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Category Archives: J-Pop

Station To Station: Music Station For August 17, 2012 Featuring Green Day, Mai Kuraki And Miwa

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This week, popular Japanese convenience store chain Family Mart rolled out a special campaign celebrating five years of Hatsune Miku. She’s a character attached to a popular line of vocaloid software (a computer program allowing people to create digital vocals) and probably better known in the Western world as the hologram pop star that pre-dated Tupac at Coachella. I went into a Family Mart earlier this week and let me tell you, it was overflowing with Hatsune Miku merch. Weird times.

AKB48 Special Medley

In case you needed confirmation that the AKB48 hasn’t decreased whatsoever, their newest album 1830m sold 625,401 copies on its release day. Tokyo Hive says that is more than their last album sold on its first day in stores so expect a big number when the Oricon Chart comes out next week.

I’ve yet to listen to the album so instead of write typical cheap shots at the group…no lack of that online!…so instead I’m going to rank my favorite song titles from AKB48’s newest album because…oh man, this is the ’85 Bears of great song titles. Let’s do this:

Honorable Mentions: “Miniskirted Fairy,” “Romance Hide-and-Seek,” “Night Of Running Away From Home,” “Sea Bottom Seen Once”

5. “Love General Elections” – Finishes fifth because this could just be a song of devotion to the group’s genius marketing scheme. Gets on the list because it could be about an election geared at…love?

4. “Go Scandalous” – Fits the group, yeah?

3. “Run, Penguin!” – Really want to see the lyric sheet for this one.

2. “Lemon Puberty” – …it goes sour???

1. “Jung Or Freud’s Case” – Now this is intriguing…did not expect a title like that from a group like AKB48.

Kis-My-Ft2 “WANNA BEEEE!!!

So how about that new single from Kis-My-Ft2. It is bad.

No what isn’t bad? The new EP from Post Modern Team and Twangy Twangy! Listen to that instead please.

Mai Kuraki “Special Morning Day To You”

Bad English aside, this new single from Mai Kuraki is about as middle-of-the-road as an easy-listening ballad can get. Save for some wet-sounding baking vocals late in the song…which is a nice touch, but also nothing really revelatory…this could have been made using the J-Pop equivalent of a popsicle mold.

Green Day “Oh Love”

Green Day will be headlining this year’s Summer Sonic and I will be seeing them this Saturday night. I’m sort of dreading it, because I have this fear they will play the above song, their newest single in advance of the trio’s new album…which is the first of three they have planned in the coming months. I’m sure parts of the show will be good, as Green Day’s career can be cut up into three convenient segments of varying quality. There was the first part, where they made some of the greatest pop-punk songs ever, tracks that still hold up today. Save for “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life),” they dabbled in the sort of speedy pop music that every Southern-California-based kid loved in elementary and junior high school. Then came the political period, the one that gave us American Idiot, which was ultimately a mixed-bag of catchy songs and goofy posturing.

And now we are at stage three – where the band try to go back to their roots but not really. “Oh Love” lacks anything resembling the energy or catchiness of peak Green Day – this is plodding, go-nowhere music. Maybe they wrote a few pop-punk gems and saved them for some portion of their new trio of albums, but it ain’t this. Dreading listening to this one Saturday night.

Miwa “Hikari E”

Ahhh young Miwa has finally made it. She’s contributed a song for a Japanese-drama soundtrack…one called Rich Man, Poor Woman…which means she’s mailed in a clunky, boring ballad that….

…huh, wait? This is really good!

“Hikari E” does what oh-so-many soundtrack songs don’t do – be fast. It starts with all the orchestral flourishes one expects from a TV-ready ballad, but then these wonky synths enter the picture and Miwa starts singing at a jogging pace. Then the moment – the four-on-the-floor beat drops in and the song never looks back. Miwa just blasts through this, and it is a good pace for her. Wisely, she keeps the strings around, but never lets them really overpower the tempo. A really pleasant surprise.

Winner Of The Week – Miwa

J-Chopped: Terio Chops And Screw Kyary Pamyu Pamyu

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Kyary Pamyu Pamyu has been 2012’s most interesting J-Pop star so far for a bunch of reasons – her vibrant music videos, the fact she reached the top of the American electronic iTunes charts with her debut album, her Yasutaka-Nakata-produced debut Pamyu Pamyu Revolution being one of the best Japanese albums of the year. Mostly it has come down to her vibrant music videos and her Yasutaka Nakata-produced debut album, Pamyu Pamyu Revolution, which also managed to touch the top of the U.S. electronic chart on iTunes

She has also inspired plenty of other musicians, and not just because of a Twitter shout-out from Katy Perry. Chicago juke producer K. Locke Traxx turned her “Ponponon” into a dizzying piece of footwork, and now an artist named Terio has made something called The Pamyu Pamyu Tape, a project wherein the Tokyo-based producer chops and screws songs from the Harajuku idol.

I obviously don’t know Terio’s reasoning or goals for this project, but to me the premise of The Pamyu Pamyu Tape is an experiment in taking a J-Pop artist whose strength lies in up-tempo pop and transforming them into eerie, trippy stuff that moves at a syrupy pace. The tape ends up not being completely devoted to that contrast – some of these tracks are just chopped and move at the same manic speed of Pamyu’s originals – but features plenty of screwed-up takes. “Liquid Cocaine” pitches “Ponponpon” low, while “Liquid Cocaine Remix” slides the shifter even further south. Elsewhere, Terio slices up “Tsukema Tsukeru” into a jittery beat, while “Cupcake” mostly retains Moshi Moshi Harajuku’s “Kyary No March” with a few changes to the beat tossed in. The best songs here, though, don’t actually feature any vocals but instead find Terio honing in on specific sounds from Pamyu’s music and turning them into lovely beats that someone could rap over. “Lake Onterio” turns the synths of “Cherry Bonbon” into something laid-back, while the gorgeous “Japan” isolated the opening of “Candy Candy” and adds a simple beat to it.

