be bothered by this strange Korean song virtually no one has ever heard before, at least not out IRL touching grass). So I came up with a pretty good way to do that.

You can tell your AI virtual assistant to play a song for you, and it might even get it right, but I had a better option. I also didn't want to speak or type anything. I literally wanted a single button press to do what I wanted. I have an iPhone, so I went into Shortcuts. I thought about calling out the song in particular, but I realised the upkeep on that meant I'd have to go into Shortcuts to change it. Not ideal. I use the Music app multiple times a day, so I figured it would be better to work there. So in Music, I found the song Blink Gone (I went with the original Korean version, of course), and added it to a playlist called "My Theme Song," then buried that playlist in a folder. I went back to Shortcuts, and made a Shortcut that simply opens that playlist, plays the first song, and loops it (Repeat One). I then changed the Shortcut icon to a lightning bolt with an arrow head at the bottom. I don't know what that icon represents to the system, but it's the one I chose. Apple disabled the ability to run Shazam from the Lock Screen in the iOS 27 beta (probably accidentally, though I've reported it in each of the three betas I've been in; we're now on the third), so that lock screen shortcut is useless to me now. I replaced it with my Shortcut that I made. Now, once my iPhone is unlocked, I can just long-press the generic superhero lightning bolt and it'll play Blink Gone. Best of all, whenever I want to swap out the song, I just add another song to the playlist, then delete Blink Gone from it. I'm not sure I can delete a song if it's the only song in the playlist. I feel like that would delete the playlist, but I'm not about to find out when the alternative has the same number of steps.

So, Blink Gone is not only the dbzer0 instance's Music comm's song of the day, it's also my theme song on my iPhone.

If you're on Android, there's probably a similar solution. I know we used to use Tasker to automate things. If you can put a Tasker shortcut on your lock screen (you probably can with KLCK, the custom lock screen maker, if that's still a thing — note that it isn't free), the way I would do it on Android is, I'd point to a folder, and manually put a song in that folder. Like a file. Easiest way to do that is use something like yt-dl (or Jdownloader2 if you're uncomfortable with the command line, or there are websites that will do the same), feed it a YouTube URL, and extract the song file. Too easy.

If you guessed today's song of the day would be Total Eclipse of the Heart, well, that would have been a great guess, especially after the BBC called it "the most dramatic pop song ever written." Could have sworn it said "the most epic" when I first saw the article. But either way, that's the song getting all the hype, and it's a great song, but this one... You can ask five different people where they know this song and you might get five different answers. The song (radio, album), the music video, Footloose, or Shrek 2. Where do I know it from?

As a child of t he 70s and 80s, of course I'm going to say Footloose, but my favourite iteration of it was in Saints Row: The Third. The video game series started as Xbox's answer to Grand Theft Auto (which was then exclusive to PlayStation) but it expanded to other platforms after the first one. The first two Saints Row games were just that, GTA clones. The third one took it in a bit different direction. You had this silly action adventure driving game that kinda resembled a purple GTA, but it was this big dumb game that never stopped trying to get you to have fun. While the first two tried to take themselves seriously as gangbanger simulators, the third dropped the pretense and accepted its role as a game that was meant to be fun.

Spoilers for the end of Saints Row: The Third: If you wanna see what that looks like, check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94UdNGwWsts — the person playing it is obviously an amateur, as the only way to do it is to go into the settings and mute everything but the soundtrack and crank it up (you still get the dialogue subtitles), but, I don't have the means to record my own video. I think I'd crash a bit less, but when the spotlight's on, you tend to slip. I think we all tried to take that speed boat up those stairs though. (And if you think that's wild, wait until you see the ending for Saints Row IV. When you get the power armour. Maybe I'll feature that song one day and post that ending.)

If you're a gamer and you missed Saints Row: The Third, it goes on deep discount all the time, and it's one of the best games in its class. Might be a hot take, but I put it above GTA V. The controls are better and I like the characters and missions more. I think it's a better story, too. And GTA games are awesome and all that, but sometimes they don't get out of their own way to let you have fun. Saints Row nailed that formula. The games are downright stupid, but they never stop being fun, and isn't that the point of a game?

