Board 8 > I count down my top 15 Katamari series songs [ranking]

(+) Yeah! (+)

I've been procrastinating on this project since before We Love Katamari Reroll was announced and I'm finally finished. I have combed through all of the soundtracks and attempted to narrow it down to my top 15 favorite songs and arranged them in something resembling an ordered list.

• If you're accustomed to reading a lot of B8 ranking topics, expect my commentary to be on the lower end of the spectrum. I don't have a lot of musical knowledge or technical vocabulary and I often struggle to articulate why I like a song beyond "it sounds cool". I'm also not great at identifying instruments or genres. But I tried sometimes.
• Since I started this list before WLK Reroll came out, I will be using the song titles from their original releases rather than the re-localized titles when applicable.
• I'm literally telling you up front that Katamari on the Rocks is not on this list. If you consider that to be a "glaring omission" or whatever, then this is your forewarning that you probably won't like anything on my list.

First entry will be posted after this topic reaches 4 posts in order to fake engagement. Also, vote on whether you want to see 2 songs per day (3 today, 7 days) or 3 per day (5 days) (or if it's not worth dragging out such a short ranking and you'd prefer 5 per day).

:O excite

Tag

-hotdogturtle-- posted...

Katamari on the Rocks is not on this list

....resisting urge to revoke tag, but it's been so long since I played the Katamaris that I barely remember the games anyhow. So will be interested in seeing how this shakes out (and ideally jogging my memory on classic tracks!)

If I had to rank Katamari Damacy 1 music, Katamari on the Rocks would end in the lower half despite being so great, just because the whole soundtrack is so stacked. I can totally understand your point. Excited to see this!

I understand the omission but only because Katamari music is so overpowered in general. I don't even think KotR would be in my top 15 either

#15. Touch My Katamari - Hello World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIgQCcGtdjk

This is one of the songs which gained a more favorable opinion from me after it was included in WLKR (it probably would have ranked around the mid 20s before). I don't really have too much specific to say about it, it's more just the general vibe of the song that makes it good background music. Actually, that's what it is, I like this song better as ingame BGM better than listening to it standalone. When I played WLK with random music enabled, I was surprised to find that I always enjoyed when this song came up because I never cared about it beforehand. I never played TMK so I never got to experience it ingame before. So it really surpassed my expectations hearing it in context.

Also, unrelated to that, this song stylistically reminds me of Pokemon BW2 music.

#14. Katamari Forever - Be Gorgeous
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YzMDaGTsZ0

Katamari Forever's soundtrack has a lot of short(ish) songs that are used for cutscenes, the overworld, or other non-gameplay things. I debated on including any of them here because they might be "wasting" a slot due to their length when I could be listening to a longer song that I like just as much. But this one has always been one of my favorites and it earned its spot here even after scrutiny. This is the song from the present screen, where you spend 5-10 seconds adding accessories to your cousin, maybe 30 seconds if you're indecisive and testing out different ones. It's weird that they even made a full song for this in the first place (you could probably use the forbidden meme for this song (actually don't look at the Youtube comments)). I like how it has the persistent beat throughout the whole thing, and the robotic voice which is a recurring theme in KF songs.

I feel like I tried to push for Hello World last year during VGMC but it didnt gain enough traction.

#13. Beautiful Katamari - Bless My Stars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWC7PXHh7G0

This is a song that I always thought that I didn't like, except for the times when I listened to it and remembered that it was actually okay (but those times were infrequent, because why would I listen to a song that I didn't like?). Doing this ranking has finally helped me remember that I do in fact like it. This song has a weird aura, it's like the vocals don't match the instrumental or something. There's probably a musical explanation for why it evokes that kind of mental emotion but I have no idea. My favorite parts of this song are the verses (1:06 and 3:06) rather than the chorus. I never noticed until this project that there's this short 4 note piano loop repeating throughout the whole thing. For some reason that's like the coolest part of the song for me. It would sound so different without that, and I don't know if this song would even make the list if I never noticed that part.

fuck yeah katamari music

tag

Danketsu #1 or I riot

Cool.

