Make Believe Melodies For January 7, 2025
I Actually Had A Proper Vacation...And Feel Completely Out Of The Loop
Fushicho Group — FENI Nishinasuno Store Tracks
Few can resist the siren’s song of department store BGM. Elements of supermarket sounds have often found there way into Japanese music, running from idols such as Especia to indie projects like BEST MUSIC’s Music For Supermarket, a stone-cold classic to anyone who has lingered too long in the Aeon vegetable section to hear MIDI jams. You have artists like Boogie Idol, meanwhile, using the consumer-pleasing sound palette to build a genre dubbed “Juscotech,” an underground style that spread out further in the early 2010s.
DE DE MOUSE and Sean Oshima’s new project Fushicho Group approaches the idea of an imagined shopper’s paradise, albeit filtered through internet genres. FENI Nishinasuno Store Tracks presents the fictional soundtrack to a Showa-era mall that never existed. It’s immediate inspiration is the very-online world of “mallsoft” and the much sillier concept of “liminal spaces,” which is often just “indoor places.” Spinning off from vaporwave, it’s slowed-down tracks mimicking the sounds — or at least the ideas of — what you would hear inside malls. The songs on FENI provide the same fusion-indebted soundscapes, given a layer of fuzz to add to the nostalgic vibe, and at times being way too smooth. Yet there’s a tension lurking beneath it.
Like how Especia’s 2014 album Gusto worked so well because it injected an imagined version of a Japan-indebted style (vaporwave) with an awareness of what really was (the hits / vibe of the ‘80s), Fushicho’s memories of Showa come from a pair who, while not quite living through them, can at least relate to them in a way those creating false pasts can’t. The speakers at this mall can sound a little too Tumblr-born for its own good — anything unfolding like syrup falling off a spoon is a bit too internet — but many others feature the same glistening and sometimes clunky sounds you’d hear in Bubble-era movies1 and TV commercials…and, presumably, inside your favorite store, with references to disco, funk and rock. It’s that ache — coupled with how like limber and fun the best parts here are — that make it a welcome addition to the Japanese store-BGM pantheon. Get it here, or listen above.
Rika Tana — Bokyaku
Sputtering and sparking ahead, Bokyaku finds melody in fragmentation. The latest from the left-field pop world of KAOMOZI rumbles ahead, with Rika Tana creating catchy instrumental numbers — sometimes transforming into slow burners — that all feel a bit disjointed. Yet from that unease comes something invigorating, showing how catchiness can be born out of unlikely combinations. Get it here, or listen above.
House Of Tapes — Pessimistic / Paralyzed
Now, you know who has been finding cohesion in chaos for a long time? Nagoya’s House Of Tapes, who kicks off 2025 with a pair of songs that manage to turn all kinds of crushing sonic elements into something clicking together just right. Get it here, or listen above.
Only U And JEAN — “man in da mirror”
This sounds like it shotgunned NyQuil. Only U and JEAN move at blurry speed — pitching themselves, not quite to screw levels but still very much in a haze — which gives their reflection and boasts a sense of welcome wooziness. Listen above.
e5 — “LOST ONE”
The familiar blown-out raps of e5 are joined by a rock edge on latest song “LOST ONE.” Produced by krynX, it gives an energy boost to e5’s sound, all while holding the self-reflective lyrics she’s always delivered close. Listen above.
Kikoku Shijo — Taiiku Riron
Honestly, a lot of this edition of the newsletter is putting down albums / releases that came out at the end of last December worth your time. Here’s one finding a middle-ground between adolescent-charged rock and trippier rap. A great example of how younger creators blur stylistic lines to create some wild and absorbing sounds. Listen above.
Official HIGE DANdism — “50%”
You can tell everyone’s getting burned out when the arena rockers start questioning the rat race. Over the final month of 2024, two J-pop acts that few would ever classify as “cutting” released songs urging listeners to take it a little easier (with the implicit message of “work fucking sucks, right?”). Mrs. GREEN APPLE’s “Bitter Vacanes” urges the stressed-out employees of Japan to seek vacation, and to remember that the crushing realities of capitalism shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all of your life (all this made even clearer via the video). It’s intriguing, and coming from a usually smiley-smiley pop-rock trio, offers intrigue. Then the chorus comes and they completely blow it with their usual “awww shucks” melodies and high-school English insights into life. Still, the ills of modern society jut out.
Much, much, much better is Official HIGE DANdism’s call for doing less. On “50%,” the band’s usual aiming-for-the-nosebleed-section pomp becomes a declaration to think about your physical and mental health, ultimately digging into the contradiction of needing to achieve at the expense of your own being. Critically, they become unhinged. The lyrics in the first verse and chorus certainly creep towards the same zone as Mrs. GREEN APPLE, but then they…let the song get wild, with splotches of Auto-Tune thrown over bits on avoiding catching colds, sudden pivots into electro-piano-man drama and EDM-lite drops. It’s a digital bombastic energy matching up with DANdism’s analog theatrics, making the advice to do half of what you should hit fully.
J-pop in the 2020s has been defined by the glumness of modern life and the desire to transcend it. Both of these bands deserve to be in that thematic conversation, even if they approach it in more subtle ways. As much as I dislike their music for the most part, Mrs. GREEN APPLE’s oeuvre often nods to the depressing parts of living in the 21st century…it just doesn’t dwell on them, instead offering a Disney-fied fantasy escape from them. DANdism, meanwhile, made its break with a biting song, though subsequent hits haven’t been as layered2. Here, they get direct. One tells you how to deal with it. The other shows, by nearly malfunctioning from the madness. Listen above.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of December 16, 2024 To December 22, 2024
Back in the day, the Oricon Music Charts were the go-to path to music stardom in Japan. Acts of all sorts traversed these lands, trying to sell as many CDs as possible in order to land a good ranking on a chart choosing to only count physical sales, even as the Internet came to be and the number of versions offered for sale got ridiculous. Today, with the country finally in on digital, these roads are more barren and only looked at by the most fanatic of supporters needing something to celebrate. Yet every week, a new song sells enough plastic to take the top spot. So let’s take a trip down…the Oricon Trail.
