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Aug 30Liked by Patrick St. Michel

It's a little wild to me that the same magazine that gave KARA not just one, but two cover issues would blank them for this. (Yeah, I know the critic pool has changed since 2011.) I would've liked to have seen Jet Coaster Love or something as an original Japanese single that actually managed to make a sizeable dent in the public consciousness at the time.

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Aug 30Liked by Patrick St. Michel

As an indication of how disconnected I was from the entire decade, I only know who Kyary Pamyu is because they based a video game character on her. I was disgusted by U.S.A because it wasn't da DA PUMP that I grew up with!

I always thought of STAY TUNE's significance as the definition 2 of City Pop, which is music *of* The City (as evidenced by them taking over the JWAVE studio space in the video) performed by an ensemble of studio musicians, not music aping 70s and 80s pop (and if it was - only in a roundabout way, because that's what Jamiroquai and Daft Punk or *cough* Maroon 5 were doing).

And once more I can lay down the torch and pitchfork because they bothered to include EVISBEATS "Yureru" - which flips a sample of Slum Village's "Fall In Love" which in turn sampled Gap Mangione (who is from my home town!), finally joining Japan's 2nd most significant contribution to hip hop (after the MPC, sorry Nigo) - lofi - with the decidedly hifi J Dilla stuff that people keep conflating with it. I didn't realize until about a week ago that Dengaryu was a popular actor - and kudos to him, because the video for that song is like a window into my life.

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