This was surprisingly difficult, as I couldn't think of a song off the top of my head, so let's go supremely sappy and pick a song off of Marillion's Misplaced Childhood.
Lavender's such a sweet song, like I get the sentiment of hearing a song that reminds you of someone you love, even if most of the lyrics are a bit silly.
I could cheat and say Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, which is technically a 42-minute song, but instead I'll go from a song from one of my favourite albums.
Seven by Symphony X off of Paradise Lost is one of those songs that just hit me immediately with just a raw, intense metal power.
I'm usually not a big fan of the summertime, and ironically whilst this hasn't been a good summer for me it's the one I've least dreaded because of the heat.
As for songs, it would have to be something whistful and nostalgic, so it will have to always return to The Beatles and Strawberry Fields Forever.
After all, living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
Day 4 #30DaySongChallenge - A Song That Reminds You Of Someone You'd Rather Forget.
Not so much a person, although we do not talk anymore but definitely what she did to me and how broken that left me. When I had my first break up I listened to Pink Floyd's The Wall on repeat and when I hear Hey You I still catch the memories of that first painful betrayal.
So so much of my playlist is designed to be bellowed at the top of my lungs and played loud.
But let's go with something from Battle Beast, Beyond the Burning Skies, because there are times when we need to push higher and get that awe-inspiring view of the world.
Again so many, especially if headbanging counts, but I'm going to go for the song me and one of my closest friends will always get up for when it plays in rock clubs.
Movies by Alien Ant Farm is just so much fun despite being a breakup song, mostly because it is about freedom and self-awareness that it isn't truly working.
I don't drive, so I wasn't sure where to go with this, whether I should have a song that powers me forward whereever I travel or a song I associate with driving.
I couldn't decide between this, the entirety of Myrone's Drift Stage Vol 1 and Sebestian Grampl's Midnight Run, but it's got to go to the sadly short-lived Ironbunny and Lightning Speed.
Seriously, half my music's great pumping driving anthems.
Thankfully, for as many songs there are that emotionally affect me, make me sad or sting right now, there are also songs I turn to for comfort.
Probably my favourite, and one of my favourite songs ever is Surrounded by Dream Theater.
Whenever I'm at my most frightened and saddest, this reminds me that there will be a day the shadows will flee and I will awaken from the longest night.
Going to have to double-dip with my favourite band and choose one of their bleakest songs ever, one that I listen to and resonate with when I feel isolated, alone and like I cannot be open with how I feel, when you see the future dressed as a stranger, and love can only endure when it stays on the page.
Space Dye Vest is absolutely, heartbreakingly incredible.
This is a bit tricky because I wasn't really into music until my late teens outside of video game soundtracks, The Beatles, Bob Dylan and whatever pop music my brother listened to.
But I will probably pick the first song off the radio that I vividly remember hearing and being moved by despite being 5 or 6 and not really understanding what it was about.
A lot of my favourite songs and one of my favourite eras of music is 1970s progressive rock, but if we are talking about a single song that evokes that era for me the most I've got to go with one of my favourite unheralded prog epic.
Van Der Graaf Generator's A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers is every bit as strange as it is uniquely evocative.
It's tricky for me to differentiate between songs I like that happen to be classics and a classic favourite so I'm interpreting it as a song that I've listened to and loved for a long time.
I'm probably going to go for a song that I apparently liked since I was a baby, which is Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin'.
It's a classic protest song, even if this era of protest music rings hollow today.
1990 was a strange strange year, filled with a lot of interesting song choices, but I'm going to go with possibly the highest commercial peak for prog metal in Queensryche's Silent Lucidity.
I know what this song likely would have been had this been any earlier than say Day 14, but either things have changed in my life or my mindset has changed away from a song like Oceans of Regret.
Instead, I'm going to opt for Reiko Takahashi's absolute gem of a CityPop song Sunset Road and give a faint smile and say goodbye to the tossing and turning waves.
This will almost certainly be a progressive rock song, and in that case it will have to be Dancing With The Moonlit Knight by Genesis.
