Make Believe Mailer #103: STUPiG
Happy Ten Years To A Song That Still Melts My Mind
Ten years back, the age of peak idol was cresting. A decade ago this week, AKB48 released its third full-length album Tsugi no Ashiato. It’s a document of the biggie-sized outfit’s dominance, featuring its most endearing hits and highest quality offerings. Beyond being a million-selling hit, Tsugi served as the final monument to a five-year run where AKB dominated J-pop and the country’s pop culture at large. For better or for worse, the project became the entertainment center. To comment on Japanese pop was to grapple with AKB48.
That period of dominance, though, was coming to a close. Fittingly, the very same week Tsugi arrived in stores, a group that thrived by poking at and parodying the idol extremes AKB48 represented released one of their final singles…and the one I’d argue is easily the group’s finest, and maybe the best J-pop song of the decade. Ten years later, “STUPiG” only sounds better.
The draw of BiS made perfect sense in the age of AKB. The Akihabara heavyweights presented charm and fantasy, signalling order in their ecosystem even when the reality was anything but. BiS, on the other end, functioned entirely on chaos. Members changed frequently, but instead of tearful graduation ceremonies they ended up targets of diss songs. The group baited fans regularly. Musically1, BiS leaned towards metal and heavier rock, and actually went and collaborated with Japanese noise bands to create some of the most surreal videos to ever come out of J-pop.
More than anything else, they ripped into idol-dom. BiS actively mocked the practice of fans buying multiple copies of the same CD (though who knows, they probably benefitted from it too). The group courted controversey with very un-idol-like videos, say of them prancing around the “suicide forest” “nude” or filming close-up shots of their uvulas or getting uncomfortably intimate. One of BiS’ final videos takes a familiar idol trope — the beach setting, summer fun, bikinis galore — but sets it at one of the shittiest looking stretches of coastline in the country. All idol music is, to some degree, pro wrestling. BiS was ECW.
Antics like this coupled with BiS’ more aggressive sound got them labelled as “subversive,” including frequently by me at the time2. If “STUPiG” is any bit subversive, though, it’s because it’s flipping expectations of the group itself. If you really stretch it, the video — above, finding BiS rolled up in a cyberpunk hell — offers a commentary on the music industry…becuase there’s like instruments and wires wrapped around them, plus that CD headdress. Yet I think that’s overthinking it. “STUPiG” doesn’t need to point at the idol industry or mock anything. No references or knowledge needed. It just screams at you, over distorted digital hardcore.
It’s tempting to call “STUPiG” ahead of its time. The distorted sound and near-gabber beat spiked by a catchy hook should warrant this BiS single inclusion in whatever proto-hyperpop playlists or spreadsheets exist out there. Yet they managed that by pulling from the past…and specifically bringing in people from the period and place “STUPiG’s” sound emerged from.
Takeshi Ueda of The Mad Capsule Markets, a rock band standing out in the late ‘90s thanks to its embrace of digital hardcore, produced the song. That group managed to attract plenty of attention during its heyday — most probably encountered the group’s song “PULSE” as part of the soundtrack to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 — but disbanded in 2006. Ueda carried on with a new project at times touching on the same sound, but his particular blend of punk and electronic wasn’t prevalent in pop circa the early 2010s.
Part of “STUPiG’s” magic is in the authenticity the group take to recreate this sound while still bending it to fit BiS’ idol approach. If you are going to capture the sonic feel of an era — go to a person who was doing it3. A worse version of the song would let the vocals on the verses be clearer, cutting through the noise to appease Avex upper crust. Instead, the all-together-now delivery just makes everything more claustrophobic. Words race out like they are running out of oxygen. The moments where individual members can sing come across a little less damaged, but with a dead-eyed energy to them.
It’s the pulverizing, suffocatting music that made this single an immediate shock in 2014 — even at a time when “alternative” idols were booming, nobody was channeling, like, Atari Teenage Riot. It remains forceful because of Ueda’s touch, and its ability to link one era to another without feeling like a history lesson, but rather carrying the energy forward.
