I use a ton of different music streaming services. Spotify, YouTube, Soundcloud.  All that and more. The chain of command pretty much goes that way too. If it’s not on Spotify, it’ll be on YouTube, if it’s not on YouTube, it’ll be on soundcloud. While a lot of my music comes from the things I watch or my friends, YouTube is a mysterious black hole that has recommended some incredibly unique and admittedly weird things.  I’m definitely not complaining though. Based on these recommendations, I’ve basically formed my music taste. Now as you read into this list, these are not necessarily my favorite songs nor are they great songs by any means but they are songs that I think are weird, unique, strange or really good and worth listening to. This is also a list that may be specific to my experience. The algorithm will recommend things based on what you already listen to and the more you click, the more it picks up on your habits. So this is my list of the best, weirdest or coolest songs that YouTube has recommended to me. 

Blue Crystal Fire by Robbie Basho is amazing and by far one of my favorite things I’ve stumbled across. Robbie Basho’s voice is something indescribable. He plays guitar with such finesse and skill and instead of using a six string guitar he uses a 12 string guitar to mimic a sitar. There is so much fire and power behind his voice in the accompanying guitar playing just amplifies it all tenfold. After hearing this song I was led to look at the rest of Robbie Basho‘s catalog and I was thoroughly impressed he’s become one of my favorite artists of all time based off of this song alone. However I have noticed that the guitar used in this song is incredibly similar to another song by him titled Wounded Knee Soliloquy. I do however have absolutely no complaints about that because the backing track is beautiful.

Looking For You by Nino Ferrer is a great track that is unfortunately not on any other platform besides YouTube. Which is a shame because this is by far my favorite song by Nino Ferrer. It’s a smooth R&B track that features Nino’s jazzy vocal style and it’s complemented by Radiah’s stunning vocals. This is a great song to just have playing in the background as you’re kicking back with friends but it’s also really nice to just listen to and absorb fully. I could listen to this song on repeat without getting sick of it because it’s so steady and comforting. This is another song that led me to looking at the rest of Nino’s catalog of music and while the rest of his catalog sounds nothing like Looking For You, it’s still amazing and has tons of variety to it. 

Mary’s Theme by Stelvio Ciprani is a really beautiful jazzy 60s track that came off of a movie soundtrack. Now the album cover kind of caught my eye, It’s a drawing of a woman draped across a chair. The orange, green and black contrast stood out to me but also Mary’s theme, any sort of theme to introduce a character usually sounds pretty cool and this one was definitely no different. With the harp plucking noises and the humming of a woman’s voice this is probably one of the most neutral in the mood tracks I’ve ever heard. You could hear this playing at a jazz club, you could listen to it while cooking or studying or driving at night, you could listen to it in the winter time or in the spring. I absolutely adore this track. 

Oh Honey by Delegation. This one stood out to me because the cover was just so simple. All it was was a vinyl record. This song is from the band Delegation who is kind of a funk, disco, soul group. This is one of their best songs. I have this on every single playlist. I have this on my driving playlist, my studying playlist, my work playlist even because it’s just this upbeat and fun track that isn’t too loud and it isn’t too quiet. This song just reminds me of summer. It’s like driving down to the beach with all of your friends and having a barbecue. With simple lyrics and an unforgettable, crooning  chorus this is a great song. 

Telephone by Junko Ohashi. This is the song that jump started my city pop phase. I think it was a combination of the incredibly simple album cover and the title that caught my eye. This is stupidly catchy and I still to date find myself humming along to the tune. This is probably one of if not the best examples of city pop music that I could recommend to anybody whether they be newcomers to city pop or people who have been listening for years. From the opening wolf howl to the repetition of numbers, this song definitely sinks it’s claws into you from the opening seconds.  

Anyway by Oto. This is definitely a bit weirder and More Obscure then some of the other songs on this list. Anyways is A synth heavy song that I cannot escape no matter how hard I try. I found this song sometime around 2018 and I still listen to it to date. It has heavily accented lyrics and pounding bass all complemented by really fun synth music. This definitely got me into new wave and synth music in kind of a weird roundabout way. Because from here I started listening to French synth music from the 80s and from there it lead me into “regular synth music”. Despite this being a hyper obscure algorithm pick it definitely worked out well and if you like synth music or new wave or anything of the sort I would strongly recommend this song.

My YouTube experience has been filled with some good experiences, bad experiences and downright obscure ones. I’ve heard a million different songs and still have more to discover. Obviously this wasn’t a complete list of songs, if I did that, this would be its own website solely composed of strange findings from YouTube. If something on this list jumps out at you, I recommend starting to find your own weird songs. I picked out a lot of these purely out of gut instinct but there’s a ton more that had cool album covers that caught my eye. But hopefully YouTube starts giving you some strange recommendations.