So, Gaki has crawled into a retirement home, Aika has wheeled herself off to something which I'm not even sure how to sum up, and Sayu is Momusu's leader. With the average age of the group now about 15 and Sayu's randomness in charge, I was hoping for some improvement.
Now, I'll admit. I like the 9th and 10th gens. They all seem pretty fun, some are talented, and some are just insane. I was content to wait for Gaki to be dead and buried before I passed judgement on the new era.
So she's now in a coffin, and I'm passing judgement.
The new single is shit.
I go on forums, I find everyone saying how wonderful it is. I despair. It sounds like Tsunku's just found more buttons to press and given up all thought of melody or timbre, or dynamics. Let's look at the vocal melody line. It barely fucking moves. Stays on the same note for ages, and then moves maybe a semitone in accordance with the chord progression. Not that the chord progression is good, you understand.
The song is a mess. The vocoders are useless, having a voice cut to shreds and buzzing incessantly pisses me off.
This isn't so much a song as much as it is an aural nightmare. It's like partenza, just not quite as bad.
The dance seems to be the thing people are interested by, which brings me to the conclusion that it's not so much that idol music is bad, per se, it's just that the majority of people listening to it are deaf.
Yeah! I'm not the only one who doesn't like it.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to save my final judgement to when I've heard the single a couple of times. Not looking good though. Knowing me, I'll be saying it's their best stuff EVER in a month or two though. Still, I don't like the vocal WOOOOOOOWWWWWwWWWWwwwwwwwWwwWwWw gimmick very much. Maybe if they'd only done it once it would've been fierce, but not when it's repeated that many times. And that fucking auto-tune (vocoder, whatever)... I do like the first part of the chorus though, the "ONE something TWO something THREE 君を待つの". That's pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteOn a completely unrelated note: Mina, yours is actually the 1,000th comment on this blog. Congratulations! I hereby award you with free sexual services provided by the author of this post himself, Krv. Please exchange contact information to collect said free sex from the guy. Have fun!
IMHO, they look like a group of K-pop fangirls imitating their idols on Youtube, and my ears are bleeding from the auto-tune. Do not want.
ReplyDelete-j
Honestly we cannot expect much of a change with the line distribution but I really do love the song. It's been like that for years where two girls usually lead the song with the others getting a sentence or in the 50th single's case, a vowel to sing.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with everyone especially J Greely saying they are "K-Pop" related in anyway. But I am really looking forward to the MV! I'm already learning the dance ^__^
I think your wrong.
ReplyDeleteAutotune is actually quite cool and for a group with 50 singles and 12 albums of course Tsunku is going to try something new.
Its really cool there isn't a second that I don't love in it because its good. Autotune adds an element of edge and coolness that will help MM stand out.
Henkka: You're whoring me out to commenters now? Sweet :P
ReplyDeleteJ Greely: Pretty much spot on I'd say. We already have Kpop, why do we need Jpop artists pretending to be Kpop?
Nyny: To those of us who dislike Kpop for being too "western" (for lack of a better term. It sounds too similar to the stuff being crapped out in America or Europe), Jpop has presented a rather different scope of popular music. In the words of Marty Friedman: “In Japanese music, pretty much anything goes. You can have the most extreme metal to the most tender ballads, and that can all come from the same artist. I love that about Japanese music.” If Jpop loses the musical experimentalism that allows it to differ from western and Kpop, it will no longer truly be Jpop.
OKdesu: Firstly, it's "you're". Secondly, I wouldn't say new, autotune's been around a good 15 years in the mainstream now (Cher's "Believe" I think was the first openly disturbing usage), and vocoders since the early 80s. Plus Tsunku's been using it since Platinum 9 Disco, so it's not new for Momusu either. Thirdly, "it's". Lastly, how can Momusu stand out in a sea of autotune/vocoder effects by using autotune/vocoder effects?
The mind boggles...
NyNy, if there's anything worth liking about the song, I can't hear it through the autotune. The poor camera work made it difficult to see the dancing, but what was visible wasn't encouraging: the girls were all over the place, suggesting they were still learning the moves and timing. And, yeah, the song sounds like a B-side from T-ara, so I stand by the K-pop comparison. :-)
ReplyDeleteAlso, rewatching it, about half the time it looks like Sayumi is phoning it in. Next graduation in less than six months?
-j