Partly a response to criticism about the "americanisation" of rock music, partly a comment on cultural imperialism of Great Britain in general, partly fantastical and partly a lament about the pursuit of materialism.
Day 21 #30DaySongChallenge - A Song You Like With A Person's Name In The Title
As tempted as I am to cheat and use Kayleigh by Marillion, I'm going to instead go for a song that's just a lot of fun to listen to despite being about a breakup.
Toto's Roseanna might be thier best song that isn't an outright meme like Africa is.
My Day 19 choice Sunset Road would totally fit for this, but since I don't want to reuse a song for this list, I'll think of another song that's helped me push forward in dark times that are finally going away.
Broken Survivors by Beast In Black is a song of how even through the deepest heartbreaks love and passion can endure.
So many choices, so many options. Most songs on this challenge I think everybody should listen to, so instead of going for my catch-all favourites, I'm going to choose a song you might not have heard but you should.
The Summer Jam by Periphery is just a fantastic song in a way I struggle to really add to with words alone.
This one is tricky, because a lot of the bands I like are older ones I don't really want them to still be together and in some cases such things are quite impossible.
I'm going to repeat an artist and go with Ironbunny. They had so much potential but had to break up just at the point where they had something really good going on.
Also too many tragic examples of people who have left us.
There's a lot of places I could take this but I'm going to go for a song by the band about what would ultimately take the lead singer's life.
Are You Dead Yet? By Children of Bodom is one of several songs about singer and lead guitarist Alexi Laiho's alcoholism, which would claim his life in 2021.
It was only going to be a matter of time before Cain's Offering's Oceans of Regret was going to make it into this list, although I was tempted to choose Constellation of Tears instead
A devastatingly desperate song about a supremely toxic relationship that is either over with the singer not letting go or mortally wounded by infidelity.
"I'm waiting with my wounds wide open" is a desperately powerful line.
I gravitate towards great singers because when I used to perform in bands it was as a singer.
With that in mind I kind of have to choose Tarja, one of the most incredible metal singers there perhaps has ever been.
Wierdly though, whilst Wishmaster or Nightwish's cover of Over the Hills and Far Away are probably better peformances, Dark Chest of Wonders works so well because it's a bit against type.
This seems quite similar to Day 12's question, and a lot of my songs would fit here, But I'll go with a song I vividly remember specifically listening to in the car with my dad as a kid and constantly rewinding the intro on the cassette tape because I loved it that much.
Europe's The Final Countdown has one of the best keyboard solos ever and probably shaped my love of metal and cheese.
Oh this is difficult, as I have a close relationship with music so all the songs I have used are ones that could easily represent me in one aspect or another.
I used this song in a #PennedPossibilities answer for one of my characters but Warlock's All We Are fits as well.
I'm incomplete, I'm still working on myself, but I know that better times are ahead, not just confined to memories.
Okay, time to come clean: I did spend time as a heavy metal musican, to the point of having studio recordings of songs and some footage of my band online. The "Sings about unicorns" thing isn't entirely rubbish.
What inspired me to be a musician myself though? Sunshine Of Your Love by Cream, as it was the first song I learned on bass guitar and lit the spark that maybe I could be on stage if I tried.
I don't have many guilty pleasures. I love a lot of music, some of it is sillier and less cool to enjoy than others but it doesn't make me guilty to like it.
There's one album/song that comes close though, and that is the very awesome artist Edgar Winter's bizarre and wierd album based on L Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth
The title track, Cry Out and The Spacer's Lot are all great, but Joy City makes me smile so much.
I go through phases of loving songs then getting sick of them, but outside of artists becoming outright monsters I struggle to hate a song for all that long. Hate's a strong word, after all.
This is itself a borderline case as whilst I did love it as an 8 year old, I found it increasingly disturbing and annoying as I got older, and it didn't even get back any ironic joy like Blue (Da-Ba-Dee) did.
There's a lot of genres and bands that I don't like initially and then get really into later on when I find a particular song that works as a perfect entry point.
