Make Believe Melodies For October 21, 2024

An Edition Big On Collaborations

King & Prince — Re:ERA

It truly wild is to step back a little, take in the history of J-pop in the 21st century, and realize access really was the biggest hurdle to the industry getting more attention. In 2024 this is only an actual problem if you’re definition of J-pop is limited to a handful of idols or older material, as every artist defining the sound of now can easily be heard. Hell, even when you start turning towards the corners that used to wall themselves off from easy access…it’s becoming easier to listen in on what they’re doing.

A perfect example of this comes from pop duo King & Prince, whose new album Re:ERA arrived on streaming services¹ last week. Finally, in this ecosystem, the classic STARTO Conundrum (formerly the “Johnny’s Dilemma”) can be solved.

To approach it from a purely musical angle, the artists under STARTO (and in another time, the ones under Johnny & Associates) always dabble in sounds reflecting what’s popping off. Usually, though, said attempts at the zeitgeist end up as album-only tracks, with singles often devoted to loathsome ballads and (especially a decade ago) goofy mid-tempo pop. Enter the problem — do you spend upwards of ¥3000 on an album full of garbage hoping the two interesting songs warrant it? Am I really going to drop that much on a SexyZone album because the chelmico-written song on the bonus disc might be “neat?”

Re:ERA represents the new, uhhhh, era of STARTO where streaming isn’t something to wince at, and can actually prove beneficial. It helps a lot that King & Prince’s latest full-length is quite solid as an all-around listen². The pair deliver a fair share of stinkers — I’m never going to be jazzed for a STARTO ballad, while stabs at rock range from flat (“Boy Meets Girl”) to embarrassing (“Don’t Grow Up,” which wonders “what if you asked your grandma to write a song in the style of Avril Lavigne?”) — but the bulk of this one is sturdy pop offering interpretations of contemporary trends. It helps that they brought in some big names to help, ranging from Daichi Miura helping shape the electro-thump of “WOW” to SKY-HI assisting with a surprisingly formidable rap on “POPSTAR in the KINGDOM.” Even cuts lacking starpower in the credits come through strong though, highlighted by the aggro New Jack Swing of “ROLLER COASTER” and bubbly dance-pop of “MAGIC WORD.”

However, you don’t have to go through this whole album to find the true gems…we can isolate them.

“King & Prince doing hyperpop” might be overselling it a touch but…that’s pretty clearly the intent with “LOVE HACKER” and “Harajuku.” The prior recruits web-damaged rapper BBY NABE and long-running hip-hop fixture Matt Cab to create a twinkling bit of fast-paced dance-pop marked by vocal distortions on the edges and rave-out hooks (bordering on like netlabel level) in a song full of computer references. They get even wilder on the latter, which closes out the whole shebang with its most disorienting moment. “Harajuku” comes courtesy of Mega Shinnosuke, who is currently enjoying his own blow-up moment towards the mainstream, but for this STARTO project he coats the duo’s voices in filters, turning them into pure electricity come the chorus. It’s one of the biggest left-turns out of this world in quite a while…and in the current music ecosystem, actually more accessible than before. Listen above.

Houshou Marine — Ahoy!! Kimitachi Minna Pirates

The pirate VTuber made a really fun album.

Virtual YouTuber attempts at music are quite similar to what you encounter with, say, STARTO, albeit coming from different sonic places. The anime nature of this online phenomena means a lot of very upbeat and chirpy songs aimed at an idol audience…but this is also a space adjacent to the sort of internet electro-pop this writer loves, and has been foundational for VTuber sounds for quite some time now. Houshou Marine’s debut full-length strikes a perfect balance between the two. The choice for her idol flavor to be closer to the wilder sounds of a group like Momorio Clover Z — the very first song seemingly nodding towards that group’s own yo-ho-ho turn — keeps the energy up and unpredictable across Ahoy!! Then you get sideswiped by appearances from the likes of Yunomi (who we really don’t hear enough from) or Giga, coupled with diversions into city pop recreation (“SHINKIRO,” featuring Gawr Gura and adding a sheen of authenticity via the presence of Kanke, who I want to stress always wears a captain’s hat) and discombobulating rap on the very-goofy-but-also-my-favorite-song-here “A Horny Money World ~ Densetsu No Yoru.” Listen above.