Anyway, the song. This and Total Eclipse of the Heart were both written by the same guy, Jim Steinman, who also wrote a lot of Meat Loaf's songs (if not all of them), including previous Song of the Day, I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That). He also wrote one of Céline Dion's best songs. Let's be real here, the Titanic and Beauty and the Beast songs absolutely top that list, no matter how overplayed they are. But right behind them is her song that Jim Steinman wrote for her. The man is not just on another level, he's playing a whole different game. He could be writing songs for Japanese bands for all we know (I don't think he is) because it seems like no one else in the west is really going for that theatrical production sound that defined Meat Loaf's career.

I don't know that much about Bonnie Tyler, but I do know her two best songs (and the only two I know) were written by that guy who wrote most/all of Meat Loaf's songs, and he writes good songs. And I will continue to highlight them as I find them. And hey, everyone else is going with the other one, so I'm not too far off the mark here.

And now, for the bit of wisdom I like to add at the end of some of these: don't hold out for a hero. Make one of yourself. Be the change you want to see in the world. Do the things you admire others for doing.

Bonnie Tyler passed away today, aged 75. She was most known for Total Eclipse of the Heart and Holding Out for a Hero.

I'll give you two guesses what tomorrow's song of the day will be.

As for the article, I'll let it speak for itself. I really only knew her for those two songs.

milet, stylised in lowercase, is a Japanese singer who has licensed her music to a bunch of anime series, including the one this song is licensed to, which is called Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. The first episode opens with a party of heroes which has spent ten years on a quest to vanquish a demon king. That's already done by the time the curtain rises on our story, where the heroes gather to witness a meteor shower. This apparently happens every 15-20 years, so they vow to meet again the next time it happens, and they slowly go their separate ways. One of the party members is the title character, Frieren, an elf who is over 1300 years old, but has only lived among her kind for most of her life. Still quite naive, she is surprised that in 15-20 years, the rest of her party has grown old. They've all passed away by the second episode, but the series is not really about them anyway. She finds a new adventuring party, and the series contains flashbacks to the original party's adventure. So it's kind of like a D&D anime, in a way, except it's its own system.

Oh, and some say Frieren is autistic. Others say elves can't be autistic because they aren't human. She's some flavour of neurodivergence, though, and this is not the first time a Japanese series has used fantasy to portray neurodivergence. (The first time I saw it was Wolf Children, a film I referenced in the "Song of the Day" post about Story of Our Lives.) I'm not sure if Japan has a stigma around mental illness, so they portray it in a clever way, or if there's some other reason, but here it is again. And Frieren's main issue is that she thought the blue-haired Himmel would be her mentor (whom she also had a bit of a crush on, but her developmental age is somewhat close to 13-14 in human years (it might be 100:1), so it's really just a crush), but then he got old and died, and she can't let him go, but she's also not great at expressing herself. So she keeps a lot of it in, and we see it through flashbacks. It's not a fast-paced series, but neither is it slow, and it is very good. Here's the trailer, but, keep in mind that while the show has been fully translated, the trailer is only offered with translations in subtitles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwr1aLEDpe4

As for the song... it's a song of healing, of someone who has suffered loss, but the memory of the person they lost and what they taught them keeps them moving forward. The video is beautiful on its own, but most of it is in Japanese, so if you don't understand that, you'll want to turn on the subtitles to understand what she's saying. It all fits very well with the story, so if you know the story, you have a pretty good idea, but you can get a more precise understanding by reading along. This is a good song to put on when you're feeling down, to remember that the good things in your life can inspire you to push forward through the bad times.

Like yesterday's Song of the Day (Far Away by Nickelback), 3 Doors Down was another alternative, post-grunge band from the 1990s that got big in the 2000s, also from North America (from the United States as opposed to Canada, but still closer together than either of them and any European or Asian band). Only — and, this is somewhat inspired by a conversation that stemmed from yesterday's post — 3 Doors Down never really got hated on. The other commenter said it was mainly just a meme, like with Justin Bieber, but I can't help but connect that both are Canadian. Never quite hated, but I've seen similar jabs at other Canadian musicians, like Céline Dion (though, that was mostly for her song, My Heart Will Go On (Love Theme from Titanic) being overplayed on the radio). I also think of Alanis Morrissette and Avril Lavigne when I think of Canadian music, but I don't recall them getting any smoke from the Internet. And I'm not saying US bands didn't either, just that it's odd that Canadians seemed to get it with a higher frequency. (Maybe it was because of South Park?)