Aqours — “Towa Hours” (131,827 Copies Sold)
(I missed one week while on vacation, which ended up being a chipper Nogizaka46 winter ballad. It’s alright!)
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Love Live! franchise, a mixed-media project that’s undeniably influential when it comes to the greater J-pop picture. It’s an early example of how anime could offer extra splash to the world of music…especially the corner of it where the intersection of fandom and consumerism was particularly important…and offered a peak at how different mediums could intersect to create something bigger. It’s still going strong today — the latest season of the anime recently finished up3, and the group associated with it has been around these parts in the past.
That outfit, Liella!, shouldn’t worry about their future, because even older groups from the series persevere today. The latest from veteran Love Live! idols Aqours is peppy-enough pop with a slight touch of ‘50s hop (those guitar and piano lines). It’s OK, a little too idol-y for my tastes but also not the worst from this corner. Yet it’s an Oricon hit, hitting six-digit sales and reminding that this anime-meets-human outfit exists as a cornerstone of the 2010s idol boom, still carrying on today in a field it helped shape. Listen above.
Consider Going Premium!
I’m back from vacation…but those who upgrade to premium wouldn’t know, because I kept up posting Make Believe Bonus while in sunny California. Heck, I even went to the mall to investigate the state of Japanese pop culture in the heart of a shopping center. Start the new year off by signing up and helping this blog out!
News And Views
The hardest part of taking a vacation at the end of the year — which almost always involves going back to the United States for a bit — isn’t catching up on music itself, but keeping track of all the news happening as December comes to a close. Apologies if I missed anything…it seems like an especially busy time for music / entertainment news at the dawn of 2025, and I managed to be off social media for most of my trip, look at me go…but let’s give it a shot.
One of the weirder quirks to my career is, despite writing about and covering NHK’s Kohaku Uta Gassen, I’ve only watched the show itself…twice in my life? I find the excitement of predicting and seeing who makes the lineup a bit more exciting than what happens on Dec. 31 itself. I’ll hunt down highlights (that “IDOL” performance last year…hell yeah) but won’t make much of an effort to watch the whole thing…or even keep up with it as it’s happening.
Which makes trying to figure out the 2024 edition kind of hard to do. Based on Twitter reaction, it sounds like the big winners were special additions. Kenshi Yonezu’s performance of an NHK drama theme drew rave reviews, with one user saying it “saved Kohaku,” which sounds over-the-top to me but hey I didn’t watch, who am I to judge? Indeed, it features some welcome pomp and a great backdrop, which I do think is vital to any year-end highlight.
The other consistent highlight seemed to be B’z, making its Kohaku debut with an extended set that similarly went for it. THE ALFEE, meanwhile, appeared to confound younger viewers who were encountering the group for the first time. I did see the clip of Sakura Miyawaki and the guy from Mrs. GREEN APPLE dueting a Disney song, which is maximum absurdity for me. There’s probably a lot more…some right-wing guy thought Kohaku was being taken over by Korea (much bigger issues on their plate right now) because of a dress a woman wore but it was not Korean at all…but this feels like the right place to let my imagination run wild.I feel like there’s always at least one massive entertainment scandal that breaks right before the new year. For the arrival of 2025, former SMAP member Nakai Masahiro finds himself under the spotlight owing to reports that he paid 90 million yen to a woman as part of some kind of settlement. The specific reason why he paid that much to address “woman troubles” isn’t public…but you better believe it’s being heavily implied to be some kind of harassment or sexual assault.
This in and of itself is important J-pop news, but it has also morphed into a continued examination of the media and it’s failings, with many saying nobody is talking about this story on TV (I’m not in Japan so…again, could be true).My year in review for The Japan Times came out, give that a read for some big-picture J-pop thoughts.
Dempagumi.inc officially disbanded this past weekend. I want to write something longer on this, but as part of it they released its final song, an end to the “W.W.D” series.
Marty Friedman’s new book came out recently, and I bought a copy while here in California! Phil Brasor wrote about it for The Japan Times.
Ado chats with Matsuko Deluxe…who also talked with Yuki Chiba for a Netflix show.
On the topic of Ado…incredible cosplay from the latest Comiket.
I don’t know what Shangri-La Frontier is but it’s getting an anime adaptation. The opening is by Awich and the ending is by CVLTE, both of who I definitely do know.
The Lethal Weapons leave Sony Music, take a break until July.
The AVYSS ENCOUNTERS series is now live, one of the best year-end features around.
Speaking of, This Side Of Japan has a ton of amazing year-end writing…including the friends list, which I contributed to.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Bluesky — @mbmelodies.bsky.social
Check out the Best Of 2024 Spotify Playlist here, before this jumps over to 2025!
I re-watched Take Me Out To The Snowland on the flight back to Japan, and while the soundtrack to that Bubble-era staple is best known for being dominated by Yuming songs, I’ve got to say this time around…the original instrumentals really stuck out to me, and certainly reminded me of instances on this FENI album.
Also, it’s way more batshit of a movie then I remember. Perhaps a future bonus edition?
Though its best song is the one that offers the most jubilation, and kind of rejects gloom completely.
I’ve only seen it in bits and pieces via a toddler who loves all things idol, but something that surprised me was…large chunks of the show are in Chinese, owing to one of the main characters being from China? A very left-field development, but one I applaud.