What's your favorite song?

[RayneBoemir]

Hard to pick just one as there are so many amazing tracks. I guess Mortal Instants (Amarout Theme) I think every time I listen to it I just remember how amazing the whole dungeon felt it’s consistently one of the tracks that just makes me feel elated.

[Khalithar]

eScape until I first heard Insatiable, now Insatiable is my current favorite.

[SherlottaEryut]

I like the one that goes DOo doo dooo dodododo do do HIGHERRRRRRR OH HIGHERRRRRRR dodododoodoo

[Kolsykol]

It's hard to pick a favorite, but I'd say the most underrated imo is '' Revolutions ''.

[MoofiaBossVal]

Too many favorite tracks to narrow down to just one. I like the heroic music where the chorus urges the hero on. Triumph (Stormblood boss theme), Worm's Tail (Shinryu phase 2), or Endcaller (Zodiark theme).

[Packetdancer]

Everyone has a favorite song, right?

Bold of you to assume I have only one... or that if I were somehow able to narrow it down to only one, it would remain consistently the same one from day-to-day.

That said...

My current jam is In the Balance from the Myths raids

...I have been listening to this on loop. I actually got so tired of YouTube stuttering when I was doing CPU-intensive things (Unreal Engine 5's developer environment is many things, but "highly optimized" is not one...), so I literally ripped the audio track out of the game data, added the lyrics and some "cover art" to the metadata (plus, getting a screenshot for said "cover art" gave me an excuse to run the alliance raid again), and threw it into my music library to sate my "I need to listen to this. Again." urges until the next volume of the soundtrack is up for preorder.

There's also a lot of new favorites in the Endwalker soundtrack itself. I was blown away by With Hearts Aligned (the BGM for the second half of the final MSQ trial) when I first heard it; the fact that Soken managed to take bits and pieces of meaningful melody from the entire story arc across multiple expansions, and weave them into a single song to represent the entire arc was just stunning. He did it in Footfalls itself as well, of course -- there's a verse in freakin' draconic -- but With Hearts Aligned is so concise in how it does that. Heroes Forge Ahead (the "rising tension/battle" music used in the sage and reaper job quest, as well as various other places -- including the job actions trailer we got before EW landed) is a great version of the Endwalker signature melody. And Dynamis (the quiet little piece that starts out with just piano, and then gradually adds some strings and other stuff) stuck with me from the first time I heard it early in the expansion... it's such a beautiful, peaceful little melody, and manages to be both melancholy and hopeful at the same time; it quickly became one of my favorite pieces of the soundtrack overall, up there with Unchanging, Everchanging (the piano piece that serves as the night zone music from Lakeland) from Shadowbringers.

And, of course, Answers itself is so iconic, so encountering so many new arrangements -- including that beautiful piano one, and the way the organ version of it swung from almost unrelenting force to a sort of weary and grieving perseverence in From the Ashes -- in this expansion, while not unexpected, was wonderful. Not to mention Flow...

We've had a piece that's seemingly sung from Hydaelyn's viewpoint in each chapter of this game. Answers for ARR, Dragonsong for Heavensward, Revolutions for Stormblood, Tomorrow and Tomorrow in Shadowbringers, and now Flow. All the others are generally at least somewhat melancholy, or in the case of Revolutions, resolved/determined; Flow, in contrast, is almost joyous and relieved... and it, of all of them, is the one where Hydaelyn knows the end is near, after all this time. That it is her last song. It's the song that's saying goodbye to us... and yet of all those pieces, it's the one that seems the happiest. It's very much a mother expressing her pride and joy... but also someone who's been fighting for a long time, and is ready -- and relieved -- to lay down that burden and finally let go.

And that breaks my heart a little.

"Welcome and well-met, my brave little spark..."

Bonus points to Home Beyond the Horizon (the song that plays on the radio in Garlemald, that sounds almost like a stereotypical Western idea of a Soviet-era Russian song), for being used in a way that made it exceedingly unsettling to have playing at any point; it takes the prize for second-most unsettling use of music I've encountered in an MMO.