And, I'm going to say it to get out in front of it before someone comes in trying to blindside the thread: 3 Doors Down support(ed?) Trump, playing a concert at his inauguration in 2017. So these guys played to support a guy who has attacked the rights of people of colour and the LGBTQ+. I'm not sure if the surviving members still support him and/or what he's done, but they did at one time, and they still didn't get any hate from the Internet. I think, because we all remember them for their good songs in the 1990s and 2000s, from Kryptonite to Away From the Sun, and of course Here Without You. Also Duck and Run, It's Not My Time, and When I'm Gone. I remember when Matchbox 20 came out with Push and a lot of people thought it was about domestic violence, here was the safer and more female-friendly 3 Doors Down. They were doing the same thing but didn't have that controversy hanging over them.

Another topic that came out of the discussion over yesterday's song was if we can blame bands for the actions of their fans, which is interesting because I'd addressed that in a previous post, about the song Lost in Paradise by ALI. That band's drummer cheated an old lady out of her life savings, so the band pulled all their music from streaming, re-recorded his parts, and put the new versions up. And about a British band whose singer did way, way worse.

Anyway, 3 Doors Down's singer Brad Arnold passed away earlier this year. 3 Doors Down was planning a summer tour. I'm not sure what they will do, if they will hire a new singer, or do something else. Like when Days of the New broke up and its members formed Tantric. Or when Amy Lee of Evanescence fired her entire band, retaining the name, and they put out an album called We Are the Fallen, which was also the name of their band. It didn't do very well. I've talked before about bands that spin off from a previous band's tragedy. Most of the time it doesn't work out. Sometimes it does.

And music should build you up, or build up to great things.

You might be wondering if I lost a bet, or you might have been wondering when we'd get to Nickelback, if we ever did. And, honestly, I get it, they're kind of the Nicholas Cage of rock music, they're generic and don't really stand out. But All the Right Reasons was a solid album, and it came out during a pretty good time in my life, so my wife and I played the CD quite a bit. And my wife and I were a long-distance relationship (I moved quite far to move in with her), and this became our song.

I've pretty much always liked popular music, and I think I've always had the right idea about it, but I was a bit off. I used to think that music that appealed to mostly everyone couldn't reach anyone as deeply as less popular music. And that's really not fair, considering the quality of music isn't determined by the popularity, and the popularity isn't at all based on the quality. The popularity is determined by marketability. And Nickelback were very marketable in the west. They're Canadian, but they sound like they could be from your town, and singing about life where you grew up. They also had some pretty good songs. That's not exactly a hill I'll die on, but neither is it a very difficult claim to make or defend.

Anyway, the right idea as I've come to learn it is that music that appeals to more people can reach more people, but it feels more special when a song that has deeper meaning to you isn't known by as many people. So among people who use Lemmy, who's heard Nickelback? Probably something like 75-85%. Who's heard ONE OK ROCK? Probably closer to 10-15%, and that might be being generous. So I get to feel special when I say my favourite song is Clock Strikes by ONE OK ROCK. Or, for another example, most people, I think, have heard of Enya, but they mostly just know Orinoco Flow (except they call it "Sail Away"), or Only Time. Or they know her as that crazy Irish lady who lives with her cats, doesn't tour, and literally lives in a castle. They almost certainly don't know The Loxian Gate or understand what Loxian is (they probably think they're hearing Gaelic, assuming they don't know Gaelic... I suspect a few who do know Gaelic might even think they're hearing Gaelic... or Welsh). So by claiming these songs, I inherently feel special, because I know something most others do not. Of course, recognising this fallacy doesn't change it, much. The point is, popular music can be just as special to someone as unpopular music. And while it feels pretty awesome to have favourite songs most people haven't heard (but, also, look what songs I opened the comm with), having a song you love that is known by many others is special, too.

