Life is really going down the shitter for me, again, through no fault of my own, and I made this yesterday before things got all shitty once more. So, I’m not feeling my best. Be gentle with my snark. My snark loves you. Most of all, keep in mind that none of this is aimed at you! :D I’d still very much like to go enjoy about four bottles of Asahi right now, if you’re paying! Let’s go get drunk, Pink Wota readers!
A-K-BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-48 EDITION!! (plus something about Socko’s Modern Life)
Whatchu want me to talk about on Wotas Gonna Wot, Pink Wota Readers? I know all twelve of you must have something that begs my commentary. I’ll try. I promise I’ll try to promise to try.
Since I’m absolutely horrible about writing lately, but I STILL HAVE THINGS TO SAY, I figured I’d throw them into a vlog which I hope will be weekly. It will probably, honestly, be “whenever I fucking feel like it”, which will hopefully be more than I feel like writing.
Then, after I have about five or six episodes of this under my belt,. I’ll suddenly decide I hate doing it and I’ll go back to writing. This is how I keep you on your toes. This blog is like a psych study. God.
This week: “VOICE” PV, Ayumi and her stupid shit, Maji Bomber!!, and BoA
Posted by Vee | K-Pop, Review, Video | Friday 9 July 2010 2:30 pm
OK EVERYBODY WATCH THIS TEASER FOR NARSHA’S MV:
DO YOU WANT TO SEE THE FULL VIDEO? OF COURSE YOU DO, HOMEGIRL IS LOOKIN’ LIKE A COMBINATION OF FLORENCE WELCH, LADY GAGA, AND RIHANNA, OF COURSE YOU WANT TO WATCH THAT!!! SHIT!!!!
Now, BEG is one K-Pop group I never really got into. I like “Abracadabra” and all, but never enough to let them rise to the status of, oh say, SNSD or After School or KARA in my mind. They’re like my Team B of K-Pop girl groups. Even so, I always knew I liked Narsha (well, that may also be because she’s the token Stan-Magnet of the group). But this video? This concept (THIS IS TOO HIGH CONCEPT TO BE JUST ANOTHER “CONCEPT”)? I never even. I even heard the SONG and still couldn’t even. How is this so awesome?
WHY ARE THESE MATT BELLAMY LYRICS, BUT IN KOREAN (the video is subbed, btw)?? Well mostly just the chorus, but that chorus is worth it. “LOL is this “Hysteria”?”
Who directed this shit, ChanWook Park!?!? The photography, set design, costume design, and art direction are AMAZING. But mostly the photography. I can’t get over some of the shots. In particular:
2:17-2:19 – OH MY GAWD it looks like a Dali painting.
The whole 2:39 – 2:53 montage – AAAHHHHH WHY IS IT SO GREAT.
3:16 – Sure other videos may have great dance shots, but do they have the singer being dragged away by dancers dressed like Freddy Krueger?!?! NO.
THE WHOLE “OMFG ANGEL WINGS” SEQUENCE – This had the potential to look SO cheesy, but it really doesn’t. It looks flawless. What the Hell. Amazing.
4:09 – 4:11 – Possibly my favorite shot in the whole video.
Watch it, okay. These videos will probably be taken down presently, but whatever. While you can, watch this.
You want me to be arsed to care, to look at this objectively and with a ~brave heart that still loves Morning Musume after all this time…I JUST CAN’T.
When I re-listen to this it occurs to me that maybe I’ve taken a few too many pages out of Luke’s guidebook. Except less skeevy. Maybe. I do end with AKB48 in bikinis.
I’m starting with the TL;DR version, because some of you may not know this, but I’m a strong proponent of Gonzo Journalism and I like to chronicle entire trips when I chronicle events. Therefore, to put it shortly, Muse in Duluth on 2-27-2010 were…let’s see…what were they, Johnny?
YES. YES THEY WERE.
