Perfume debuted forthcoming single “Spice” on their radio show recently, and now you can hear the full track right here.
Initial vibe…maybe I’m just sleep deprived, but the actual music reminds me of Washed Out? Except, uh, a lot fuller and catchier. That’s only a few listens through though, talk to me in a few days.
See that tasty-lookin’ burger above? That’s McDonald’s Japan’s new KBQ Burger, a Korean-inspired offering available in stores starting today. But hey! Any day now that whole “Korean wave” is just gonna recede away yeah? Any day now……
Kazuyoshi Saito “やさしくなりたい”
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0oXGhUHvC8″]
Kazuyoshi Saito has a new album out soon, yet “やさしくなりたい” isn’t on it. He’s performing it special, because I think a Japanese drama is using his version in their show. MAYBE. Since no recording of his version can be found from a 20-second YouTube query, let’s instead focus on the original version by Nagai Mariko. Released in 1991, “やさしくなりたい” jumps out as a wholly inoffensive bit of karaoke-ready pop, coming off like something potentially put together in a single afternoon but simple enough as to not really be a hassle when it plays in the background. It’s actually OK – the chorus glistens just enough, and nothing about it sounds bad. No idea what Saito does to it, but the original is a surprisingly pleasant walk that probably wows them in the karaoke box.
Superfly “愛をくらえ”
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BF-Oe-fVsk”]
Last week, I joined a new gym and it’s pretty swanky. They have a coin machine that dispenses towels, a Vitamin Water freezer and something called a “Splaza” which I think is the strange hybrid of a spa and a plaza. Not sure what that is. Overall, fine establishment mere steps away from workout-ruining Burger King. Yet, while attempting to work my “delts” (I think that’s what they are), I realized something about the music being pumped into the main room – all Western. A mix of Foster The People, Katy Perry and Avril Lavigne. Then I remembered the LAST gym I went to played pretty much the same sort of stuff, save for more Matchbox Twenty. Then it dawned on me every gym I’ve heard about in Japan does the same. A quick Twitter poll revealed that the only time anyone had heard Japanese music in a Japanese gym was in a public facility, one surely lacking a Splaza. Apparently, many gyms skip over Japanese tunes in favor of Nickelback.
Initially, I thought “maybe Western music is just more conducive to lifting heavy things.” But nope, Japan has Superfly right there. Tracks like the one above fit the gym-soundtrack mold incredibly well – rockin’, but not too much! Vaguely inspiring! It even seems paced in such a way that I could time lifting motions to this. Superfly seems like a group born to write music appropriate for squats, so why haven’t Japanese gyms embraced them yet? Have some national pride, Workout World chain!
Tegomass “魔法のメロディ”
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjJkE2QZpmE”]
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu…this sounds like Christmas music. Which means…Christmas music season is now upon us, DAMN IT. The coming of Christmas signals another year drawing to a close, and that means reflection. Which blows. Thanks a lot Tegomass.
The actual song up above is pretty boring, lamer than the usual Johnny’s bloodfart. But the video is a must watch. Tegomass dress up as workers from the Alice In Wonderland ride at Disneyland to…construct some sort of magical flying device that doesn’t look like any mode of transportation that already exists, no sir. Serving as their band are…elves? Or maybe Moldova’s Eurovision 2011 entry? Whatever they are, the video is funny in an awkward, they-were-not-trying-to-be-funny sort of way.
Perfume “GLITTER”
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSffhB1Gl_w”]
This minute-and-20-seconds preview of “GLITTER” probably lays out all the major pieces of the song – something sounding like a cowbell, constantly falling synth sparkles, the type of singing Perfume does where they all sort of blend into one another. The verses sound like by-the-numbers Perfume…not remotely a complaint!…but then the chorus snaps in and stuff gets good. The actual backing music barely changes, the same electro flurries storming down, but the actual singing takes on a new shape in a little reminder that this isn’t all studio perfection. When a full version appears you can bet it will appear here, but for now color us intrigued.