These days, my wife and I listen to different kinds of music. Her favourite band now is Sleep Token, which I featured a while back (DYWTYLM). My favourite musician is still Enya. We both like ONE OK ROCK, but we have different picks. Neither of us really listen to Nickelback anymore, though I'm sure I still have that disc around somewhere. Maybe I'll play it this weekend, just to throw it back and laugh. The song doesn't really resonate for us like it once did, because it's been so long since we've been "far away" from one another. The last 20 years have been magical, and have flown by almost like a dream. We've never had a big fight. When people say they married their best friend, but then they fight, they split up, I wonder how true that is, or if they read it off a greeting card. I actually did. And we're still one another's favourite person. So, here's to the next 20.

Among Japanese songs, Key of the Twilight is interesting, as with a lot of German-born Japanese composer Yuki Kajiura's work... it isn't in Japanese at all. Yuki Kajiura is only the composer (and keyboardist) here. The vocalist on this track, I believe, is British. She has other singers for other languages, as she composes songs in English, Japanese, Italian, and Latin — maybe more. There might even be a German one, but if I know about it, I'm blanking on which one it is right now.

This version of Key of the Twilight is taken from Kajiura's album Fiction and is the second version of the song. (Actually, I also linked to the second version of Fiction. I can't find the original anywhere, though I own a physical copy of it. The second version changed the album cover and added a few tracks.) The first version was a rougher cut but was otherwise the same. The first version was featured in the soundtrack for .hack//SIGN, which was the anime that Japanese author Reki Kawahara was watching when he started writing the Sword Art Online books. SAO fans hotly contest this version of events, but we'll never really know the truth. Both contain similar plot lines and elements (between the first season of .hack which was called Sign, and the Aincrad arc of SAO). They also share the same composer (Kajiura) and production companies. It's a joke everyone's in on but the SAO fans. But while Key of the Twilight, Fiction, and SAO iterate on what came before, .hack//SIGN also iterated on games like EverQuest.

Which is real funny, considering the game I just beat yesterday. Though, if I told you what the game is, I'd be spoiling one of its endings. But it had to do with cultures iterating on ones that came before them. You're in one, and figuring out what the previous ones did differently was the key to solving a mystery. If you know, you know. There's wisdom in what came before. But, I'm no philosopher.

Today would have been a great day to post Touch of Grey by the Grateful Dead. I think it's physically impossible to be down when that song is playing, but I've already posted it. So I've been doom scrolling on YouTube for something to pick, with a few good ideas, and this came up. I mentioned it the other day (was it yesterday?) and yeah, this was Green Day for me back in the day. At the time I was not aware that they had albums before this, but Dookie dropped (pun intended) and they were all over MTV and rock radio.

Later I heard there was kind of a debate around them, "are they punk or aren't they?". I always understood that they were punk rock, so, rock that was punk flavoured. I didn't buy the argument that they were not qualified to be real punk. That never mattered to me — but, I was never a fan of punk. Didn't hate it, just didn't jam to it. So I didn't feel confident saying what was or wasn't punk. Green Day definitely dressed the part and played the music, but I always heard rock first and punk maybe second. My favourite Green Day album is actually 21st Century Breakdown which is more emo/pop punk — not that there's anything wrong with that, you could define my favourite band, ONE OK ROCK, the same way, and they're not really punk at all. They are a little emo, though. And so is Green Day, at times. And that's fine. You don't even have to agree on the labels. I don't think they really matter all that much. What matters (to me) is if the music moves you or not. And I definitely like listening to Green Day.

Saw them live once. Probably been 5, 6 years? It wasn't the 21st Century Breakdown tour, it was for the album after that. My niece loved the song 21 Guns and when I took her to her first concert, I jokingly said "who we going to see next?" She said Green Day. I didn't go to concerts when I was a kid (and she was 12 telling me this). So I was like hell yeah, next time they come round, we're getting tickets and we're taking you out of school if we have to. We didn't have to. We did have to take a bit of a road trip as they didn't come anywhere near us. We made a weekend out of it. It rained. The show did not suck. Even in the rain. Probably the best show I've been to, and I've been to Metallica. It's close between the two of them, but I gotta give it to Green Day. Take the rain out of the equation and it's no contest. (I've also been to ONE OK ROCK and Nightwish, as far as favourite bands go. Among other songs of the day, I've also seen Rise Against live a couple times. They were good, too.)