“STUPiG” isn’t held up as a classic idol or J-pop song from this era — it sold fine upon its release, but wasn’t a marquee hit — though lurking within its DNA is an important legacy less obvious. For Ueda, working with BiS marked his first time collaborating with an idol group. Several months later, he was recruited to work with his second. While nowhere near as aggressive and opting for a more direct “music loud, lyrics cute” tension rather than the pure sonic contrasts found on “STUPiG,” the same general approach came through, complete with electronic dapplings.
That song, though, became a viral sensation globally, and helped usher in a new era of idol music, especially on the world stage (not to mention countless metal festival stages). “STUPiG” is that moment in chrysalis, wiggling around all gross like.
What is BiS’ legacy? The obvious answer is that they turned a black t-shirt that just says “IDOL” on it into one of the defining pieces of music fashion of the 21st century…when it’s warm out, I see at least one weekly while riding the Sobu Line around west Tokyo. Next in line is that they set the pace for the visual and sonic style for a generation of “alternative” idols…not to mention helping their production company WACK morph from weirdo underground agency to hobknobbing with major labels, leading to the genuine mainstream success of BiSH, a group taking “alternative’ idol aesthetics and presenting it in a palatable way for general listeners.
Yet the percieved “subversion” that defined BiS during its existence feels like something that could have only happened in the early 2010s, when idols reigned supreme and social media wasn’t quite at the point it is now. This proves correct when you learn BiS came back twice following its 2014 disbanding — once in 2016, and again with a whole new lineup in 2019. These updated flavors of BiS had and do have its fans, but lack any greater impact on J-pop.
Original BiS constantly found themselves the focus of controversy, but in a very “can you believe this?” tone that also gawked at it all. Jump forward a few years during BiS 2.0, when leader Pour Lui had to lose weight or face suspension from the group, failed, indeed was suspended and broke down on camera. That’s typical BiS fare, but the reaction in 2017 was much more aggrieved and moralistic (aka it happened on Twitter). That part of BiS just couldn’t work in modern online times4.
“STUPiG” offers an alternate way to remember BiS. Not as anti-idols, a term thrown around a lot back then to describe them or Oomori Seiko which ultimately failed to capture what they were all about5. They loved idols and the possibilities this world allowed. It wasn’t sacred space needing to be messed up — J-pop idols have always been self aware and open to satirizing the industry they operate in. Even AKB48, portrayed as air-headed performers by the media at the time, constantly examined the idol life and starred in a video game where players shot zombie versions of them. With BiS, the members clearly had an appreciation for this territory — they hung out with Dempagumi.inc! — and instead sought out a way to express themselves as artists.
“STUPiG” is abrasive and constricting and for most of its run intentionally battering the listener. Yet then the chorus comes, and out of all that cacaphony emerges a perfect pop hook, delivered much more clearly albeit still with a harried tone underlining it. Both sides can coexist, and even work together to make the other stronger. “STUPiG” isn’t interested in tearing down scenes or genres. Rather, it’s highlighting what’s possible in the space, and how any artist — idol or otherwise — can express themselves however they want. This was their chance to scream it out, and show that an idol could be whatever you wanted it to be.
BiS live at a shopping mall somewhere in Hakata.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
One of the other wild details about BiS is how they counted experimental artist Tentenko as a member for several years. This would be like if Keiji Haino had suddenly joined The Checkers sometime in the mid ‘80s, and then started doing Keiji Haino things after they broke up.
I wrote about them for Vice back in the day and…it is a very Vice article. But a lot of people really did hate them!
See also: another idol song from the year prior in contention for J-pop’s best of the 2010s, Negicco’s “Idol Bakari Kikanai De,” produced by Yasuharu Konishi of Pizzicato Five, who would know better than anyone how to capture the Shibuya-kei vibe. Bonus opinion: this song skewers idol culture better than any of BiS’ attempts, largely because it hides its jabs under playful music…while doubling as a tribute to idols of yesteryear.
This includes the group’s overall commentary on idol music, which while often shocking still found room to nod to references and generally have a point. This type of work fell out of style. Look, instead, at the closest outfit in modern Japanese music to vintage BiS — Planck Stars, who have similarly done crazy things and found themselves the target of discourse. The difference is they aren’t playing with idol concepts or satirizing anything. They are trolls (complimentary!).
I did this at times, and see it as one of my biggest critical misses.