Make Believe Mailer 26: Akiko Wada Enters The Discovery Zone

Who Needs To Promote When You Can Be Found?

Akiko Wada — “Yona Yona Dance”

Anyone can become a global superstar on the internet…so why not Akiko Wada? The 71-year-old media staple has managed one of the most impressive entertainment careers imaginable in post-war Japan. She started out in the late ‘60s as a singer before morphing into an all-around talent. You are just as likely to see her cracking jokes on a variety show as you are to catch her offering political opinions on news programs (even if her omnipresence has lead many netizens to loathe her).

Being a constant topic of discussion on bulletin boards and real virality, though, are very different experiences. “Yona Yona Dance,” released in early September as a digital-only single, has approached the latter. The elastic funk cut finds Wada working with the band Frederic, with their signature nervy songwriting melding with Akiko-appropriate splashes of retro sound (the chorus just…eats you up, ya know?). It’s great, boosted up by Wada’s husky voice and a chipper emotional core standing out from 2021’s gloomy musical mood (that cowbell! When was the last time cowbell featured so prominently in J-pop?). The video, above, embraces animation, always a smart move for a Japanese pop song.

That all has worked together to make it an internet hit. The video sits just north of seven million views on YouTube at time of writing, and has enjoyed high placement in Spotify Japan’s Viral 50 for most of the past month (although it is currently sliding down a bit). Let’s turn to the true barometer of online cool though — TikTok, where “Yona Yona Dance” has performed extremely well on the platform’s TikTok HOT SONG Weekly chart, inspiring plenty of front-camera-centric dancing…including from Wada herself, game for using the platform despite clearly facing a learning curve.

One of the many, many YouTube covers

Out have come all the other markers of online popularity — YouTube covers from real humans, performed by Virtual YouTubers, and mashed up with circa-2012 viral clips to create truly disorienting internet art. The video and its animation style has become a popular point of inspiration for artists and animators alike. And then come the trend articles, breaking down how it became a hit (special shout out to Kayo Kyoku Plus for an early read on it).

If you needed a snappy summary of how Japanese music has radically changed in, like, four years, here it is, with a particularly irresistible backbeat. It only exists as a digital offering, largely consumed via streaming. The music reflects contemporary trends in Japan, while coupling those with an animated video laying out a hand-centric dance ideal for TikTok. Half a decade ago, music companies were terrified of the internet. Now, they’re creating singles geared towards it.

That’s not what interest me most about “Yona Yona Dance,” though, because there’s something else on display here.

City Poppin’ Off

I swear this newsletter hasn’t transformed into a diary of what I eat…yet (full disclosure: fried chicken sandwich bought by a client after work meeting)

While often flailing and failing to promote outside of their borders, the Japanese music industry has become savvy about what does do well. In recent times, that’s “city pop,” or maybe better expanded out as “Japanese music from the 1970s and 1980s.” Everyone is aware of this now, and are trying to capitalize on this newfound interest. I can speak on it because I’ve directly benefitted from it — I’ve had interviews with prolific Japanese songwriters presented to me thanks to unexpected TikTok trends. In the past two weeks, I’ve sat in rooms with Japanese music legends, opportunities offered to a media apparatus once met with scrunched-up faces. I’ve been interviewed by Japanese journalists about the topic.

In the same way Kyary Pamyu Pamyu set the pace for the entire foreign image of Japan in the first half of the 2010s, the online city pop revival has shaped the current state of both entertainment and tourism across the country. To continue with ~ my life ~ I recently ate at a vaguely “city pop themed” restaurant in Shibuya (my dining partner’s words, not mine), located inside a hotel built to capitalize on the expected inbound visitor rush come Tokyo 2020. That didn’t happen — but perhaps this spot, with its Tatsuro Yamashita LPs proudly displayed on bookcase and framed Hiroshi Nagai prints on the wall, will make it to the days when Narita once again overflows with visitors, looking for their own escape into Bubble-era nostalgia. Very good chicken sandwich (above), by the way.

What’s fascinating about all of this is how this interest in older Japanese music comes to be. Japan, for the better part of a decade, has been criticized for dropping opportunities at promoting its pop culture abroad, whether via the “Cool Japan” initiative or just generally lacking sizzle. Let’s embrace our worst tendencies, get reductive and compare Japan to neighboring South Korea, which has enjoyed the opposite narrative as soft power heavyweight. They’ve managed that thanks to active engagement, by always being in the conversation and highlighting any achievement big or small. The fans, companies and government play a role in making sure that, hey, have you heard about K-pop? Did you see Squid Game? Do you have time to learn about webtoons?

