DRSC Media’s top 10 2019 songs

31/12/2019 DRSC Media Culture, Culture-English
unsplash-logoElice Moore

With 2019 having come to an end, we look back at some songs released this year that we believe are worth mentioning.

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2019 has been both a long and a short year. While at times, time seemed to move very slowly, now that the year has come to an end, and looking back at it, we are left wondering, where has time gone? Regardless, multiple artists and bands released dozens of new songs this year, with both good and bad music made. We’ve decided to compile our 10 favourite songs released in 2019, with most having been mentioned in a previous article at some point. We are not classifying them from the best to the worst, and, instead, are mentioning them without a specific order.

We’ll be starting with a title that has made into a specific group of people as part of general culture, Sabaton’s “Bismarck”. While this single was not included in their 2019 “The Great War” album, not being a WWI event, it remains as, possibly, the best song that the band has made this year. After all, lines such as “Pride of a nation, a beast made of steel” and “To lead the war machine […] the Bismarck and the Kriegsmarine” can be seen in random places around the internet. We had initially considered picking “Great War”, as this song does appeal to our ideals and beliefs as Europeans, but, ultimately, “Bismarck” is where the feelings are at. After all, who wouldn’t want to see this beast of steel navigating through the seven seas, in all its glory once again, after listening to this song?

Furthermore, we can’t help but feel that Sabaton’s “The Great War” was a step-down from what the band usually does, with no song having any real appeal on the first listen, appearing quite bland. This is in comparison with songs such as “The last stand”, which, long before release, was already eagerly awaited by thousands of fans, having been used at the end of some other songs that year in the end credits. With “The Great War”, one has to force themselves to re-listen to most songs, with this second round actually providing the “trigger” needed to appreciate them.

While PewDiePie released some new music this year, such as “Congratulations” at the beginning of the year, or a song about Minecraft which, while it isn’t bad, is quite forgettable, we’ll have to mention the “PewDiePie’s Rewind” song “Me and the boys” from Party in Backyard. Even if the second track found in this Rewind, “Highway”, is quite good by itself, “Me and the boys” is even more memorable:

Of course, the name of the song also refers to the meme having the same name, which is an added bonus.

A singer having made an impressive comeback this year, the Swedish artist YOHIO, is our next pick, with his beautiful song “My nocturnal serenade”. We don’t have much to say on this selection, as the song and the videoclip speak for themselves:

Moving to Japan, we would like to mention the utaite Mafumafu [まふまふ], who made quite a lot of original songs this year, on top of a number of covers such as “Android girl” [アンドロイドガール]. Picking one of these original songs is difficult, with various titles deserving to be mentioned, such as “An encouragement of a ninja” [忍びのすゝめ], “I wanna be a girl” [女の子になりたい] or what is easily one of the most ambitious cross-overs in history, as various comments under the video point out, “Sincerely, on this day the cherry blossoms fall and sway” [拝啓、桜舞い散るこの日に]. This song includes most of the characters that appear in two different manga magazines, being “Shōnen Jump” and “Shōnen Magazine”, which have launched a website for students (Shōnen Jummaga Gakuen, as the title of the video mentions) having a collection of some of their series for free. In any case, we’ve selected this last song, as it is the one we find the most appealing out of the few we’ve mentioned:

While never mentioned on our website, we cannot hide that we wrote dozens of articles while listening to DJ Blyatman, thus why we’ve decided to include one of his titles in this list. Of course, we’ve also written dozens of articles while listening to Eurobeat, which might explain why some of them are so terrible, but this is a different matter. In any case, if we could, we would likely select “Kosmos”, but this song was released at the end of 2018, thus being outside of the period of time covered. This leaves three options in our eyes, “Night in Pripyat”, “Stalker” and “Shutdown”. We understand these might be curious choices, due to “Vice City” being the most popular of the recent songs, with over 4 million views, followed by “Our sound”, “Lunapark” and two other titles, but this is, after all… our choice [☭Communism intensifies☭]. While we would have initially picked “Shutdown”, our final choice is “Night in Pripyat” with XS Project, the artists that are behind titles such as “Take me to Russia”, “Gagarin” or “Fu Manchu”:

Once again a curious choice, but French YouTuber and music maker “JOYCA” released some new tracks this year, such as “Haut de gamme” and “Party end”. Our pick is “Haut de gamme”, featuring another popular French artist, “Boostee”. This is also not the first collaboration between both artists, with Boostee having also participated on “Heart & Soul”. While the interpretation of the lyrics of “Haut de gamme” is unclear, somehow, we associate it with the struggles of dealing with depression and other mental illnesses, a topic important for us, reinforcing our choice:

Coming back to metal, and, more specifically, power metal, we’ve picked Powerwolf’s new version of “Kiss of the Cobra King”. The original version of this song came out all the way back in 2005, but this new version slightly differs from the original one, thus qualifying for entering this list. At the same time, its catchiness makes it hard to ignore, and, after all, “oh ohhh, this is the kiss of the python king”…:

For the last three choices, we are returning to Japan, starting with Kizuna AI’s single “Sky High”, released this summer. While Kizuna AI released a few new songs this year, on top of multiple covers of popular Japanese songs, “Sky High” is the one that stands out the most, thanks to soothing lyrics, a happy track and a colourful video:

We’ve then picked “The light”, a song made by the Dutch DJ duo W&W, in collaboration with… Kizuna AI. While a bit unfair for all those that are not mentioned in this list, “The light” features a beautiful clip made in VR, a catchy track and beautiful vocals by the Japanese vtuber:

Finally, our last pick is one of the more recent songs of the Japanese idol group “The World Standard”, also known as “WASUTA”. Forming part of their mini-album “The Legend of WASUTA”, released this past summer, 「Meranyaizar!!!!!」is both a catchy and happy track, making us come back to it on a regular basis:

We are aware we’ve left out quite a lot of artists, songs and albums released this year, such as metal bands such as Amon Amarth, Twilight Force or Gloryhammer, or artists that have come back this year, such as Emilie Moldow or Krista Siegfrids, although, from our point of view, most of their work didn’t stand out as much as what we’ve picked. Of course, this is our own opinion, which is quite subjective. Others might have different preferences and might have selected different titles and artists, although, as we mentioned at the beginning of this article, most of our picks were mentioned at some point or another in one of our past articles.

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