Make Believe Mailer 14: Power Of Tens
Music Magazine's "Best 100 Albums Of The 2010s"
Canon building, once a fledgling concept, has now hastened into the standard. Music Magazine has been at the forefront of constructing such lists, with their best-of 2000s and 1990s offerings receiving lots of attention upon their releases (and becoming comic in specificity…I bought it immediately obviously, but a “50 Best Perfume Songs” ranking is really starting to narrow the vision). With a 12-month buffer between them that actually feels like several decades thanks to the pandemic, they’ve unveiled their “Best 100 Albums Of the 2010s” list.
Every effort at shaping a canon in Japanese music catches my interest, but this one especially got my foot tapping because…I actually lived through the decade in question in Japan. That 10 year span is now starting to solidify, and the defining musical developments of it changing in ways that weren’t always clear in the moment. Music Magazine’s first draft of this period reveals…a pretty rich time, with new voices emerging and, perhaps more tellingly, older ones proving newly influential.
For reference, I’ve gone and typed out the entire list over here, so feel free to study up on that and listen to what you can.
From cherish, #3 of the 2010s
It’s probably best to start with the caveats — like any list, Music Magazine’s offering is shaped by certain stubborn preferences, something shaping every major effort of this kind before too. It’s the Rolling Stone problem (a comparison that would be much better if Rolling Stone Japan didn’t exist) — they’ve gotta squeeze Neil Young on there somehow. Music Magazine tends to elevate older (mostly male) acts up a peg, meaning the top 10 makes room for Cornelius, KIRINJI1, Sunny Day Service, Shintaro Sakamoto (also placing at #11) and Haruomi Hosono. Go deeper and lots of golden-era names definitely worth attention pop up, for works that…aren’t their finest. Nearly all the inclusions that made me double take…two PIZZICATO ONE albums????…are a result of this, though the high points on that KIRINJI album deserve love (above)
Yet to harp on this would be a disservice to how well Music Magazine has done celebrating new artists, and offering a very well-rounded read of everything Japan had to offer in the previous decade. The smoother metropolis-born rock sounds that emerged in the middle of this period get love (cero’s Obscure Ride #5, Suchmos’ The Kids #15) while also nodding to the wilder experiments appearing in the commercial success of that style (cero, again, for POLY LIFE MULTI SOUL, #14). Actual city pop revival? Lots of examples, topped by Hitomitoi’s excellent bubble diorama City Dive (#16 despite Hitomitoi being featured on the cover…probably because there aren’t a lot of women in the top 20).
Rap gets lots of love, but it isn’t just nods to the old heads, but rather the elevation of KOHH (#17), Yurufuwa Gang (#28) and more. It would have been easy to just ignore idols entirely, yet they appear all over the place, albeit out of the top 40. Even netlabels land the appreciation they so deserve, with tofubeats clocking two full-lengths here and, most daring, Music Magazine placing frantic internet-spiked composer Hakushi Hasegawa’s debut album into the upper echelon (#8).
From Heisei, #1 of the 2010s
Yuta Orisaka’s Heisei tops this list, and it’s another example — I mean, the example, really — of the makers pushing a new voice forward to celebrate. It’s a natural choice for this spot because his second album pretty much encapsulates every single bigger-picture theme Music Magazine lays out in their foreword to this feature, primarily the end of the Heisei era in 2019 (the title here should give away what this album is about) and the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami2, which marks its 10-year anniversary next week (that event haunts the album, with some songs directly referencing the shaking and destructive waves of 3/11).
Those references appear a lot in this list…but there’s another connection found in Heisei and many other inclusions here that isn’t stated out loud. I find Music Magazine’s 2010s ranking is declaring it the decade of Hosono.
From HoSoNoVa, #10 of the 2010s
In general, the 2010s felt like the decade where the world really realized “oh, that Haruomi Hosono guy is kind of amazing.” He’s the throughline for every flavor of algorithmically-powered Japanese retro trend online — from city pop to ambient — while also becoming a go to point of inspiration for artists all over. Ezra Koening sampled his Muji music, and about 70 percent of Mac Demarco’s catalog boils down to him trying to imitate Hosono House.3 He’s always been in the spotlight in Japan — dude has starred in convenience store commercials! — but it felt bolded in the past ten years, with books and magazines and young artists nodding to him.
The Music Magazine list captures that latter dynanimc well (while also including Hosono’s own 2011 bossa nova album in the top ten for good measure4), with so many folksy acts channeling ‘70s solo Hosono in their music alongside spotlights falling on bigger names like Hoshino Gen, an admirer turned student of Hosono in the early 2010s, and whose whole “yellow music” concept draws from Hosono’s own “soy sauce music” idea of taking sounds from around the world and adding a drop of Japanese perspective to each. VIDEOTAPEMUSIC’s entire career is just trying to recreate Tropical Dandy…and they get in the top 50.