Still, there are plenty of others that I really love throughout the game. Heartless from O12 is amazing; it takes Torn from the Heavens and the Warrior of Light's own leitmotif melody, among other things, and uses the rising/falling scale (Prelude) that's the leitmotif of the entire Final Fantasy franchise to bind the pieces together. And, I mean, does anyone not love Civilizations? (Do you know... la hee?) Heck, the music in Slitherbough gives me nostalgia, because that piece -- Whisper of the Land -- is the original 1.x Black Shroud zone music. (I hated the Black Shroud zone in 1.x, but god I loved the music. The 1.x Black Shroud was very much the deep, mysterious, and oft-dangerous forest of western folklore, and the music worked very well for that.) And of course, the game's own actual theme -- A World Apart -- which we have not really heard much of since ARR, save for occasionally bits of the melody worked into later pieces.

But, I mean... I can go on for hours about the soundtrack. I can gush at length about callbacks (or foreshadowing!) through reuse of specific leitmotifs in various pieces throughout this game, and how Soken is himself as much a storyteller through the music as Ishikawa is through the narrative.

Do not get me started, I will not stop.

[Packetdancer]

I like the one that goes DOo doo dooo dodododo do do HIGHERRRRRRR OH HIGHERRRRRRR dodododoodoo

The verse in question is from Footfalls, the theme to Endwalker itself.

Our song of hope, she dances on the wind,
Higher, oh higher!
Ere our vow endures, we remain forever strong,
Standing tall, through the dark we will carry on!

On wings of hope, you rise up through the night,
Higher, oh higher!
Carrying our song, cradled fast within your arms,
That its chorus might ring for all!

The melody right there is also seemingly the leitmotif for Endwalker itself, as you'll find that it occurs within a number of other pieces (without the lyrics) if you sit down to listen to the soundtrack.

The version you're most likely thinking of specifically, though, is probably With Hearts Aligned. (The music for the second half of the final MSQ trial.) As that one does actually have the lyrics (sung with a sort of joyous defiance) rather than just the melody.

[Fengalon]

my alltime favorites are:

Brutes Justice: makes me smile every time

Wayward daugter: because yotsuyu was my fav char in stormblood

Gangos Theme: native vibes ^^

Carrots of Happiness: because of bunnys^^

[Packetdancer]

Actually, going to have to give a mention to 'In the Balance' from the Aglaia Nald'thal Raid - as well as being a fantastic piece of music (although haven't seen any offical lyrics for it yet), it sounds so damn hopeful - it feels like the oposite to Endsinger's song of despair!

We don't have official lyrics, but the playerbase has collectively transcribed (as a group effort over on reddit) what appear to be pretty accurate ones:

Oh twin Gods bless this land
To us, treasure bestow
City of desert sands
Water and gold below

Lifeblood and rubies red
Precious coins cast their glow
For hands of fortune's men
Wherefore we may not know

And when we reach our ends,
To scales we gladly go
Our fates are yours to bend
To hells and heavens both

Under arid sky...
With silk veils we weave a rainbow
Voices lifted high...
Dreams, upon our backs we carry

When day beckons night
As does restless time go slow
Drifting hand in hand
Life, Death, will follow

Stoke the nascent flame...
Brighter burn
Dance with souls afire
May ember catch a red-gold spark
Rise to new heights

May we want all that coin can buy
Never see one's river run dry
May we find fortune after life
For this we pray
We pray, we pray,
We pray twinfold...

Oh twin Gods bless this land
To us, treasure bestow
City of desert sands
Water and gold below

Lifeblood and rubies red
Precious coins cast their glow
For hands of fortune's men
Wherefore we may not know

And when we reach our ends,
To scales we gladly go
Our fates are yours to bend
To hells and heavens both

Under arid sky...
With silk veils we weave a rainbow
Voices lifted high...
Dreams, upon our backs we carry

When day beckons night
As does restless time go slow
Drifting hand in hand
Life, Death, will follow

Stoke the kindled flame
Hotter burn
Sing til breath expires
Near those who wander, laugh
In the dawn, find firelight

May we on astral eagles fly
Never fear unjust favor's bite
May we be judged by what is right
For this we pray,
We pray, we pray,
We pray twinfold...

[ASkellington]

Revenge Twofold and On Blade's Edge.

Literally will stop whatever music I have going on Pandora/YT to turn on in game music to hear either of them in a dungeon.

...

RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH!(Beauty's Wicked Wiles)