Arch Enemy's a good example as a band I didn't quite get and therefore didn't like. It was too abrasive and too heavy for my taste initially.
Then I heard Nemesis again after about a decade and it made perfect sense.
This was quite tricky, and unfortunately the song I wanted to choose by this artist was three months past the threshold. I'm cutting it fine with this one too.
Ai Furihata dabbles in voice acting as well as few other genres of music, but her take on CityPop is fantastic.
Whilst CITY is by far her best song, Love is A Work Of Mind is not bad at all either, sounding like it could have been on the SNATCHER soundtrack.
I don't want to be a person who just assumes they are the only person who's heard a song so I've got to pick something I think few people listen to but also should.
I will reply with a bunch of other obscure but great songs but this one is the one everyone should hear but few have.
Minako Yoshida's on the border between CityPop and japanese Jazz Fusion and everyone should hear an amazing song delvolve into jam band greatness.
I may have wasted some of my favourite live performances on previous days, but I will choose a song I have seen and utterly adored live.
Babymetal are an utterly sublime band to see live and whilst this isn't from the performance I saw live, this is one of my favourite live performances I've ever seen.
Before I moved to my current home, I lived in Preston for decades, and whilst there are not too many great bands and musicians from the city, there will always be Xentrix.
Tremendous 80s thrash metal with that distinct guitar tone that seemed to be lost by the time of Metallica's Black Album.
To be honest, I often listen to music in a way that creates ear worms that I get sick of, stop listening to and then come back to and fall in love with again.
If we're talking a song that just randomly enters my head a lot is the Steve Winwood song Higher Love, especially its utterly phenomenal cover by Whitney Houston.
There is a more famous remix by Kygo, but the original is way better.
A lot of my favourite songs. I'm very much a night owl and so many songs explicitly are about the night.
City by Ai Furihata, Metropolis Pt 1 by Dream Theater, Vienna by Ultravox and basically anything off City Hunter by Sebastian Grampl are honourable mentions.
But I have to go back to Beast In Black and Moonlight Rendezvous, a cyberpunk-themed power metal ballad that just hits me the right way at night.
My favourite non-music activity is writing, but almost every song on this list reminds me of writing and creativity, so we'll go to my current obsession which is fitness.
I've been working out a lot lately because for the first time in my life I actually enjoy it, and whenever I do it reminds me of Ace Buchannon's wonderfully charming Buns of Steel
I always try to give all of the music I encounter a chance. After all, it clearly resonates with someone otherwise it would not be acclaimed.
There used to be a lot more bands that were acclaimed that I hated, such as Pantera, Slayer, Lamb of God. Those sorts of bands.
Honestly, it's probably something like Five Finger Death Punch. I don't get why I'd listen to that when every aspect of thier music has been done better.
A lot of the music I listened to with my dad definitely qualifies as songs that remind me of home.
Probably the most interesting for me in recent years is Roundabout by Yes.
It's far more well-known as that song from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure now, but I always associated with trips out with my dad, especially when we went to see my brother at university.
Now Beyond The Burning Skies by Battle Beast would be perfect here, but I like my own place and use writing and reading as my way to explore the world so it takes a hell of a song to make me want to travel a lot.
So instead of songs about other place or travelling it has to be song about the motivation to find something new, and ultimately FM-84's Never Stop (featuring the incredible Ollie Wride) is absolutely it.
This is going to be really tricky, given that my tastes in music really started in the noughties as I found the music that really spoke to me.
Arch Enemy, Children of Bodom, the Dream Theater albums from that era could all qualify here, but I'm going to pick a song that screams of a very specific era.
Bullet For My Valentine's Hearts Burst Into Fire is so late 2000s it hurts, but it is so fantastic that it still resonates.
Even trickier than yesterday, as the 2010s is such a strange kalaidoscope of a decade, with so many different genres defining an era where everything and nothing seemed to speak to the moment.
The most evocative songs of the 2010s I only heard in the 2020s and the songs that defined the 2010s were made in the 1980s, so here's the compromise.