MILLENNIUM PARADE Featuring Rauw Alejandro And Tainy — “KIZAO”

This is what I imagine Daiki Tsuneta wanted for the next chapter of the MILLENNIUM PARADE project. It isn’t just about bringing in big names, but also making connections with corners of the world overlooked in Japan. Rauw Alejandro and Tainy are huge names abroad but, owing to Spanish-language music being niche here, pretty invisible in Japan. This attempts to forge a connection and bring the two closer. Listen above.

DE DE MOUSE And WaMi — “(Never Gonna) Give Me Up”

The partnership between producer DE DE MOUSE and vocalist WaMi continues to result in glistening re-imaginations of well-worn sounds. The title hints at something ‘80s, though the resulting track is much more Hi-NRG than pop cheese. Like the best from any of DE DE MOUSE’s recent collabs, it isn’t so much as recreating a lost vibe as it is taking elements from the past and grafting them into the now. Listen above, or get it here.

Tsubusare BOZZ Featuring madoka — “Omajinai”

It’s M3 season, as the independent music market event happens this weekend. Once again, I have conflicting events so I can’t go…but thankfully, around this time tracks from the various projects being sold at the gathering appear online. Here’s an early highlight courtesy of producer Tsubusare BOZZ, who lays down a busy electro-funk track for guest vocalist madoka to add some vocal sweetness. Listen above, or check out the compilation it will appear on here.

Boys Age And Penguin No Yuutsu — “We Don’t Need This World”

The bedroom-seasick pop Boys Age has long made gets an electronic pick-me-up courtesy of whimsical creator Penguin No Yuutsu. Together, the pair create an upbeat number featuring chiming notes that distract from the melancholy (and like, doomsday leaning) lyrics, giving the long-running project a new energy. Listen above.

Shinako — “Ha Ra Ha Ra”

Now for the most unexpected collab of all…Eurobeat and dental hygiene.

Who am I to dismiss the merger of pop and ASMR!? I love artists like Foodman and PAS TASTA and Sasuke Haraguchi, who use sonic texture to jarring and pleasing and sometimes crunchy effect. ASMR YouTuber Shinako actually does something similar, albeit in a more straight-ahead pop way. Besides just being an influencer who chews on things really close to a mic, she’s released songs utilizing the sound of like, candy being bitten. “Ha Ra Ha Ra” offers a novel twist on this approach, both in theme (she eats a lot of sweets…so she has to brush her teeth too!) and in sonic approach (the sound of a toothbrush being used slides in very nicely with the Eurobeat bop around it). There’s also a cavity breakdown. Bring back Wasbi Tapes to release this. Listen above.

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If you sign up, you get one extra post a week. Last time around, a report from K-Arena in Yokohama, which offered a peak at the future of live music in Japan.

Oricon Trail For The Week Of October 07, 2024 To October 13, 2024

Back in the day, the Oricon Music Charts were the go-to path to music stardom in Japan. Acts of all sorts traversed these lands, trying to sell as many CDs as possible in order to land a good ranking on a chart choosing to only count physical sales, even as the Internet came to be and the number of versions offered for sale got ridiculous. Today, with the country finally in on digital, these roads are more barren and only looked at by the most fanatic of supporters needing something to celebrate. Yet every week, a new song sells enough plastic to take the top spot. So let’s take a trip down…the Oricon Trail.

