LogFAQs > #950633965

Hey hey hey! A little while ago I took nominations for a music ranking where the criteria was non-VGM, aka anything that wouldnt be eligible for VGMC. 164 songs later, were ready to rank!

The nominations were an interesting spread. I got stuff that was adjacent to the examples I posted of songs I like: jazz, pop, chiptune, piano-y things, glitch, weird avant garde. Other noms ran the gamut of genres: country, classical, ska, anime, rap, musicals, choral music, vtubers (vtubers are a genre apparently), film score, and at least three video game remixes. There were a lot of songs with non-English vocals, which was pretty awesome. I also got a crap ton of metal. I guess you folks like metal!

I tried a BRAND NEW HOT OFF THE PRESSES ranking system. I have a big spreadsheet for video game music rated and ranked in order, from 0 to 10 in increments of 0.5. For non-VGM, it felt weird using that system; it felt like I had to train my brain to think of other types of music on a rating scale, which is completely arbitrary and weird, yes.

I came up with a new rating system for this, with five variables, rated from 0 to 10 in increments of 0.5, with total scores multiplied by 2 to create a final score out of 100. Note that these categories are all subjective Im not laying any claim of being an expert in music. In fact, most of these writeups will be terrible! But this is how I chose to rate everything, in descending order of importance:

• Emotion: How do I respond to it emotionally? (This is basically my original rating scale.)
• Three songs got a 10 in Emotion.
• Immersion: Am I fully enveloped into the song? Does it maintain my focus? Do I enjoy being in its center?
• Four songs got a 10 in Immersion.
• Unconvention: If I want to listen to this song, will it offer me an experience unlike any other song? This one is tough to quantify. Its not the same as weirdness (though weird songs certainly get a boost here), and it relies on my knowledge of other music to compare. Basically its a matter of, when I listen to it, does it make me feel a specific way I cant find anywhere else? That exists independent of weirdness.
• Three songs got a 10 in Unconvention.
• Appreciation: Does this song execute its intent well? This isnt the same as is the song objectively good. Its more like, if I can see what the song is trying to do, is it doing it? This proved to be a very interesting category because there were a number of songs that scored low everywhere else but high in Appreciation.
• Ten songs got a 10 in Appreciation! This was definitely the wildcard category.
• Obsession: Do I find myself thinking about it or listening to it again? This category I mostly filled out after the initial ranking, since its often hard to judge if Ill keep coming back to a song or not right away.
• Two songs got a 10 in Obsession.

I sorted the songs by total score, then broke ties in order of category. So if there were two songs that scored a 75 and one got an 8 in Emotion and one got a 7.5 in Emotion, the one with the 8 would get ranked higher. If they were tied in Emotion, it would then be the higher score in Immersion, then Unconvention, etc. This way I didnt have to manually order anything!

To my great surprise and delight, one song got a 10 in every category a perfect 100! I certainly wasnt expecting that.

The last thing to go over is that, as I said in the nomination topic, Im only saying positive things about the songs. Even the bottom ones. If I do say something somewhat negative, it will be in relation to something positive. I dont like crapping on things.

Heres a spreadsheet with nifty stats and such. You can see all 164 songs in alphabetical order. Ill be updating as we go along with a countdown as the songs get posted, as well as nifty nominator stats:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ExYfjmcF6guMR2sXEP5SqtJoOpPVBVfGgO1jdqZ21vw/edit#gid=0

Whew! I think thats everything. Lets listen to some tunes!