Dispatch, Week 3

Riho Sayashi on Instagram, Haruomi Hosono, and Showa pop

Hello! I write about music time to time, mostly in my newsletter but also in other places. For whatever this is, I basically want to blog about random things I come across during the week to an audience of no one — or maybe someone? — in these times of isolation.

Welcome to Instagram, Riho! And 5 Morning Musume Songs Released After Her Graduation That I Would Love Her to Sing

Riho Sayashi joined Instagram last week. Apart from guesting on last year’s Hina Fes and, oh, suddenly showing up as one of the dancers of Babymetal, the former Morning Musume has been relatively quiet outside of the entertainment system since her graduation. So it was not only a big deal she signed up for some form of social media but also participated in an Instagram Live session.

Sayashi was shy and nervous as all hell, spending the first 5 minutes avoiding the camera at all costs. She apparently felt odd at the very idea of talking to herself in front of a phone in an empty room but also to an audience of 20,000 people at the same time. I can relate! Once she got rolling, though, she had a nice conversation. Before Mo-Musu senpai Ai Takahashi hopped on to help her out, she talked about the Morning Musume folks she keeps in touch with (video chats with Kanon Suzuki!) and recent Hello! Project songs she liked. Her favorite recent Morning Musume? “I Surrender Ai Saredo Ai” and “Jiyuu Na Kunidakara.” She also likes Angerme’s “Koi Wa Acha Acha.” (Rina Katsuta of Angerme was in the audience too!)

Don’t you think a “Jiyuu Na Kunidakara” with Sayashi on vocals would rule? Which got me thinking: what are recent singles post-Sayashi graduation that I would love to hear her sing? Here are five others:

1. “Brand New Morning”
2. “Jamashinaide Here We Go!”
3. “The Vision”
4. “Kokoro & Karada”
5. “Are You Happy?”

Sayashi said she will talk in English for the next Live after being too shy for this round, and someone on the comment section pitched that her and Morning Musume’s Miki Nonaka, the English-speaking Chel, should collaborate next. Please! Maybe she can also talk to us more about her Line group with the other ninth gen kids.

Haruomi Hosono: “Living Dining Kitchen”

(from the 1982 album Philharmony)

Yellow Magic Orchestra hit it big about five years before the trio’s Haruomi Hosono released his sixth solo album, Philharmony, in 1982, so I don’t think he had to do too much priming of synthesizers as a pop tool for the general audience. But it’s a good introduction as any with many proofs of just how simply alluring the instrument is in conjuring exotic sounds.

My interests were piqued more, though, from a song like “Living, Dining, Kitchen” that put the more banal corner of life as worthwhile subject matter for a pop song. It’s right there in the title, the very quarters you plop your body after a hard day at work but also the unit of measurement of a Japanese living space; 1LDK (Living Dining Kitchen) amounts to a rough equal of a one-bedroom apartment. It’s the routines of modern living framed in a rosy electronic decoration that recalls the romance of the industrial hustle and bustle.

I’m sure I would have loved this more a few years ago. For a brief time back in 2017, I was fascinated by pop acts like Gary Numan and Devo that interrogated postmodern life and commercialism through a pop style that felt readymade as the subjects of the song. Basically what Kraftwerk had been exploring through an album like Man-Machine but less cynical. If the banalities and the repetitions of life that they explored inspired songs that propped up their subject matter as something romantic or thrilling, it was because for all the cerebral deconstruction and criticism they were doing, they were mindful with their process enough for the end result to become pop. Plus, synthesizers just sound cool, and it was true even back then despite how primitive the instrument was in the late ‘70s.

Chelmico Radio Asking the Big Questions

Last week, Chelmico brought back their FM talk show, Demo Madamada Doyoubi, as a YouTube radio program for people to enjoy while we shelter at home. This being a direct adaptation, they asked for fan mail to read and answer, and the topic for this episode’s show was, unsurprisingly, “what do you want to do when the coronavirus is over?” And, oh god, did this get me emotional.

Like duh, they all just want to go outside. But who the fuck doesn’t? What they want to do once they’re out is so simple, too, yet it’s so sad it remains out of reach for so many of us. It really doesn’t matter what they do or where they go. It can be boring as hell: “I want to go shopping, look at everything in the store, complain about the price, and then end up not buying anything and go home,” says one person — I want that freedom! They can do nothing in the middle of nowhere. They just want to see their friends! And long-distance partners! Please let them get reunited very soon.

“I love being at home, but I caught myself thinking, ‘I want to go out to the club,’” Mamiko said. “I think I’m going to cry once I see everyone because I’ll just be overwhelmed,” Rachel said. I seriously don’t imagine myself communicating very well with my friends when I get to finally see them. But the first thing I want to do with them is go out and eat and have a drink with them. That’s all I want; I don’t care where.

SARD UNDERGROUND: “Sukoshizutsu Sukoshizutsu”

The only thing that rivals the gross commercial indulgences of Avex Trax and the label’s endless reissuing of their ’90s J-pop glory is the grave-digging of material by ZARD’s Izumi Sakai. Not only does the music by the late artist’s former band constantly get reissued with some in memoriam angle, you get songs like this from Sard Underground, who put out a full ZARD tribute album last year, that’s based on her unused lyrics. It’s tiresome at best, disgusting in its necrophilia at worst… but dang it, this song is also good if you’re in the mood for ’90s J-pop ballads.