Tag

I guess what I can do is post 1 in the morning and 2 at night after I come home, and that will get us through the weekend.

#12. Katamari Forever - Galactic S-O-U-L
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gcv4vdzriI

This was one of the earlier songs from KF that I liked since the beginning, when I just thought it was a slow, almost psychedelic song about space or whatever. But everything that I thought I knew about this song changed in February 2024 when I learned that this was actually a remix of Katamari Dancing (main theme from Beautiful Katamari). Wow. It's actually so obvious, the lyrics are right there, you can literally hear them, but it's SO different. 15 years of listening to this song and I never even knew. Everything is changed now. To clarify, this song was already on the list before I made this discovery, but now I hear it in a COMPLETELY different light than I ever did before. I don't even remember what I was previously gonna say about it, because it's basically a new song now.

#11. Katamari Forever - Sayonara Rolling Star (Yuri's Mixx)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WXsGDSRT3k

One of the harder things about this list was deciding how to rank the two versions of this song. I actually like both of them for different reasons, and each version has certain parts of the song that I like better than the other version. I considered ranking them both separately, ranking just one or just the other, cheating and ranking them together, or even dropping both of them. But ultimately I stuck with this version because on the whole, it's more like my usual style, definitely in the instrumentation if nothing else. And I guess that's all you need sometimes. Just sounding like something that I would like is enough to make me like it.

#10. Katamari Forever - You are Smart (RAAGINIA SOFT MIX)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usCM05yt5xA

This song actually has very little to do with You Are Smart. It has a few samples and maybe a few sequences of notes every once in a while, but otherwise it's all 9+ minutes of... whatever genre you want to call this. As with much of this series' music, the composers had free rein to do whatever they want. I'm told that the band who did this song has a bunch of albums out and this song sounds just like their usual style. So if you like this, there's plenty more where it came from. I like the existence of this song because even in a series known for not sticking to any conventions, this song still feels like it's breaking them.

#9. Touch My Katamari - Katamari on the Funk (Takeshi Nakatsuka edit)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R909_fJhbJY

When I was brainstorming songs for this ranking, the original Katamari on the Funk was in consideration. I had actually forgotten about this version until I relistened to it. And I realized that this version is a direct upgrade over the original. If I were commenting on the original, I would have mentioned something about its length. Not even in a negative or detracting way, just a statement of fact because it is one of the song's most distinctive qualities. This version is 4.5 minutes shorter but feels like the same length. It doesn't feel like they condensed anything or left any parts out of it, it's like they managed to fit the entire essence of a 10 minute song into 6 minutes while keeping it exactly the same. The changes in this song compared to the original aren't too major like you'd expect from Katamari variations, they're smaller flairs and additions scattered throughout that serve to spice up the song a bit (I suppose that's why they called it an "edit" and not a "remix"). Overall this song is a purely better version of an already good song.

#8. Katamari Forever - The Moon and The Prince (and LEOPALDON MIX)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65SZjEh4ofw

This song perfectly encapsulates the manic energy that people often falsely associate the entire Katamari series as having. They may not all be like that, but this song surely is. This song is all over the place all the time, both the vocals and the instrumentals. I don't speak Japanese, but I get the impression that they're singing with a silly tone, like goofing around while delivering the lyrics. (And if I'm wrong, then they still did a good job of making it sound like that was what they were going for.) Very insane, high action, high energy song.

#7. Touch My Katamari - Don't Give Up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WorW7R0xHGk

This song starts off pretty slow and basic, and gradually starts adding stuff that you can barely notice. Then suddenly you're 2 minutes in and it starts blowing up and you're thinking "wait, when did it get like this?" Very cool buildup, and then it maintains it for the remainder of the song. Although it kind of starts unraveling itself by the end, which is also kind of funny, and then it concludes almost sounding like how it started. But when it's going, it's going hard and I love it.

Okay I wrote this paragraph like 2 weeks ago and I have to wonder why I called the ending "funny" before. It's actually kind of disappointing, I wish that it kept going for longer like the middle part.

Katamari on the Swing is so much better than Katamari on the Rocks

So have you only played 2 games...?