The real draw of this tape – besides a song titled “@terio013” which is the first time I’ve seen a Twitter handle used as a song name – is the meshing of worlds it introduces. Save for a surprising amount of chopped-and-screwed Utada Hikaru remixes on YouTube, J-Pop hasn’t really gotten this treatment before. Yet now J-Pop is entering into a different sonic world, with the help of that juke remix and this tape (see also, Oakland’s Friendzone turning a Perfume song into one of the best rap beats of 2011) perhaps due to the strict copyright enforcement policies that exist in Japan. It seems Western artists are forcing J-Pop into a world of sonic experimentation.

Station To Station: Music Station For August 3 Featuring Miliyah Kato, Sonar Pocket And J Soul Brothers

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Will anything be more depressing than the story behind the above photo? Let’s find out!

Miliyah Kato “Heart Beat”

Since this song is a Coca-Cola tie-in track with the 2012 Olympics, I figured the line you hear at the beginning of the song was saying “I was going to London.” It seems to actually be “I was going to love it,” so tsk tsk to the Coke people for missing a chance at further brand advancement. Anyways, the above clip only plays a snippet of “Heart Beat,” and from what is there it sounds OK albeit a bit mindless. Still, it at least tries to include a beat, unlike every other goofy Olympic song I’ve heard come out of Japan so far this year. That’s a gold medal in not being terrible.

J Soul Brothers “Hanabi”

Aren’t fireworks supposed to be exciting? J Soul Brothers didn’t get the memo, I guess.

SMAP

Adventures in learning Japanese – turns out the song SMAP will be performing this week has “yet to be determined.” I’m going to live in ignorance and take this opportunity to hype up some good music – Taquwami’s Blurrywonder EP! Expect a longer review of it soon, but for now go get this great five-track release from Void Youth.

Sonar Pocket “Kimi To Miru Mirai”

Go to 3:16 to see the song in question.

Finally, a full video for one of the songs this week, it was looking like we were heading towards total shipwreck this week. Unfortunately, Sonar Pocket’s latest is a wedding song, which is usually shorthand for plodding fluff. Which this song certainly is, except done in Sonar Pocket’s preferred style, which is in the key of FUNKY MONKEY BABYS, “rap” custom made for a Hallmark store At least other Sonar Pocket songs have the decency to try to sound sorta fun…this is the equivalent of the bride and groom so hellbent on having the perfect wedding day to the point the whole thing feels like prison.

V6 “Keep On”

I was all ready to just dismiss this as vanilla balladry, an easy snark here and maybe drop a roll-eyes .GIF in for good measure. Yet this is V6, the Johnny’s outfit prone to the wackiest flights of fancy. This couldn’t just be a mopey iPhones-in-the-sky number, could it?

Nope.

After a minute and a half of that junk, this song swivels into a weird funk section and away we go. V6 give us disco, rap, more slow singing, some off-Broadway material, a guy who sounds like Porky Pig and a lot of shouts of “keep on dancing!” All wrapped up in a video featuring a kid dressed up like a knockoff Where The Wild Things Are protagonist. It is hypnotic and painful all at once.

To V6’s credit, this is pretty much the most ambitious song I’ve heard from a Johnny’s group in…forever, as most boy bands signed to the talent agency just stick with safe pop-by-numbers tracks. This is all-over-the-place stuff, and it’s nice to see something so out of the ordinary for a group like this. Unfortunately, ambition alone doesn’t make up bad music, and most of “Keep On” is just bad sketches of pop sewn together into one grotesque creature. Interesting to look at, but I wouldn’t want to spend any prolonged time with it.

Yuzu “Mata Ashita”

Then again, V6 at least made something that sounded interesting. Yuzu just keep releasing the same kid-gloves rock with the same “meh results.

Winner Of The Week – V6 for at least making me do a double take.

New Perfume: “Spending All My Time”

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Perfume’s newest single, “Spending All My Time,” is now available to hear in full (for now, at least). Check the Euro-pop touches! It’s almost like they are trying to tap into Western pop trends. They do a good job though, and this entire single (this song, “Point,” and “Hurly Burly”) sound very nice. Listen here.

Station To Station: Music Station For July 27 Featuring Kobukuro, Nishino Kana And Hoshino Gen

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That’s the face I made when I realized I have all of August as a vacation (though not from blogging, don’t worry!).

Kobukuro “Yell E ~ Ru”

Looks like more and more older Japanese bands are wising up to the economic benefits of either putting together comeback tours or at least placing an emphasis on older hits in order to get an extra bit of sales boost in what seems like a sluggish summer. Duo Kobukuro never broke up and last released a new single in 2011, yet here we are in July 2012 and they are putting the spotlight squarely on their song “Yell E ~ Ru,” which came out in 2001 and served as their breakthrough moment into the mainstream. I suppose it has been long enough for one more victory lap, but I wish it had a better news hook.

The song itself is pretty listless, an acoutsit-guitar-nudged ballad meant to highlight the duo’s voices, which sound good but also never do anything particularly riveting, instead just flowing alongside the song with a few lifts here and there. And of course there are violins, there have to be violins. It’s a typical sort of J-Pop song, and though I’m not sure what people saw in it to make it a breakout hit (different music market, I guess?), it’s completely innocuous and not even worth any real criticism. Just…there. The fact Kobukuro can turn something this uneventful into a revival is pretty startling.

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