Fairies “More Kiss”
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bASSi2OJYbI”]
I have a friend who, very briefly, wanted to know as much as possible about the group Fairies. His motives were pure – he had seen the video for “More Kiss” playing in a bowling alley, albeit with the audio on mute. This same bowling joint exposed him to the likes of Sakanaction and OGRE YOU ASSHOLE, so he figured maybe Fairies fluttered around similar artistic space. Though I had never listened to anything by them, I figured they probably didn’t because a recent trip to Tokyo revealed a barrage of Fairies advertising. Now though, I have an excuse to listen and hate to tell my friend…meh.
Fairies exist to latch onto the vaguely creepy “we love youth” market spurred on by AKB48. Tokyohive tells me the average age of the members in Fairies is about 13.1, which makes everything about the video mortifying. Despite being the same age as my junior high school students, Fairies have one thing going for them – “More Kiss” actually sounds better than anything AKB48 have ever released, these barely adolescents imitating R&B moreso than Branson, Missouri stage show. Heck, the subtle electronic glows going on in the back sound great…unfortunately, they only flicker up occasionally. Still, the whole thing sounds like a song some adult singer didn’t want to bother with it, so these kids got it. Has some good points, but overall nothing thrilling. To my friend…sorry!
Winner Of The Week – I mean, it seems cheap to give it to Perfume…but it’s them or Fairies and I’m not doing that. Perfume.
Finally, AKB48 and I cross paths in a longer piece on The Atlantic. The article serves as both an introduction to the massive group for readers who don’t geek-out over Japanese pop music and to examine AKB’s current push throughout Asia. In a great bit of timing, this story about the Jakarta group appeared in The Japan Times today as well if you want an even clearer picture of what is going on. The whole thing really is fascinating, and I’m continuing to follow all of it with a certain gross curiosity.
Also, I want to write a semi-related piece for this blog about AKB48’s impact on Japanese contemporary culture…it will be a bit more insider baseball than anything that could appear on a major publication’s website. Stay tuned!
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crtcgzOpplQ”]
UPDATE: OK, appears NBC is really good at getting video pulled off the Internet, as the original clip I posted is gone. You can see a clip of the below here and above is another YouTube clip bound to be removed in the near future. Strangely, though, it seems the YouTube comments for both follow a similar pattern.
OK, ragging on Saturday Night Live has become an especially easy sport in recent years…but I’m going to admit they had me cracking up with this sketch from last Saturday’s episode (which also featured Drake!). Titled “J-POP America Fun Time Now!,” the bit focuses on two Michigan State university students who love Japanese so much, they host a TV show about it. What follows may not be any groundbreaking humor for anyone using the Internet in the past 10 years, but for some reason I still enjoyed this way more than MacGruber. And hey, kinda educational, because the teacher is right when he says it is a narrow part of Japanese culture. Also the self-awareness of racism was pretty funny.
(Part of the reason I find this funny is because I also watched the web-only reality series America’s Greatest Otaku, which attempted to sorta clean up the image of the “otaku” but half the time sorta resembled the above sketch. Ya know, except without being intentional. If you’ve got a lot of free time, watch it for the laughs.)
Make sure to check out the YouTube comments while you are at it, and by that I mean stay the hell away from the YouTube comments. A combination of people offended by the portrayal (to the point they compare themselves to Italians getting offended by Jersey Shore) and the just-as-annoying folks going “I know these people in my Japanese class, so lame because I’m great.” Oh, and people saying the parody of J-Pop is still better than American pop music…the hell is wrong with these people? Oh yeah YouTube.
Shouts out to my mom for sending me this.
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2oymHHyV1M”]
Music Station has been away for a really long time now, but finally returns this week with a pretty loaded show. I feel like the dude jacked up by the antelope in the above video…except I probably don’t have long-term kidney problems now. Onward!
KARA “Winter Magic”
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qkl0EMs2Zc”]
I loathe the winter with every non-chilled over fiber in my body, the three-plus months of near-freezing weather reports leaving me a deeply depressed shell of a human dreaming of humidity and swamp butt. Anything to get away from the cold. Thus, I sorta loathe “winter” songs that celebrate the season. Unless they focus on a San Diego winter, I can’t get behind any of the cheer for a season where staying indoors and cranking the heat is the norm. So, sorry KARA, strike one against “Winter Magic” and the “golly gee, we can ride bikes in the snow!” stupidity of the video. Attention ladies, you can’t pull off shorts like that in honest-to-goodness cold unless you enjoy the hospital.
