Make Believe Mailer 12: Four Paths
2020 Ushered In New Potential For J-pop...Which Way Will It Go?
Last year for The Japan Times’ music-in-review feature, I wrote that 2019 signaled the start of a new era for J-pop. The past 12 months truly underlined that the country’s music industry was facing a frontier, both building on ideas I looked at last December and presenting unexpected models players in the country could embrace moving forward. Of course the COVID-19 pandemic hovered above all of this — it hovered over everything — but this once-in-a-century development simply accelerated trends already in motion.
J-pop is changing…but how exactly will it morph as the 2020s truly settle in? Four of the year’s biggest songs showcased four potential paths forward for the industry. All of them intersected at times, but these hits each practically proposed an ideal step forward for a music business long seen as stuck in the past.
This quartet of songs defined 2020 in Japanese pop, and they deserve deeper looks…as do the potential ways forward they represent.
Path One: YOASOBI “Yoru Ni Kakeru” (The Art And Commercial Compromise)
NHK’s year-end bonanza Kohaku Uta Gassen announced that the duo YOASOBI would play the Dec. 31st show today, marking the project’s first live appearance ever and giving the music extravaganza the chance to actually highlight the biggest domestic hit of the calendar year.
“Yoru Ni Kakeru” — “Racing Into The Night” — is fascinating for a bunch of reasons, ranging from how its lyrics about launching yourself off a building reflect the more glum realities of pop listeners in Japan, to the fact the year’s biggest hit never came out on a physical format. Pretty radical stuff for a country still linked so tightly to CDs.
The real shift, though, comes in the balance between artistry and commercial connections. It’s also the change that was most clear at the end of 2019 — from my perspective, it was the note to close the feature on, observing how the likes of Yorushika, Zutomayo and more balanced being part of the J-pop machine with being creatives raised in the Vocaloid community, a space where individuals tended to control every aspect of their art, from the sound to the artwork to the music videos. A little over a month before that story published, “Yoru Ni Kakeru” dashed onto YouTube, bringing together a relatively unheralded vocalist with an emerging producer who got a start creating songs centered around Hatsune Miku.
Despite that creative spirit being central to YOASOBI, it’s important to remember they are a major label undertaking. Gendai interviewed the Sony Japan team that helped make the pair a breakout hit, and it’s a good reminder that it generally still takes a lot to create a smash. “Yoru Ni Kakeru” is based off a short story posted to the Sony-owned site Monogatary, and the duo have enjoyed extra attention thanks to The First Take, a YouTube channel that…well, it isn’t hard to speculate that Sony has some kind of involvement in it, given how many Sony artists and headphones factor into the series.
It’s tempting to get cynical about this — I’ve caught a few Twitter-centric Japanese music critics say liking YOASOBI is akin to really being into marketing (though…have you seen pop / fandom around the world recently?) — but I think this compromise ultimately could be good in establishing a unique sound for J-pop, one where artists manage to retain their overall vision but reap the benefits a major label provide. In 2020, it worked — besides the groups mentioned above, you had Vocaloid-adjacent creators like Yama, Mafumafu and Eve (an especially compelling one given how well they do on Spotify internationally) enjoying huge years…while the artist arguably responsible for all of this, Kenshi Yonezu, delivered the best-selling album of the year. “Yoru Ni Kakeru” stood as the anthem for this relationship…but it wasn’t the only approach to hit it big.
Path Two: NiziU “Make you happy” (The Just Let K-pop Deal With It Special)
I’ll always associate the first half of 2020 — unnerving, stuck indoors, generally shit — with the downer rush of YOASOBI. I will also always remember the very end of June, when “Make you happy” burst in all Kool-Aid-Man-like, like it was smashing into our world from a parallel universe where the world got the novel coronavirus under control by early March. So upbeat! So smiley! So un-2020!
Everyone needed a splash of serotonin, especially after the state of emergency in Japan. NiziU’s “pre-debut” single, however, stood out even more because of how it used K-pop strategies — the same ones that turned the South Korean industry into a global force — to re-imagine what J-pop could be. They weren’t alone, as IZ*ONE carried on and JO1 presented a similar idea for a male group.
It was “Make you happy,” though, that cleaned up best. It’s the most viewed Japanese video on YouTube, approaching 200 million views and, thanks to its connection to K-pop powerhouse JYP Entertainment, earning looks from K-pop fans all over the world.
J-pop and K-pop have been linked for decades, and over the past ten years the latter’s success worldwide has resulted in a lot of brainstorming from the prior. Japanese labels have attempted all kinds of K-pop-ish units — LDH takes cues from Korea, while Avex projects like FAKY and Intersection exist as reactions to the possible reach of Asian music. Other groups take visual inspiration from Japan’s neighbor. Yet none have come close to making inroads like those of Korean outfits.*
So…why not just let K-pop companies pick up the slack? This will be one of the bigger trends to keep an eye on in 2021, as all the aforementioned groups continue to work and Big Hit Japan begins…whatever they are up to. K-pop agencies know how to make hits in Japan and abroad so, if said entities can start packaging together Japanese groups that work on both sides, why wouldn’t they? On this path, K-pop wins, and the aesthetics and strategies that worked for one industry get applied to another. Maybe, though, that’s a little too controlled…
*Quick aside here to note…it goes the other way too, as 2020 continued the trend of Korean artist and labels embracing city pop as a way to add a dash of cool to their sound and win over a different kind of audience than those gravitating to your usual K-pop idols (people who spend most of their time on Rate Your Music). This won’t truly reach its peak until, like, Blackpink try to imitate “Plastic Love” or something, but it is worth noting that it is not quite as one-sided as you’d think.