The Midnight's Days Of Thunder is kind of a cop-out but it fits the time.
Hmm, angry songs that I use as catharsis, a lot of the songs I tend to listen to tend to channel anger in wierd ways or are more about channeling anger directed inwards, but I definitely have a few floor pounding songs I love.
Let's stick with the simplest and Children Of Bodom's Hate Me.
Specifically, the first verse bit where the song goes "Walking through winter streets alone he stops and takes a breath of confidence and self control" I feel like I'm in a slow motion montage in a music video.
So many options, most of which are songs that are a bit odd to get sad to.
I'll avoid Hey You, Oceans of Regret or other songs I've already selected and pick something from an odd time in my life, one I'm thankfully long past.
I went through a The 1975 phase and the song that hit me during that dark time was Somebody Else, and it still affects me.
Okay, so this is not typically the sort of song you think of when you think of songs that rally friends together since it's a nearly nine minute power metal song about one of the longest fantasy book series ever, but Wheel of Time by Blind Guardian's one of those songs that brings my closest friends together.
Okay this is tricky because songs inspire me in a lot of different ways and I'm not sure which to choose here.
Okay so Six Pack Twins by Deadlift Lolita is a song about two people united through a pursuit of individuality through fitness, and it is inspiring for me going through a fitness journey even if I won't be a buff idol or pro wrestler.
A little tricky given there's not a lot I won't listen to, but I did stumble upon 18+ by Scene Queen which wouldn't be something I'd seek out but is absolutely phenomenal.
Its topic is unfortunately exceptionally timely given Russell Brand's allegations too...
Okay, so there are some really good songs by the band Slayer, but in general I'm not the biggest fan of thier music, and World Painted Blood is a good example of why that is.
It's not a terrible song, but it's exceptionally safe, and despite Slayer's reputation for being edgy and dangerous, thier music feels like a band afraid to experiment.
There probably won't be that many I truly forgot about, since I'm always fascinated by obscure music from when i was younger.
However, whilst I still know some Enter Shikari, Anything Can Happen In The Next Half Hour is definitely a song I only really remember listening to as a 17 and 18 year old.
There aren't actually any songs I wish I had written. In my own experience of songwriting, it's quite a personal, almost confessional process so if I tried to write a song I adore it'd be very different if I had written it.
With that said, if there's one song I wish I'd written it's Mr Crowley by Ozzy Osbourne, if only to actually get some facts right.
I don't listen to a lot of radio these days, but I actually really liked Midnight Sky by Miley Cyrus, in no small part because of its synthwave vibe and Stevie Nicks influence.
Calming music is something I kind of stumble upon, but this particular song from the Final Fantasy VII soundtrack really resonates and relaxes me a lot.
Okay now we're talking! There's not many songs I wouldn't do for karaoke, and I used to sing in a band so I have the confidence to try.
As for a specific song, I often like singing A-ha's Take On Me, not because it's my favourite song by them (The Sun Always Shines On TV is underrated) but because it surprises people when I hit the higher note.
I've tried to make my choices for the song challenge diverse and avoid using the same artist and song too often.
Here, that's absolutely impossible. My favourite album is Dream Theater's Images And Words, and its opening track is the legendary Pull Me Under, thier only hit single.
Tragically there's a lot of examples of this, and I'm not really sure where I should go with this.
I think I will go with Heaven For Everyone by Queen, released years after Freddie Mercury passed away as a posthumous epitaph. It's a lovely song but quite haunting at the same.
So very very many. I listen to a lot of randomised playlists and song radios on Spotify so I end up picking up music I would have never found otherwise.
Choosing a recent example I stumbled upon the amazing all-female power metal band Lovebites and the song Scream For Me.
I love how much easier it is to find music that would have passed me by.
I'm sorry, it's Dream Theater again. I try to mix up a lot of the bands and not do the same band too many times in a row but with this question there's no way of avoiding it.
As for the song, we're just going to go with Forsaken. It's an amazing song with thier best music video ever.
