[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMjuPBARGHg”] The cynic in me said last week that J-Pop in 2012 looked to be a gloomy affair, another 12 months of AKB48 roundabouts and Johnny’s drippings and whatever EXILE does. Three weeks into the year and I was ready to toss it out of the window. Then, with excellent timing, this past week has…
First Station To Station of 2012, rejoice rejoice! Been a long time since we have journeyed into this sketchy sonic territory, but Music Station doesn’t disappoint this week, giving us a surprisingly wide variety of J-Pop (and K-Pop!) to sample and eventually stick our tongues out at. Let’s get the rust off. Ikimono-gakari “いつだって僕らは” [youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGttchG98RI&ob=av3e”]…
CNN recently interviewed Yasushi Akimoto, the guy who came up with the AKB48 concept and basically ruined everything. They just put up a transcript of the interview in English, which is worth reading. The biggest reveal of this chat is that Akimoto loves cliche comparisons – AKB48 is like “cheerleading or lacrosse” (huh?) unless it…
Man, Super Girl really did end up being the worst-case scenario for KARA. Whether because they wanted to spike sales even more or just because they have absolutely no idea how to embrace something that doesn’t sound like the year 1993, the J-Pop powers-that-be pigeonholed one of Korea’s hottest exports into the bland box of…
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLYVRSIvtpY”] You know how sometimes you go to a party or some other laid-back social gathering and there is some dude/dudette who makes a funny joke or maybe talks in a silly voice for a second and it kills? Like, everyone burst out laughing and loves it. Then said person decides “hey, I like this…