Path Three: eito “Kousui” (The Chaos Reigns Approach)
Ahhhh, at last, we come to TikTok. All music pretty much ended up processed through that short-form video app at some point this year, as did nearly all culture. For me personally, I’m always more interested in older songs that suddenly find new life on TikTok than new songs taking advantage of current trends. Give me the “Dreams” guy over Jason Derulo’s garbage (at least until labels figure it out and ruin that, too).
Japan had plenty of both, including YOASOBI and NiziU enjoying varying degrees of vitality among the teens of the country. Those, however, came from savvy major label types at Sony. Singer-songwriter eito’s “Kousui” flourished on TikTok out of the blue, turning this May 2019 single into one of 2020’s defining hits.
Of the four artists featured here today, eito is the one least tied to the larger path. He’s lucked into a hit that guarantees he will always have a crowd willing to see him. He has a full-length dropping next month complete with a vaguely country-sounding single set in a burger shop, but whatever happens with that doesn’t matter because “Kousui” exists. It’s also the one song with zero sonic implications for J-pop’s future. This is an acoustic breakup ballad, which has primarily been lauded by fans and critics for not just mentioning the smell of perfume in its lyrics, but the smell of Dolce & Gabbana perfume…and it isn’t even an ad! Nothing new.
What is new — the idea of letting the TikTok masses make your song a hit, regardless of when it came out. Some of the more notable surprises of the year emerged from TikTok trends, such as the sudden ubiquity of “Chernobyl 2017” (which…this is the reason why? OK) and “The New Sweet Groove.” eito’s song was the best example of this crowdsourced approach, going from a TikTok phenomenon to something being parodied on YouTube and then TV and then baseball players.
J-pop used to be wary of letting too much control slip away from them. Now, pretty much everything needs to have at least a slight opening where listeners themselves can make a song their own in some way. “Kousui” offered an extreme view…and was joined at the end of the year by what might be Japan’s biggest international surprise of the year, Miki Matsubura’s 1979 debut single becoming a wholesome…and Spotify trending topper…hit with a new crowd. It might be scary to leave it to the others, but 2020 showed that it could lead to some interesting surprises.
Path Four: Official HIGE DANdism “I LOVE…” (The Just Do What You Do, But Well, Track)
When the idea of live shows both domestic and international remained viable at the start of 2020, I heard some industry gossip before what would end up being the last show I saw at all this year. Rumor was, the band Official HIGE DANdism (Higedan from here on out) wanted to try a Western crossover which…caught me off guard. Them???
That’s nothing against the group, who had topped 2019 with the deceptively gloomy “Pretender” and had started this year off with a career highlight in “I LOVE…,” a fireworks display of arena rock using drum machine and synths to keep the drama up, while spotlighting lyrics avoiding the usual pretentious pondering of other top-level J-rock acts capable of filling Tokyo Dome in favor of…a character fumbling on how to express just why they are drawn to someone else.
Still…isn’t this slice of clap-a-long rock totally out of step with global trends? How would this connect with listeners worldwide?
Now come the end of the year, I mostly think…what if being out of step with “global pop” is the best move possible for Japan?
I realize reading too much into netizen comments is as silly as you can get, but I haven’t been able to shake this post about Koreans being jealous of rock’s mainstream status in Japan. Higedan isn’t who those posters are necessarily pointing at, but they are the biggest rock group going in Japan now, so it seems fair to bring them in with the ONE OK ROCKs and Wanimas. They also aren’t doing anything new — but rather just updating a tired and true approach (bleeding over to the video for “I LOVE…” too…LGBTQ couples and single dads? In one of the most viewed videos of the year? Steps forward for sure).
Yet that works, especially at home where Higedan tower over the rock scene right now. They aren’t alone either…King Gnu remains buzzed by keeping it simple, while 2020 breakout bands like Macaroni Enpitsu, Novelbright and Broken Kangaroo among others…mostly stick to the script. Being more open to digital realities helps for sure, but musically, rock still does extremely well here, so why change it up?
That’s a boring path to finish on, but part of me thinks it could also end up being the one that best fits J-pop’s continued efforts to gain attention globally (the route represented by YOASOBI is close to this, but a little more musically daring and in tune with the global mindset of “yeesh, this all sucks”). Why compete with “global pop” that has a heads start when you can offer an alternative in the form of rock, which is probably due for revival anytime now (everything is cyclical baby)? Higedan…and the speculation around them thinking they can try to go abroad…taps into this, and reveals some surprising ambition along the way.
Do you like these big-picture thoughts about Japanese pop culture? Then you should listen to “Recultured,” the podcast series I worked on over the last two months about how COVID-19 changed Japan’s pop culture! Follow it here, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Nice read!!