Hello, and welcome to the fifth post in Music Highlights, where I post about songs that I particularly like.

Despite the festivities, music releases are still coming in, and some of those are just fire. Those are some of the songs I looped for a lot of times recently.

Without further ado, let's go for the songs themselves!

#1: Brand New Day feat. Hatsune Miku

First of all, I would like to congratulate irucaice, for winning the very first Project SEKAI NEXT Song Contest!

For the first song contest, the theme is "songs that make you excited". Naturally here, irucaice selected a Happy Hardcore song for the contest. This, combined with irucaice's sparkling sounds, just makes you want to move your body so bad.

#2: POPLINKS TUNE!!!!!

Next, is the theme song from one of my most anticipated games of 2021. THE IDOLM@STER POPLINKS is a arcade-puzzle game from the IDOLM@STER franchise. I covered the OBT of this game in this blog, but here I'm focusing more on the theme song itself.

POPLINKS TUNE!!!!! is the third original song work by Mifumei in the Idolmaster series. Unlike previous works, POPLINKS TUNE is more energetic, with a faster tempo. The bassline here is very strong, and in line with Mifumei's usual bass sound. A very interesting choice here is the usage of sounds usually heard in cartoon, making it much more playful and lighter.

#3: Cloud Diver

This song by TEMPLIME and Toto Hoshimiya has just landed in streaming services (on Christmas, no less, thank you TEMPLIME and Toto Hoshimiya!). This time, the sound approach is unique, with rapid-fire sounds too. Certainly, a song that I really often looped because I love how it sounds.

#4: 世界の果てに約束の凱歌を

Being the theme song of the 10th KONAMI Arcade Championship, 世界の果てに約束の凱歌を is a refresher compared to the previous theme songs. The melody is just beautiful, and the instruments help a lot here. It's one of the songs I looped often recently.

This is also implemented into BEMANI games as various renditions, and from those, my favorites are the jubeat, VOLTEX, and Nostalgia renditions.

#5: Natsu no Hanabi to Kimi to Ao

And, finally, a DIALOGUE+ song just recently published to streaming services. The melody is one of my favorites, the chiptune-like synths, courtesy of the composer and co-arranger Wataru Sena, gave variety to the song, and the vocals of the 8-person strong DIALOGUE+ really makes this song colorful. Really, really, beautiful.

This ends the fifth Music Highlights post, and the first post of 2021. 2021 will be an exciting time for both this blog, and myself content-wise. I'm looking forward to several plans that I've been hatching for quite some time, one of which started 6 months ago, and I really hope I can deliver those for 2021, so stay tuned, not only for the next Music Highlights post (2021 has quite the starters), but also those future plans too!