You know what, while I'm at it, I'm going to do the opposite now:
Use my pack to promote songs by some rather unknown musicians who I consider somewhat underrated (at least if you think on an international level)!
Yeah, I know, my outreach is truly large here in this small community
, so it probably won't be of much use to the artists, but whatever...
Those who follow Arty's LP may have noticed that I always post links to the songs featured by the levels in a given video in the comments beneath said videos, but I don't think a lot of people actually click on them, because it's usually a narrowly-spaced list, and the less known songs are often placed between songs so famous that most people already know them anyway.
I'm going to combine these with the level images so that you know what they refer to.
Since a lot of people have created levels based on songs, I encourage others to do so as well! I'm always a little dissatisfied when I don't get what a level title is referring to (if it's obvious to me that a reference is being made by the title in the first place, that is
).
So please, if you based your levels on songs, share them here, I think this could make the thread a lot more lively with more regular posts! 
Japan - by Zlata OgnevichIf that accent sounds a little weird to you: The singer is from Ukraine, and the song was made shortly after the meltdown of the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan (which I tried to rebuild in this level). The song was created in reference to the similar event in Chernobyl (which is situated in what would later become the nation of Ukraine) in 1986. That's why both the Ukrainian and the Japanese flag are in here.
Discovered this singer through Eurovision due to her pretty impressive vocal abilities (case and point), but the main reason the song was included in my pack was because Japan was still missing from my "World Tour" - and given it has such a huge music market that it's frequently graced with exclusive bonus tracks, that was not an option!
This one really has to be experienced together with the images - quite rare to make a video that powerful without using any moving images, only photographs!
Rome - by TenDo any of the English forum members actually know this band? They are from Manchester and were at their peak in the mid-to-late 90s, predominantly in
Japan (transition!
), though. Their musical style is often called AOR (adult-oriented rock), although they have evolved to
sing a lot about historic topics, similarly to bands like Sabaton. The above song is one such example - it's about Rome in its founding period.
I like to joke that the band is called "Ten" because they came ten years too late - they made 80s-style rock music during the 90s. Maybe they would have been a lot more successful if they had appeared on stage a little earlier. At the same time, you can see they picked their name just before the internet became a widespread thing: A name as generic as "Ten" pretty much makes your band the hardest thing to find with any search engine. A shame, because their music is everything but generic!
Dziesma par laimi - by Fomins & KleinsWell, this one is the exact opposite - just a harmless, nice and cheerful little "
song about happiness" (that's what the title means, it's Latvian). In the level pack, this obviously became "Dziesma par Lemmi"
. I'm always a sucker for power-metal style vocals, and found it interesting to hear what this sounds like in a less well-known European language.
Bay of Pigs - by Civil WarThis is another history metal band in the style of Ten and Sabaton. (They are actually even from the same small town in Sweden as Sabaton!
) This song is about the US-organised invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles on 17th April 1961, attempting to overthrow Fidel Castro. Since the invasion failed, but a level has to be successful in order for the player to advance, the Lemmings are on the Cuban side in this level, and the Zombies are the invaders.
Dragostea din tei - by O-ZoneOkay, this song is by far the most successful of those listed here. However, I repeatedly get the feeling that its fame seems to be largely restricted to Germany? And I'm part of that bubble, as you know. Looking at the comments at least, most of which are in German, this seems to hold up
. Despite the large number of people who probably remember this song, I doubt most of them could actually recognise it by its title. Unless you drop the lines "nu ma, nu ma iei" or "maya-hee, maya-hoo" as additional hints
. It's probably the only Romanian-language song to ever achieve widespread international success. (The band itself is from Moldova, a smaller ex-soviet nation right next to Romania, but both countries speak the same language.)
The title means "love under the limetree", which is why there's a giant tree in the middle under which the two lemmings on this level have to meet
.