Ayumi Hamasaki: “Many Classic Moments” (Globe Cover)

I understand I should probably look around other songs in the Ayu Trance album if I want more Ayumi Hamasaki trance songs in the vibe of Above & Beyond’s “M” remix. But instead, I’ve been revisiting Ayu’s cover of Globe’s “Many Classic Moments” from 2015. (This was also when she worked with Komuro on A One for an original song for the first time.) It’s not even trance; it’s basically EDM 1.0. But it hits the spot!

While Keiko’s singing on the original is smoother, I’m intrigued of how… unnatural? Mechanical? Ayu’s voice sounds here. Her singing always had a quirk with excessive accenting of syllables, which many comedians have picked up on whenever they do impressions of her, but late Ayu pushes that quirk even further almost to a surreal degree. It’s something you can pick up in Made in Japan from a song like “Flower” and how it’s more a percussive instrument of its own.

Against a very electronic production, an updated cover of a preexisting song at that, brings a different effect, however. She sounds as if she’s not only mimicking the original — Keiko had her own quirks, too, mainly a shout-y, vibrato-heavy style that Komuro preferred with a number of singer who he produced — but parodying impressions of herself. There’s an uncanny mental feedback loop further emphasized by the choppiness of her syllables, the emphasized melisma and some Auto-Tune. This sounds rude, but it’s kind of like an AI Ayumi Hamasaki that was programmed to sing a Globe song.

Apparently Men in 2020 Queue King Gnu on Karaoke to Win Some Attention (and Fail Miserably at Actually Singing It)

Stuff like the Monomane Kouhaku, a variety special dedicated to all of the impressionists and the look-alikes, is mostly filler to occupy TV timeslots. It’s comedians and entertainers aiming for relatively cheap laughs for three hours or, hey, someone out there in Japan really looks like Aimyon — and boy, did she! But my brain wasn’t completely dead while I watched it with my parents, and so I took some mental notes:

• Who would’ve thought 10 years ago that Kenshi Yonezu, the creative mind behind Hachi of vocaloid community fame, would one day become the subject of singing impressionists? He does display some quirks with his singing, though, that I don’t find it too surprising that his voice was one to mimic, if I don’t account for the blazing popularity of “Lemon” — a song the featured comedian nailed pretty much pitch perfect.
• If anything, impressionist acts are a good measure to see which name has strong enough cultural cache. Obviously no one would try to sing in the style of a singer or the imagined vocal style of a comedian if they don’t have name recognition. So it was interesting to see geinojin try their hand at King Gnu, who rose to the top with “Hakujitsu” last year, and Billie Eilish.
• Apparently, King Gnu and Official Hige Dandism are the go-to bands right now for guys to load on karaoke to score some cool points. But most of them also apparently fail miserably at actually singing it. I now must know more of this subgenre of songs that dudes bet on to win some attention.

5 Quick Thoughts on the Showa Pop Episode of Matsuko No Shiaranai Sekai

• It’s depressing to look back at the Bubble era, as roughly described by the show, as a time when Japan used to be thriving. The two guests were millennials, 28 and 27 (as am I), born the third and fourth year of Heisei, so the Bubble had just burst when they were born, and the country has been trying to recoup since. To bring a slightly more American cultural narrative, they were the first to be faced with an unstable economy. I wonder if they listen to Showa-era pop to feel a promise on life that they can’t quite get today. (Matsuko DX, a Showa-born geinojin, meanwhile, surprisingly refuses to look back with rose-tinted glasses, which is actually relieving.)
• It’s also disappointing that the two think their generation lacks a pop anthem that can unite people together. They say Morning Musume’s “Love Machine” is the last pop single with such quality, but I refuse to think so! Utada Hikaru put out more hits thereafter! How about Ayaya’s “Momoiro Kataomoi”? Am I overestimating the power of AKB48’s “Koi No Fortune Cookie”? There’s got to be, like, one rock band who put out a song everyone knows in Japan?
• But it is true that there is less of a monoculture than the Showa era or at least it is decentralized with TV growing weaker especially during the past half decade. What do you expect with the introduction of the internet? The show brought up an image of a family spanning three generations all sitting around the TV, watching a countdown show like The Best Ten, therefore creating more familiarity in pop songs across generations. With less music shows on primetime, and really less family time in general, I don’t find it surprising that every member of a generation has grown a different taste in pop, or even within generations for that matter.
• I recognized Showa pop had incredible intros, but I never thought deeply as to why they did. It is something to be missed to have such a memorable hook right when you press play, but it’s also telling how sophisticated the structure of pop songs have become in Japan, and the adventurousness of the audience embracing it, once it transitioned into Heisei. We don’t need fancy intros anymore; there are infinitely more things we can do creatively to make and keep an impression to listeners.
• It’s a damn shame almost none of the Showa pop songs are available on streaming services. I forever have respect to the fan blogs on Tumblr and Twitter spreading love of Showa artists on the internet, and me having to scramble for coverage on the era like this only deepens it.

Congratulations Sailer, You Made It to Friday

See you next week!