That can apply to Orisaka’s Heisei too, an album that channels pre-YMO Hosono strongly both in how it draws from the whole globe and…this is a little unfair…how often Orisaka’s voice drifts into the same Kermit-lite zone Hosono does. It being #1 is part acknowledging a new voice in Japanese music, but also part showing just how far the reach of the father of all this goes.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Whoa whoa whoa slow down….what about the SNUBS!?!?
Ahhhh, time to get personal. Generally, Music Magazine manages what any good list does…they cram the last, like, 20 spots with as much variety, to shut people like me up from nerding out about what they left off. That’s where you find Sakanaction, Foodman, OORUTAICHI and Suiyoubi No Campanella5, acts who made multiple albums I’d cram into my own version of this. Every writer also submitted a individual lists that helps round this out — shout out the person putting Especia’s Gusto, a top-ten lock for me, as the second-best album of the 2010s.
No omissions really feel too glaring — though, for posterity, they include everyting on Flau (top-notch but obscure), Soutaiseiriron (already immortalized in the 2000s list via their best album), anything Enon Kawatani did (don’t be a creep, kids!), tricot (a good example of the reverse-import effect in action, far bigger outside Japan than inside until 2020), Haru Nemuri (same, though I also think CHAI probably just takes both of their spots), Tsudio Studio (though does appear on some personal lists), BABYMETAL and anything WACK related (Music Magazine’s idol taste leans towards the light, not the “underground”).
There’s only two exclusions that feel intentional in a way to shape how the 2010s are remembered from a critical perch (in the same way Music Magazine’s ‘90s list pretends Tetsuya Komuro didn’t exist). First, Vocaloid and post-Vocaloid music…easily the most important community of creators to emerge in Japan during the 21st century…is completely ignored. I think the Music Magazine6 of 2040 staffed by folks who were teens in the 2010s will have a very different read on this lane.
Second….
From Pamyu Pamyu Revoltuion, not a noteworthy album of the 2010s
Look, I’m worried this is going to be my cause for 2021. We are months away from the 10th anniversary of “PonPonPon” (above), a song and video that literally shaped a large chunk of the world’s image of Japan last decade (nobody built a themed cafe inspired by Hosono) and just still kills it as pure pop pleasure. Pamyu Pamyu Revolution and Nanda Collection are masterpieces, both as front-to-back Technicolor dance-pop confection and as sly meditation on coming of age in late Heisei, which puts them in the same ballpark as Heisei…not to mention how her whole rise was a byproduct of post-3/11 escapism.
(I’m going to be insufferable this year, sorry in advance).
She’s totally absent from Music Magazine’s top 100…but also missing from any writer’s individual ballot. This publication leans rock, but pop appears all over, including via another Yasutaka Nakata-produced outfit in the form of Perfume (#46, second-best Perfume album so good call guys!). It’s not a mystery why she doesn’t earn looks from the critical apparatus — in Japan, she was, at best, a three-year phenomenon whose cruising by today on international love.7 But these albums are masterpieces doubling as perfect snapshots of a very specific period of time…and now they are the first real overlooks of this new canon…though I’m glad there’s space at all for this type of nerdery to play out.
Big month for KIRINJI being celebrated. Their song “Aliens” was named the 16th best J-pop song of the 21st century, for a list made for a TV show that is just a trip all its own (“PPAP” at #29 and…maybe deserved!).
Though not the subsequent disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which inspired just as much music but doesn’t really get reflected anywhere on here. Another theme of this list — staying largely apolitical, despite 3/11 forcing a lot of musicians to get outspoken.
Pretty sure this didn’t happen but…I’d love to see what the same Music Magazine crew made of non-Japanese albums in the 2010s, and how much this same mindset would shape that.
Not a fan personally, but besides being a chance to celebrate Hosono, Music Magazine also underlines its connection to 3/11…backed up by checking out the comments on the above YouTube video, full of people stating how Hosono’s cheerful tunes helped them temporarily escape the horror of the natural disaster.
Not sure if I’m 100% willing to commit to this just yet…but Superman is my vote for #1 at this moment, just wildly ahead-of-its-time and a pure blast, even nearly five years later.
Future BBC headline about Japan, circa 2042 — “Seen as high-tech wonderland, Japan still publishes magazines. What’s wrong with them?”
A whole can of worms here about why that is, though a lot of the blame definitely falls on Kyary’s side…especially (in my humble opinion) her agency, which had an easy layup in front of them they somehow launched the other way for a backcourt violation.