I have played and owned Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari.
I have played without owning Me & My Katamari and Beautiful Katamari.
I have not played Katamari Forever, Touch My Katamari, or any of the spinoffs.

#6. Me & My Katamari - Jesus Island
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-bYvrAj-q4

Me & My Katamari doesn't have that much original music in the game, with most of it being recycled from KD and WLK. This is one of the few original songs in the game, being the results screen. And they sure made it count. The previous results screens start big in the beginning and then don't really do anything else, because that's what you're most likely to hear while playing the game when you get your score and then mash through the dialogue. This one distinguishes itself by doing the reverse, starting small and building up over several minutes. It almost makes you wonder if they wrote this song for something else first and then threw it on the results screen later. Interestingly this song is available in WLK Reroll as a stage theme (since MMK didn't have enough original stage themes to contribute) and it works really well there. MMK has another track called "Katamari on the Moog" so that kind of tells you what they were into when they were making this game's music and it shows in this song too.

#5. We Love Katamari - Blue Orb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YnwAWbeIbY

Out of the entire series, this is the song which I MOST strongly associate with the stage on which it plays (Roll Up The Sun, not to be confused with the Save Earth stage which also plays this song). I would never play any other song on this stage, and I dislike playing this song on other stages (when I played WLKR with random music selected, I'd usually restart the stage if this song played unless I was really in a certain headspace). I don't think that anything else in any video game does as good of a job at representing outer space as this stage. It's large, it's empty, it's minimalist, it's quiet, everything is all far apart from each other, there's a ton of stuff there but it's all tiny compared to the size of the stage and you're even smaller. All of that is represented in this song. It's not "happy" music like a lot of Katamari music, but it's not sad either. It's just nothing. The notes are sparse and there aren't a lot of sounds or instruments. The vocals are really light and airy. This song does for your ears what looking at the stage's layout does for your eyes; it creates very strong mental imagery. And again that's why I say that they're so good at what they do. It sets a mood that's entirely unmatched by anything in this series or outside of it.

I have looked up Kahimi Karie's other work because I enjoyed this song so much. I came across this quotation from some interview when she was talking about her first album from 1997: "I wanted to make really, really melancholic music, to be alone." Now I will fully admit to taking this quote entirely out of context here, as it pre-dates this game by nearly a decade, but I honestly feel like this description can be applied to Blue Orb as well. "Alone" is one of the best words to describe the song. You feel alone when you're a tiny speck out there in space watching all of these planets orbit around the sun. (Incidentally, not all of her albums sound like this, which is why the fittingness of the quote struck me considering the amount of time between them.)

I've also heard detractors of this song claim that it's "just random noises" or "isn't even a real song" or something (paraphrasing comments that I seem to remember reading back when this song was in VGMC). That makes me wonder if they only listened to the first 13 seconds before the main part kicked in. Or if they somehow didn't notice that the song had lyrics. I get that not everyone is looking for "mood music", but those particular criticisms seemed out of place to me.

k blue orb made your ranking. im satisfied now.

#4. Beautiful Katamari - Guru Guru Gravity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itenyJoEkH8

Back when Beautiful Katamari first came out, I found the soundtrack to sound like it didn't really fit with the other games, like the whole thing had a different style to it. At the time I attributed this to the game being on Xbox for the first time so that's why everything was "different". In retrospect this makes no sense and would have no bearing on the types of music made for the game. This song was one of the few (if not the only) that I thought sounded like the old games. Over time I gradually warmed up to the rest of BK's soundtrack, but it didn't change the fact that this was my favorite song in the game, and it still is. I love the main melody that's played in the intro and in between the verses. The vocals are very catchy and make you want to sing along even though I don't know the words (although this Youtube upload has a comment with a transcription of all the lyrics so I can follow along). I will also note that this song's title has a great alliteration that would definitely be ruined if it weren't written exactly as is.

#3. Touch My Katamari - Alien
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdM2BbPpPPc

For being such a high ranking song, I don't really have anything to say about this one (see: 1st bullet point in my intro post). It has a very, very distinctive sound to it, and I really, really like what that sound is. I can listen to this song multiple times in a row without losing interest. This is the part of the list where I start feeling more confident about my rankings, where I can say that I like this song better than any song below it without second guessing myself.

