Obviously, I'm here to update the monthly listening playlist, which already has a healthy 212 tracks ➡️
Real-life events, such as the recent General Election (I'm jubilant that we've finally got rid of those lying, venal, country-demolishing Tories 🎉, although I've yet to be convinced Labour will be as progressive as I want them to be) have eaten away at my time, as did the May playlists, so I'm still working on the June playlists and haven't even started the mid-year ones yet.
However, Billboard has not been so slack. They produced their list of the 20 best K-Pop singles of the first 6 months of 2024. Although their list is split between male and female artists (you may have noticed I'm not generally a fan of the girlies in K-pop), I can say that most of the male artists featured are either in my top 3 for the month they released or were strongly considered for it. I am, of course, absolutely delighted that they chose Hui (Pentagon)'s Hmm BOP as their #1 song, as both he and the band deserve far more recognition . . . no, I will never stop preaching about how underrated Pentagon are.
Unusually for me, among last month's favourite songs there was a female singer (well, she's more well-known for rapping), as my EXO boy D.O. featured on Lee Young Ji's track Small Girl. It's a great song, has a good message, and the MV is cute af. It's also very popular in Korea and is topping all the charts.
The Receiptify playlist has been updated (and even has a couple of new tracks on it).
Also, while you wait for me to update the final June and mid-year playlists, here are my top artists and listening stats for June, according to Last.fm.
1 July also marked the 1st anniversary of me logging my music through Last.fm. In that time, I have listened to 29,306 songs, which equates to 12,649 individual tracks from 5,716 albums by 2,705 artists. My top 10 most listened to artists for the year are the following:
I doubt anyone who's been following my blog is surprised at the list, nor that the top 10 songs are made up of tracks that appear regularly in the Receiptify playlist:
Have I mentioned that I love EXO? 🤣
If you're wondering about my initial foray into the world of D&D, it went about as well as you would expect from a group who've never really played before. The DM is experienced (but more as a player) and there was one other who had played before, but generally we were all floundering a bit.
The campaign was supposed to take about 3 hours in total, but by the end of our first session, which lasted about 2 1/2, we had only just managed to get into the cellar. The rats we were fighting were apparently superpowered, felling one of our party on the first roll. Unfortunately, our cleric, the only one with any real healing powers was unable to play, so we found most members of the party being injured as the rats got high scores and we got low ones. Fortunately, I was able to kill most of them with my longbow, otherwise we'd probably still be stuck on the stairs.
Another session is happening tomorrow evening, where hopefully the game will progress more quickly now we have a vague idea of what we're doing.
This is my character, Hanali Ilphelkiir (although she goes by the name of Hana Lund), a half-elf ranger who is, apparently, a badass with a longbow.