I've been lucky enough to hear a lot of my favourite bands live, outside of the ones that for logistical reasons have never reached the UK.
I'll probably go with a band I am going to see in November, Battle Beast, and whilst there's loads of thier songs I want to hear live, here's one I don't think they'll play called The Eclipse.
I may have already used this one, but few songs helped me wake up and get energised than Asayake by Casiopea, especially thier live 1985 version with THAT bass intro.
There's a lot of amazing music videos out there, several of which have I've used already, so I'm going to go the opposite route: a music video so bad it's a amazing.
To do so we need to look at Rhapsody's Power of the Dragonflame.
Made for about a fiver, I'm not sure what two kids on a bus and the band playing on train tracks says about dragons.
The last song I did dance to in "public" (ie on my way home after a night out) was Cassilda by Necronomidol, but another song that makes me want to is what I came home from.
Vieon are a fantastic band and seeing them live was an incredible experience during a rough time.
Inter-City is thier most recent song and my favourite.
This is difficult because most of my friends I met because of music societies so we tend to have quite similar tastes. It's difficult to find stuff I truly hate.
I think the one exception to this rule is Crazy B*tch by Buckcherry. It's a song I kept hearing so much that I have a pavlovian hatred of it now.
It's a tricky one because I'm not all that terrible at karaoke so I try a lot of songs that usually you shouldn't really try and sometimes it works out kind of well.
If we're talking best karaoke song, as obvious a choice as it is, I've got to go with Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.
Another #30daysongchallenge Day 2: A song that you like that you learned something new from.
Within the fandom, learning history through power metal is literally called The Sabaton Effect, and literally any of thier songs would count here, but I'm going for Night Witches, the Russian 588th Night Bomber Regiment made up entirely of female pilots.
Another #30daysongchallenge Day 4: A jingle or song from a commercial you like.
It's a bit early for this advert, but the famous Toys r Us Christmas advert Magical Place might be amongst the greatest jingles in the history of advertising.
Interestingly enough, it was composed by Jordan Rudess, keyboardist of my favourite band Dream Theater too.
I am rather fond of the very strange musical Chess, and I cannot help but love The Arbiter, a song about the referee of a chess match, told in the most 1980s way imaginable.
I'm a metalhead so I'm kind of spoiled for choice when it comes to really angry music of various types, but I think the most nakedly vengeful song that comes to mind for me is Aesthetics of Hate by Machine Head.
It's not my favourite song from The Blackening, but there's something quite visceral about a song made as a vengeful response to an article on a music website.
Another #30daysongchallenge Day 7: A song you like where you misheard/misremembed a lyric.
I'm quite bad with mondegreens, so there's a lot of songs where I'll mishear a lyric and never be able to hear it the right way again.
Most recently, it's probably Thrill by Band-Maid, which makes sense given I don't speak Japanese, so I hear the chorus line "I've got to be on my way! 真っ平らな (matairana or completely flat)" as "my dynamite!"
There are far far too many to mention. I'm a huge fan of video games and a lot of my favourite songs come from game soundtracks, which can be powerfully emotional.
I'm going to go with a bit of an obvious one, which is Hopes and Dreams, the final boss (at least for the Pacifist Run) of the game Undertale.
Toby Fox's music is legendarily good but this song always gets me a little teary-eyed.
Another #30daysongchallenge Day 11: A live version of a song you like better than the studio version.
This is a bit of a cheat, but Rammstein's live concert experience is simply impossible to match in the studio, as good as the music is.
This is live version of one of thier early songs, "Wollt Ihr Das Bett In Flammen Sehen?" where the difference is far more pronounced than say, Engel or Auslander.
Another #30daysongchallenge Day 12: A song you like that has an excellent breakdown.
I might have used this song already, but Minako Yoshida's TOWN has an absolutely amazing breakdown, made even better in the hands of a live band that's allowed to completely let loose.
Another #30daysongchallenge Day 13: A song you like in a language not your native language.