#2. We Love Katamari - DISCOPRINCE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7vxowpoPaM

I was not a music listener growing up. I only knew songs that played on TV/movies/commercials or in public spaces, and didn't really know anything about them. It's possible that I may have had preferences about things that I liked more than others, maybe subconsciously, but it wasn't something that I thought about, even for songs that I recognized. Disco Prince is one of the first songs that I can ever remember that made me think "I want to hear more songs that sound like this". Of course being oblivious to music culture back then I had no idea how to actually go about doing that. So it wasn't until even later when I started getting into music and getting in touch with my own tastes that it finally caught up to me. At this point in my life I'd say that I do listen to other music that sounds "like this", which theoretically should be evident from the previous 13 songs on this list. So yeah, this possibly might have been one of the first songs that I ever actually "liked" (for context, this game came out when I was in high school). It's all great but I want to give a special shoutout to the percussion which really lives up to its "disco" name by doing that thing that it does.

Side note: This is one of the few songs in WLK which has an instrumental version, which automatically plays after the song loops once, assuming that you're playing a stage that's more than 7 minutes long. While you may think that the intrumental would be good to listen to, with its interesting synth and percussion parts, it's actually very painful hearing the intro without that strong first line at 0:31. The vocals are essential too.

#1. Katamari Forever - Everlasting Love + You
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0KzYztRZiw

This is... one of the happiest songs ever. This is the absolute cliche of when you're having a bad day and you listen to this song and you can forget about the things bothering you for the next 10 minutes because you're still riding the high from the song. This is literally one of my favorite songs ever, not restricted to video games. I love every single aspect about this song. I love the new arrangement. I love the new instrumentation. I love the new stuff added to it. Whoever thought of mixing You Are Smart into this song is a genius. Take a thin song that's made up of a bunch of beep boops and turn it into a backing track for a larger song. I'm also glad that this song is in English. Now I'm not normally a lyrics person at all, I rarely pay attention to the words that people sing even when they're in my own language. I usually treat singing like an extra instrument and just hear it as more sounds among all the other sounds. (That's why I don't have trouble listening to non-English music, I mean look right here, nearly this whole list is Japanese songs). I fully believe that this song would still be my #1 even if it had the original Japanese vocals from WLK. But there's something about this song, just due to the sheer number of times that I've listened to it, that being in English allows me to create an extra bond with it, by allowing me to fully follow along with it in a way that I wouldn't be able to otherwise. So this may have been a risky decision for them and possibly turned some people off from it, but for me it only helped. The part at 4:12, where it hits a climax and repeats the chorus with more instruments than earlier, still gives me chills every time even after hearing this song hundreds of times. I would say that this song is primarily responsible for me calling Katamari Forever my #1 favorite game soundtrack for many years, enough so that when a challenger approached, I started questioning whether I was actually overrating it due to the influence of one song rather than the whole thing. But I think I've settled it and ranked it fairly now (it remains in my top 3).

Thank you! Will happily listen to them all right now. :)

Danketsu not #1
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/4/4f841b45.jpg

the nice thing about katamari music is that it is honestly really difficult to make a top 15 that's bad. i guess so, if you're going after the deep cuts. pretty good, selection even if only about a third would knock into my top 15 if it is any consolation, these are all upper ranking songs on your list.

-hotdogturtle-- posted...

#8. Katamari Forever - The Moon and The Prince (and LEOPALDON MIX)

Oh hell yeah, this took me back. When Katamari Forever came out this was one of a small group of songs I was really into.

Great writeup too, and:

-hotdogturtle-- posted...

I don't speak Japanese, but I get the impression that they're singing with a silly tone, like goofing around while delivering the lyrics

I also dont, and I always liked to think that there was some epic Japanese rap collaboration there (like the "Monstars" from Space Jam OST), lol

Favourite part is when the song is building up to a beat drop, and then all the sound cuts out and one guy goes "Yeah", and then all the crazy sound blows right back in, damn. So good. Think I also liked the original Moon and the Prince a lot but will need to relisten to that.