Japan and Japanese companies tends to be bad about this method of promotion. Instead, Japanese pop culture — especially music — has to be discovered by folks abroad. What if that’s a perk, though, and helps said exports in the long run?

Enter…the Discovery Zone.

“A vortex of grooviness”

You’re reading a newsletter devoted to a niche corner of the global pop ecosystem in 2021…odds are, you are the same kind of nerd as me, who has felt the thrill of discovering some obscure or unheralded album, of crossing paths with an artist nobody knows about. That’s almost always a distortion, even more so when wading into non-English music, where the creator seemingly ignored by the masses to you is actually a superstar (or at least has a sizeable following) in their home country. Yet that little inner flutter remains…wow, I found something!

Japanese pop culture has always benefitted from being in the Discovery Zone, especially music. Can you imagine the thrill of the person who walked into the Matador office declaring “I’ve found something that will blow your mind, a little ol’ band called Pizzicato Five!” That’s only become more true in the current landscape, where paradoxically things feels more fragmented (with streaming, we have everything available to us….uhhhh, where do I start?) but also less robust (everyone gravitates towards the same megastars). Who wouldn’t feel a rush of excitement stumbling across an obscure bit of Japanese fusion? Or, maybe more likely, directed toward Mariya Takeuchi via YouTube recommendation, or Minako Yoshida through Rate Your Music. Doesn’t matter how you get there…it still feels like you are finding tunes nobody else is talking about, in the grand scheme of things.

“Maybe Americans are getting bored of what’s coming out of their country,” one of those celebrated Japanese artists told me last week about this resurgence in older Japanese music.

Does it win you immediate praise and get art placed in the current discourse? No, but it does allow for a greater chance at longevity or resurgence, not to mention cool if that’s your speed. A Japanese song from 1979 can suddenly be everywhere on the world’s most popular app decades later, all because of it being in the Discovery Zone.

So…can you manufacture that?

I Can Always Be Found

Again, Japanese music companies know what’s up, and I think they are keen to the Discovery Zone. Purely rumor and industry gossip, but I’ve heard TikTok Japan saw the viral success of “Mayonaka No Door / Stay With Me” and doubled down on promoting city pop to a user base always hungry to discover a new trend. Perhaps that’s over the top, but everyone knows about the viability of city pop abroad…and how part of the fun is the “surprise” at it being discovered.

“Yona Yona Dance” feels especially aware of this, and designed to be a song that could potentially become a gem unearthed by the influencers of the near future (and kind of already has). It sounds like city pop, with its beat and lyrics bringing to mind “Plastic Love” (again…that cowbell though), with more you-can’t-miss-this references to ‘80s pop along the edges. Akiko Wada is a superstar waiting to be found by contemporary listeners, and here is her gateway. The dance moves and anime-style video are a little more obvious in inviting viewers to participate, but even they offer a similar thrill.

But forget any of the fake nostalgia for nights out in ‘80s Tokyo…I think it’s Frederic being involved that’s the biggest clue.

All Japanese music benefits from discovery, not just the old stuff. You can argue how damning it is for the industry that contemporary Japanese music needs to be found rather than pushed, but it has its perks, and can lead to some unlikely success stories. Like Frederic, a band with an out-of-nowhere viral hit in 2014’s “Oddloop” (disorienting and slightly unsettling video above) that’s still generating views and comments today. That group being attached to “Yona Yona Dance” feels like a breadcrumb trail…ahhh, you encountered this before, do we have something else to show you.

The trick is…we won’t really know if “Yona Yona Dance” can go up to this level of attention for a while. Early returns are pretty strong…besides being a meme domestically (and a little bit abroad), you can find a fair amount of non-Japanese comments beneath the video on YouTube, and elsewhere online. Nothing crazy, but hey it wouldn’t be a treasure if everyone was digging it up at once. Wada will probably perform it at NHK’s end-of-year spectacular Kohaku Uta Gassen, giving it extra juice. Now, it’s a moderate hit at home with some slight international traction, with the potential to be something more if the right people come across it. But, given how it’s been put into the world, who knows if they will find it or when.

That’s part of the fun, though…and the Japanese music industry might be aware of that now, ready to leave out sonic clues and see who finds them.

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

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