A lot of the songs I've chosen throughout these challenges have been in Japanese, and there's probably as many songs in other langagues than in English.
So I'll just go for a song I am really enjoying as of late in the form of Never Ending Summer by S. Kiyotaka and Omega Tribe.
So so many songs have been like that for me, so I'm going to avoid my immediate J-Pop predeliction and go for a song from an album full of earworms.
Everyone has a different answer for the best song off Paramore's Riot, but I think That's What You Get is the most earrwormy and is by far my favourite.
Another #30daysongchallenge Day 16: A song that a good friend of yours loves but you don't care for at all.
There'll inevitably be metal songs and artists that I'm much more lukewarm on, mostly in more extreme metal genres.
It's really hard to find stuff I don't like rather than stuff I do.
I find Pantera on the whole quite overrated even notwithstanding all the awful stuff surrounding the band, but Walk in particular just never really grabs me.
Another #30daysongchallenge Day 17: A song you like that is a less popular song on the same album as a very popular song.
Okay, so EMOTION by Carly Rae Jepson is one of the most surprisingly amazing albums ever, but whilst Run Away With Me is the obvious hit, I love When I Needed You so very much.
Another #30daysongchallenge Day 18: A remix that you like better than the original.
It's going to be a Shep Pettibone remix, as they extend the song and add some really fascinating elements to popular new wave songs.
I'd probably go with the remix of Level 42's Lessons In Love, in no small part because of how it brings that sensational bass riff to the forefront of the mix compared to the Single version.
Another #30daysongchallenge Day 19: A song you like from a movie soundtrack.
Alright, so Vince DiCola's not always been a popular or fashionable composer to like, but i can't say I don't absolutely adore his work on The Transformers: The Movie and especially Rocky IV.
The Training Montage theme in particular is something really really special, and I think influential to a lot of synthwave I'm into now.
Another #30daysongchallenge Day 20: A song most people liked but you didn't care for.
I'll try to avoid ragging on Slayer or Pantera again, but a lot of thier music tends to be adored but I just don't get it.
This is going to be a bit of a tricky one. I'm going to go with Disturbed's version of The Sound of Silence.
It's not that bad, and I like a lot of Disturbed's more esoteric covers like Shout 2000 and Land of Confusion but it's so venerated that I find it dreary.
Another #30daysongchallenge Day 21: A song that you would play for your fashion show walk if you ever had to be a runway model.
Let's say that's not exactly likely, but if I had to pick something, I'd go for this awesome metal cover of a half-decent song by a very decent pop artist.
Kesha's music outside of her early dollar sign era isn't actually as bad as people think, and Die Young's one of her best dance songs, covered to perfection by Everfrost here.
Another #30daysongchallenge Day 22: An incredibly popular song that you like.
I'm hardly made of stone and I'm not someone who has a problem with pop rock at all. I'll give a lot of stuff a try that you might not expect from this thread.
Take Meatloaf for example. Not only do we share a birthday, but I absolutely love a huge chunk of his particular kind of opera rock.
I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) is his biggest hit, hence my pick.
Oh god, I love a lot of comedy music, and between Ninja Sex Party, Jon Lajoie and Wierd Al I've lot of options.
I'm going to go with my favourite funny song rather than the funniest song I like, which is the wonderfully cheesy and hilariously fun Laser Raptor 3D by Grailknights.
It's tongue in cheek but so close to earnestly serious that it becomes hilarious.
The idea of the one hit wonder's always been a bit strange to me. After all, my favourite band are technically a one-hit wonder if top-40 singles hits are the only barometer.
I'll stick with a pretty universal example. Babylon Zoo made an amazing, strange electronic space rock song that sounded like nothing else on the charts before or really much since.
Another #30daysongchallenge Day 26: A song I like from someone with an extensive hit library.
Okay, so the obvious choice here is The Beatles. One of the most successful bands in history and one that I have been listening to almost since birth.
As for the song, it's so hard to pick just one that I love so I'll go with a Day In The Life, a surreal, wierd song that lodged in my mind for decades.
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