The Final Fantasy Series Reaches Number 3 In Classic FM's Hall Of Fame 2013

Every year Classic FM (a well known classical focused radio station here in the UK) holds its annual Hall Of Fame voting. Listeners can vote for 3 songs/soundtracks they like and the votes get tabulated to create the top 300. Last year, video games did quite well in the chart, with Dragonborn (from Skyrim) and Aerith's Theme (from Final Fantasy VII) making the list, the latter even breaking the top 20! This year, 3 video game soundtracks made the top 300 (individual tracks getting clumped together as soundtracks from series now), with 2 of them being in the top 5!

Grant Kirkhope's score for Viva Piñata came in at number 174, a tremendous achievement considering this score wasn't even really mentioned during the online "Get Video Games into the Classic FM Hall of Fame" Facebook campaign. It just sort of appeared in the top 300 out of nowhere, and is a much deserved entry and dash of recognition for Grant Kirkhope. More startlingly, breaking into the top 5 were the Elder Scrolls series (embodied by playing Dragonborn from the Skyrim OST) at number 5 in the chart, and the Final Fantasy series (represented by Aerith's Theme from FFVII) in at a remarkable number 3.

Hopefully this will give video game music more of a platform to show its quality, 2 entries in the top 5 is almost unbelievable, and that should show people that this is an art form that we can be proud of. Listen to Aerith's Theme below and revel in Nobuo Uematsu's excellent composing work. Congratulations Nobuo.