Still have to listen to top 5 later, I see disco prince and I remember that was a favorite for me... and if Everlasting Love is what I think it is, solid #1

Bonus post: ~Honorable mentions~

Touch My Katamari - Cosmomule Cosmopolitan
Touch My Katamari - Jupiter Dub No.404
Touch My Katamari - ACID EUTRON #007 (Baraduke Remix)

These songs were all in consideration (to varying degrees) for the #15 spot before I locked in Hello World.

Beautiful Katamari - Sayonara Rolling Star

As I mentioned, there are parts of this song that I like better than the remix. But I eventually realized that I was conflating both versions together in my mind, and the whole of this song isn't as good as the whole of the remix, so I wasn't going to rank it.

We Love Katamari (demo disc) - La Morena Kumonai

It would have been funny to include an unreleased demo song on this list, but it didn't make the top 15 (although maybe it should have...).

Katamari Forever - Campus DAYDREAMER

Basically snubbed for the reason stated in my Be Gorgeous writeup. I couldn't justify listing it.

Katamari Forever - Katamari on the Swing (SEXY-SYNTHESIZER ALL ABOUT namco Mix)
Touch My Katamari - Katamari of Love (SEXY-SYNTHESIZER Remix)
Touch My Katamari - Katamari On Namco

When I was trying to figure out which one of these I liked the best, I realized that it wasn't the songs themselves that I was attracted to, but the sound of SEXY-SYNTHESIZER. In the case of the first two songs, the remix is like a "candy shell" on top of the original songs. You could put that "shell" on top of any song and I'd say that I liked it regardless of my feelings on the original. So there's no point in trying to compare any of these songs to each other. They all sound the same (I am saying that in a positive way).

-hotdogturtle-- posted...

#14. Katamari Forever - Be Gorgeous
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YzMDaGTsZ0

Katamari Forever's soundtrack has a lot of short(ish) songs that are used for cutscenes

going insane, the ost releasees don't have these and GODD DAMN im mad i havent heard this before

these are some amazing choices, most of my favourite katamari songs are on this list lol
don't give up, the moon and the prince and leopaldon mix, guru guru gravity, sayonara yuri's mixx, bless my stars and alien would also be in my top 15 lol
(hello world and everlasting love + you are totally up there for me too)

+ shoutouts to sexy-synthesizer mixes, og sayonara and acid eutron #007 in honourable mentions :)

Relistened to Everlasting Love + You fairly recently and it did kinda blow me away, especially since it was playing on shuffle from my playlist. I KNEW it wasn't the og (i recognised that it was pitched up) but ,in that moment, I forgot that Everlasting Love + You existed and was just waiting for whatever other version of the song I could somehow have downloaded (assumed some Siiva rip from when I used to download those albums).
Then the song hit me and god, I loved it. It's far from my favourite Katamari song but the mixing of them together is amazing and it's one of the few times I've seen a mashup done at all outside of like. silly internet sphere. You Are Smart as an addition to something like this is perfect, it's simple and listenable on its own but as another part in a larger song it works perfectly. Especially in such a swansong feeling game as Forever (despite the fact that Touch My released after LOL), I think a mashup works perfectly and just feels so celebratory, without being over the top.

bonus somewhat related thing: leopaldon are a SUPER cool band and i'm so happy they're in katamari, their the moon and the prince remix doesn't sound like all of their stuff but it's definitely characteristically them
this is basically an excuse to rec a band i like but i think theyre awesome

some fun stuff by them
DISCO EMPEROR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbCGa6sCrfc
this is from an album that's like. SUPER sample heavy. it's basically just all samples from different anime and tv shows or whatever and its awesome

GEARS OF THE PARTY
https://bubble-b.bandcamp.com/track/gears-of-the-party
more rave sounding party stuff than the moon and the prince but definitely more aligned with that, you can hear the vocalist in this one

Bug Me Crazy!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywaI8coTbBk
from an 8-bit rave album in the speedking series