Seasonal grievances out of the way…JUST LET ME ENJOY THE FALL PLEASE…this single is mostly a disappointment because it finds KARA giving into market forces and making a very J-Pop single when they are capable of so much more. I’ve already moaned about it once, but quickly – save for that burbling bass, this is only a few degrees above an AKB48 ballad. From a capitalistic standpoint, I don’t blame them – no better way to win over those folks protesting Korean music than to try to blend in. Yet as music I want to enjoy, this falls flat like oh so many gingerbread men. Worse yet, KARA have a legitimate knockout of a song with “Step” hanging out in South Korea right now. One positive is that Japanese people want “Step” to – it checked in at number five on the Oricon album chart this week, despite not being officially released here. Hope remains, not snuffed out by the miserable winter just yet.
Kanjani8, A Very Special Medley
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzLhgvbhm9Y”]
Kaela Kimura “Chocolate”
Talked about the above video a while ago, speculating whether the sweet version enclosed in that video player would be the same as on the album. Well, I’ve got a hold of Kimura’s new album 8Eight8 and now know…it certainly isn’t. Whereas the video seemingly records Kimura singing above a faint version of the instrumentation, the album version (closing the album, noice) equalizes things, the light guitar and gentle synths matching up with her vocals.
Thing is, it sounds plenty good on the album, especially as the finale. Appropriately, “Chocolate” stands as one of Kimura’s sweeter slow songs, a delicate breeze of a song featuring some of her best pure singing and lovely little synth. Not show stopping, but a pleasant number that is surprisingly endearing. Might be even better live…though Music Station rarely is like that!
YUI “Green a.live”
Sorta makes sense that “alive” isn’t spelled right, seeing as this song is anything but.
L’Arc～en～Ciel “XXX”
Obviously it is a stupid complaint considering SMAP chug on at least seven years past their expiration date…but L’Arc～en～Ciel seem like the sort of group that shouldn’t be still going strong in 2011. I give them credit for making it to their 20th anniversary this year, when so many other mainstream J-Rock acts barely last five years, but at the same time this sort of hyper-dramatic rock seems like a relic. Again, to be nice, this sounds better than all but one other song on this list tonight…but this still just seems like it should be in an encyclopedia and not on TV. I’ve read L’Arc～en～Ciel have moved away from the Visual Kei look, but “XXX” still finds them looking rather silly (THAT HAIR) and sounding like newbie actors overselling every line. Seems like this should remain in the decade it was really big. Though, the 90’s revival is just around the corner…….
Winner Of The Week – “Chocolate”
Super Bonus K-Pop Song That Might Be A Hit In Japan
T-ara “Yayaya”
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PChUEyZTQuM&ob=av2e”]
OK, first a few things off my chance…the girls in T-ara pretend to be Native Americans in the video for “Yayaya,” which is slated to be their next single in Japan. Though I don’t believe it, I’ve been told I’m upwards of a quarter Native American, and as a result part of me is pretty grossed out about the tee-pees, headdresses and implied sacrifices (not even gonna touch the woo-woo noises). Like the worst Thanksgiving pageant you could imagine.
Yet the part of me not stuck up on possibly unrelated racial issues just sits kinda impressed by the song itself. It doesn’t touch the best K-to-J crossovers (“Gee,” “I’m The Best,” “Mister”), but still towers over most original J-Pop songs coming out today, its clever use of Auto-tune (as a trailing-off device for the vocals) adding to the noisy mess of a pop song. T-ara have a surprising amount of momentum behind them…their “Bo Peep Bo Peep” debuted at the top of the Oricon Charts, a first for a foreign woman’s act, prompting all sorts of outrage from delusional J-Pop fans. “Yayaya,” for all its racial insensitivity, conceals a loud-but-catchy tune that should get decent love in this country. Just ditch the feathers for the video, ladies.