Ae! group — “Gotta Be” (390,765 Copies Sold)

This has been (and will be) a STARTO heavy edition of the newsletter, so let’s ignore context and instead focus on the sound of the agency’s next-big-thing’s latest song. Wisely…like a lot of recent songs from this corner of J-pop…it leans into rock, a sound they can execute well, and here gets enhanced by some weirder touches (it sounds like the song is…flaking apart at times, before zipping into a jazz passage? OK OK you have my attention). And I’m not talking about the metal breakdown late, though I love that touch, along with the moments where they just let the members shout. This is the best Ae! group song to date.

OK, let us pivot back to context, because this arrives at a very interesting moment…

News And Views

• …where national broadcaster NHK announced they will resume using performers from STARTO, after a very well-documented move last year where they moved away from doing so owing to the reckoning over Johnny Kitagawa’s history of sexual assault. Most importantly for them, it means STARTO talent like Ae! group or Snow Man or King & Prince or whoever can appear on year-end music bonanza Kohaku Uta Gassen, which last year featured zero talent from that agency. It’s worth noting here that last year’s STARTO-less edition featured the worst ratings in the program’s history, though I would pillow that by noting lolz it’s the 21st century we aren’t all stuck in the countryside watching NHK on New Year’s and frankly the fact it still dominates cultural conversation speaks to its power…though also the data would probably look better if Kanjani8 did their thing, too.
  
  This has sparked some slight “discourse” online over if it is really a good thing or if the agency has done enough to address damage done to victim’s of Kitagawa’s assault (the public broadcaster argues, yep), though I personally think this is a bit short sighted. After an initial wave of moving away from STARTO talent in late 2023 after a summer of finally confronting this stain on Japanese entertainment, most brands and channels have been totally fine turning back towards performers from the company in 2024. That’s not even getting at the more complex issue haunting all of this which is…the groups under STARTO remain wildly popular (see Ae! group above), indicating the public has separated artist from agency, and NHK genuinely is limiting themselves by not featuring folks from this space. I won’t bore you with how nuanced it gets³, but we’ve entered a new frontier in the post-reckoning era, and it is going to involve the most popular pop groups in the country getting attention that they, in theory, deserve.
  

• What makes all of this a touch weirder is NHK’s decision to also release a show that finds them basically admitting that, yep, they totally ignored credible information about Kitagawa’s rape of male talent for decades. I’m speculating here, but it feels like a way for them to apologize for failing to properly look into any of this very much out there information over the last, oh, four decades, as a way to move on to being able to have Snow Man on Kohaku.
  

• Well, that was all heavy, let’s distract ourselves with a video where Perfume shoot laser guns. I’ve had multiple people contact me asking “is this AI?” and I don’t know…but based on Instagram, a large portion of it is definitely not, and leads to a bunch of interesting conversations for some other day. For now, give me electro-pop legends dancing with a fake Daft Punk.

• Guitarist Akira Kuwahara announced he was leaving the band RADWIMPS this week.
  

• McDonald’s Japan going full Showa music mode.
  

• Forthcoming Batten Girls album looking stacked, with contributions from Parkgolf, ASOBOiSM and Daoko among others.
  

• Lilas Ikuta of YOASOBI made a song for an adorable anime-style video of Rilakkuma, the relaxation bear and one of my personal favorite characters. This warmed my heart…a lot, really.
  

Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies

Follow the Best Of 2024 Spotify Playlist here!

1. Oddly, the streaming / download version arrives nearly two months ahead of physical editions…which is similar to what Perfume is doing with Nebula Romance. Maybe Universal Music Japan is getting creative? Or does it have to do with both having very light space themes?

2. It also probably helps that King & Prince sort of have to put its stuff on streaming, since rival outfit Number_i — featuring three former members of King & Prince — have enjoyed a lot of love in the press for seeming so digital first.

3. OK, I will here. The mainstream Japanese media, including The Japan Times, defaulting to calling the agency “Johnny’s” actually is kind of unfair, they did blow up that branding in an effort to move forward from the horrible past it reminds of, which is noteworthy.