Make Believe Melodies For March 7, 2022
Dancing In A Mall With All My Friends
Peterparker69 — “Flight To Mumbai”
Immaturity doesn’t mean a lack of heart. Better stated — you can contain emotional multitudes and still make dick jokes that are going to age like mustard left out in the sun. Rising electronic/rap artists Jeter and Y ohtrixpointnever have joined together to become Peterparker69, with debut number “Flight To Mumbai” featuring a video where they film themselves dancing in a mall before cutting to shots of NSFW knick-knacks and ending on some superfluous Hindu imagery. Young adults being blockheads and enjoying it, regardless of whatever anyone thinks (in this case, a family walking by a bookstore).
Beneath the who-cares-lolz images, “Flight To Mumbai” delivers a surprisingly sweet and daring song. The pair use pitch shifting to add flair to the song’s mid-tempo march, while the lyrics themselves pivot between longings for love and aspirations for something more from all of this (“I wanna get out of the lowlife” being the emotional broadside here). Coupled with smaller details that keep the music itself burbling, “Flight To Mumbai” hides a tender heart under a Spencer Gifts’ t-shirt. Listen above.
SATOH, Lil Beamz And AOTO — “CRASH!!!”
A power conference of Japanese hyperpop players, featuring an appropriately nervy energy and a lot of digi-frayed vocals. Fractured but fun, “CRASH!!!” offers a nice entryway into the works of three names to keep an eye on. Listen above.
Valknee — “Scrapbook”
Please tell me if I’m wrong, but possibly the first song to shout-out mooks (Japanese magazine-book hybrids, that I had to add this parenthetical only strengthening claims to it being first).
Valknee writes an ode to remembering every moment with that special someone — “no digital, no Tumblr” — backed by a chimey beat courtesy of producer Shampoo. All together, it makes for a light gust of a rap number from the Zoomgals member, but one with a sweet core and a publisher’s heart. Listen above.
ao — LOOK
As much as mood has been central to J-pop over the last three years, an equally important shift in narrative is playing out in how artists create music at all levels. Victor Entertainment artist ao highlights this well in the sound and story surrounding debut EP LOOK. The 15-year-old creator does everything over the half hour featured here — play guitar, handle percussion, sing and produce via Logic Pro on her computer — and that’s a huge part of the hook surrounding her. She’s not the first being highlighted for this, and that’s the point, because this kind of “digital native does it all” profile is becoming more common.
LOOK offers one of the more polished attempts at capturing this bedroom spirit in the social media age. It’s a balance between sorta soggy ballads and breezy dance-pop, the latter graced by a touch of unsettling electronic details to rise above other major label efforts at cornering this market. There’s something controlled about ao’s sound that gives away the ambitions behind her — she’s a less zany Sasuke, with built-in drama rather than off-trend optimism — although she generates enough goosebumps on numbers like “you too” and “with you” to create compelling work. It’s very much an artist in chrysalis, but also a sign of where everything is heading. Listen above.
Sasuke — “Mata Aimasyou”
Hey, it’s Sasuke, still charming away! Even his melancholy songs sound like miniature parades. Listen above.
PinocchioP Featuring Hatsune Miku — “Magical Girl And Chocolate”
Is J-pop coming out of its moody period and starting to brighten up a bit? Maybe, though it has been tiptoeing that way for at least half a year now, if not a little longer (whenever YouTube slapped “Yoru Ni Kakeru” with an age-restriction warning, thus showing there was an actual limit to how dark you could get, at least according to our tech overlords). So let’s have a toast to a late highlight in the “21st century is trash” category. Vocaloid producer PinocchioP nods to old songs and crafts a bleep-heavy ode to social media anxiety on “Magical Girl And Chocolate.” A braintwister like a lot of their work, this one stands out for the particularly taffy-like structure and the clever metaphor of using a magical girl to represent…anyone with a spark of life having to deal with the internet in 2022 (while also adding some undercuts to it by reminding…hey, maybe you want someone to tell you to cheer up and you kind of love this). Listen above.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of February 21, 2022 To February 27, 2022
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.
NMB48 — “Koi To Ai No Sono Aida Ni Wa" (152,131 Copies Sold)
A nice pace…synth plink-plonks…a dash of rock thrown in for good measure…NMB48 came through! This type of song is like the Chipotle of AKB48 pop, taking something that can easily be done fast and fancying it up without losing the key appeal. One of the better Oricon-topping songs to appear her in 2022, and a late-period highlight for Osaka’s branch of the J-pop institution.
While we’re here, let’s take a quick detour to Spotify, where a very different song has latched onto the top spot in Japan.
I swear this new King Gnu song came out on a Wednesday, and then the next day was on top of the chart. Not sure if this is an outlier or if the band’s pivot back to balladry (with some nifty robo-voice creeping in) will result in a year-defining hit in the months ahead, but I’ve never seen anything move as quickly as this one up this ranking.
News And Views
Which Johnny & Associates’s group will pick up the crown for the company moving into the 2020s? If The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry offers any clues, it might very well be Snow Man, who scored the ninth-best-selling album of 2021 according to the body. That’s not the only Japanese album on the list though…because the BTS “best of” compilation at four is technically a Japan-only offering.
In other Johnny’s news, Travis Japan is being shipped off to California to get better at everything. Good luck at the Orange County dance competition.
As expected, Fuji Rock Festival plans to bring international acts to this year’s July event in Niigata Prefecture. Early tickets go on sale next week, though unlike some fests in other countries, Smash Japan will still institute a variety of rules to prevent the spread of COVID-19, including mandatory mask usage.
感染防止対策ガイドライン ≫ fujirockfestival.com/news/detail/42… 今後の感染状況に応じて、適切な防止対策を講じてまいります。制限や制約の変更・更新は、必要に応じて速やかにご案内いたします。 ご協力をお願いいたします。 #フジロック #fujirock
(Though, one measure not featured…and not present anywhere [?] in Japan right now…is any sort of “vaccine passport.” They’ve introduced them…I have one on my phone…but so far I can’t think of a single instance where it has been utilized. It will be interesting to see if any fests make it mandatory, or if the unpredictable nature of COVID has kind of made it outdated before it could begin.)
Hiroshi Nagai shirts coming to Uniqlo soon.
YOSHIKI donated 10 million yen to support Ukraine as the Russian invasion of the country carries on.
Kyodo has a nice feature on a Ukrainian musician living in Yokohama.
Ryo of This Side Of Japan on a hot streak, following up an interview with Kyary Pamyu Pamyu by chatting with Haru Nemuri.
Following up on last week…winD’s “Kawaii,” one of the big viral hits of 2022 which is also just a new name given to a song first done by a Chinese VTuber last year, confounded me “Here I admit I’m not sure why exactly this has now been credited to winD…is that the new artist name for this VTuber in the Japanese market? Did someone claim jump this?” It’s the latter, because winD has vanished from subscription streaming. This is the most prominent case of this happening in the Japanese market I can think of.
Soichi Terada with a BBC Essential Mix.
It’s funny that the two-man group METAFIVE had to put together to perform at Fuji Rock last year because of the whole Cornelius ordeal has now decided to go for it.
PRKS9 has a great dive into the history of women in Japanese rap, charting the early days to everything playing out now in the country.
Speaking of history, I looked at the continued presence and influence of Eurobeat in Japan (and beyond) for The Japan Times. Very fun to dig into the roots, the boom, the bust and where it is all at now. Also working on this story broke my YouTube account as I now get videos like this suggested at me everyday.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodiesFollow the Best of 2022 Spotify Playlist Here! It’s over a 100 songs now, which is probably a little too much but ehhhh it’s all good.
