35 songs flipped:

It's been an eventful week, but all I've been doing is listening to music and rerating things to be more accurate for my hall of fame.  This time I promoted 35 songs from my 2-star tier to 3-star, and demoted 35 songs from my 3-star to 2-star, a rather large housecleaning.

The demoted songs were mainly by Motoi Sakuraba, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Nobuo Uematsu and a smattering of others.  Mainly instrumentals, mainly video game music.

Much more interesting were the upgraded songs, which all deserve a day of praise in the limelight:

Clear Weather after the rain by PMMK, Gollum's Song and The Return of the King by Howard Shore, Promontory by Dougie MacLean, Arabian Nights and the Same Thing to You by Sarah Brightman, Frozen by Madonna, Amarantine by Enya, Ce He Mise Le Ulaingt, Marrakesh Night Market, Skellig, Never-ending Road and Kecharitomene by Loreena McKennit, Why by Stabbing Westward, One Who Bares Fangs at God by Yasunori Mitsuda, Main Menu (Wrath of the Lich King) by Russell Brower, say goodbye & good day by KOKIA, Holy Crusade by Kazuhiro Nakamura, the breeze at dawn by Junichi Nakatsuru, Credits (Heroes of Might and Magic 5) by Paul Romero, Ghaleon's Theme by Noriyuki Iwadare, Fight it Out! by Masaharu Iwata (Tactics Ogre), Geralt of Rivia by Marcin Przybylowicz, The Heartland by Edo Guidotti, Concerto 1 A by Vivaldi, Symphony 6 - 1. Awakening of Cheerful Feelings by Beethoven, Che Che Che by Yoshimi Iwasaki, A Sai, After in the dark ~ Torch Song and the Real Folk Blues by Yoko Shimomura,  Idol by Yoasobi, A beckoning voice by Nobuo Uematsu, Natsuiro Present by Yui Ogura, Ta ga Tame no Sekai by Akiko Shikata, and Concertina by Tori Amos.

20 western songs were upgraded versus only 15 Japanese, showing I've been a little too harsh on the west up until now. 26 out of the 35 of the upgraded songs are vocal tracks, following the general trend that vocal songs are more moving and memorable than instrumentals, which were the ones mainly demoted from the 3-star tier.  25 out of the 35 of the promoted songs were from non-game sources, showing that non-game music is a more likely source of 'moving and memorable' than game.    All the details can be found in my good music permapost.

Now my 3-star music hall of fame is scintillating, all the weak songs gone and a giant plethora of amazing reinforcements put in their stead.

And the 2-star tier isn't so bad either, after all it has a lot of new songs which I thought were worthy of 3-star status up until now, plus it had so many good songs in reserve that it could easily cough up 35 replacements when called upon.  There were plenty more good songs from the 2-star tier that could have also answered the call to duty, but there weren't any more demotable 3-star songs so that call was not made.  So in short there aren't any bad songs in the 3-star or 2-star tier.  If I can listen to the 1-star tier with satisfaction that would mean there isn't any bad music in my entire 5500 song gallery.

One more tier to hear and then my project will be complete.

Meanwhile, Prigozhin presented a large enough threat to the Kremlin that it was forced to pardon him in exchange for his agreement to end the coup, despite Wagner having shot down 8 helicopters/planes and killed 20-30 pilots during their 'march for justice'.  It's a travesty but now that the deal has been struck it should be honored.  I hope the mass murderer Prigozhin is happy with himself.  He weakened Russia for nothing and ruined his reputation forever.  Hopefully this is the end of Wagner disrupting the Special Military Operation and loyal troops of the actual Russian nation and government can now win the rest of the war.  They've been doing fine for the last month without Wagner, but like usual Ukraine has announced another wave of mobilization and is getting more weapons from abroad, so Russia needs to put more effort into the war themselves.  There should be more troops and more funding.  This should be treated like a serious war with Russia's life on the line, or Russia will lose.  They came close to losing this week, with a complete repeat of 1917.  It's clearly past time to get serious.

Meanwhile, Princess Principal's 3rd Crown Handler movie has come out and as usual it was fantastic.  There's a reason this relatively short series is ranked so highly, #40 in my anime hall of fame.  Emotionally intense and artistically mesmerizing.

World Dai Star had an amazing ending episode of its own, I'll be sorry to see it go.  For some strange reason Dead Mount Death Play is getting a sequel season but World Dai Star isn't.  Such a shame.

The first episode of the summer season has already aired, Genjitsu no Yohane, and I've already acknowledged it as a great anime -- part of the overall greatness of Love Live!  I do love the Sunshine cast.  Next up is the new season of BanG Dream.  Things are heating up all over.