Now, if you want to read about how Pink Wota went, saw, got our faces rocked off, and in the process had horrible sinus colds and/or trouble navigating Duluth and I-75, read on.
…because then Tsunku forces you to graduate and “pursue modeling”, that’s why.
Perhaps I sound like some flailing would-be Nostradamus for this one, but as my previous posts on Reimagining Sub-par Ayumi Hamasaki Videos have indicated, I like to imagine different videos for good songs, okay? And I always thought that the video for ‘Osaka koi no Uta’ was woefully lacking, as stunning as that song is. What did I imagine in its place? A fashion/runway/photoshoot/make-up theme.
I am not even kidding, I’ve had this fake concept for like three years, and then the costumes come out for ‘Onna ga Medatte Naze Ikenai’ and everyone is comparing them to ‘Osaka koi no Uta’. Gotta admit, I’ll take that comparison. And then…THEN….the PV preview dropped, as did my jaw. This is pretty much the concept I’d been wanting!
A concept that would have been right in place with the dwindling but still-ample budget of Morning Musume PV’s during the transitional 6th-to-7th generation. Whereas the “we’re not going to really light anything, so just use your imagination” PV for ‘Osaka koi no Uta’ could be exactly what I was expecting here.
Don’t get me wrong, though. ‘Nanchatte Renai’, for all its (imo) flaws, had great lighting and camerawork, too. I still say ‘Shouganai Yume Oibito’ was a gorgeous video. ‘Kimagure Princess’ and ‘Naichau Kamo’ suffered from the same problem as most C-ute videos: lack of scope. But here comes ‘Onna ga Medatte Naze Ikenai’ down the line, and…what’s this…?
RACK FOCUS. TRACKING SHOT. AMAZING LIGHTING. THE GIRLS WORKIN’ IT. lack of Koharu, sniff. COLOR. IT LOOKS GLOSSY AND CLASSY AND FIERCE.
This is the mature, self-aware, well-marketed Morning Musume I never saw in 2010.
Well played, Tsunku, well played. Now, the question: was it all waiting for Koharu’s departure? Because I think the girl would have slipped right into a more mature look (even though those costumes make you think “there is no fucking way this is a mature video lawl” NO IT SERIOUSLY IS), but the timing would prove otherwise. Sure she got to be in the ‘Kimagure T&A’ video, but that was just…baffling. Still very baffling, what they were trying to accomplish with that one.
For reference, here is the video, albeit still pretty LQ:
Everyone is staggeringly beautiful, with the exception of Aika, who has no big sexy lips to pout, and would be better suited working with Hagiawara Mai in a new unit for Large Heads.
And oh, my. The transformation of Gaki-san from the last single to this one. I was beginning to think we’d lost her, that she was just turning to a skinny girl with a very pointy face, but NO!! This is the Gaki I know and love and….other things. GAKI. Fuckin’ KAMEI, too.
But mostly, ladies and gentlemen, the Pandas. LinLin obviously owns that runway. Miss J Alexander would approve. And we think that’s it until JUNJUN comes marching in, her legs get their own close-up, and she just throws fierce all over that camera lens. Hot damn, gurl, you fine.
Gaki, Sayu, Kamei and Aika are all obviously sabotaged by terrible direction of how to pose at the end of the runway, unless they think that’s really how models pose at the end of a runway, in which case:
But this is just focusing on the particulars. This video, in general, leaves me feeling happy for Morning Musume. That maybe they’ve found that magical niche after a year of flailing around and trying to locate it. I really hope this single does well on the charts, as the video is fucking FIERCE and it’s not like AKB48 picked a salacious follow-up to ‘RIVER’ or anything (I like it, okay, but….yeah).
Hopefully I can update this with screenshots, but that’s all dependent on how soon I can get a copy.
P.S. The line where they all go “MY FACE!” still cracks my shit up.
Since I spent my New Year’s Day working and then waching the two television broadcasts I’d been waiting FOREVER to see, it seems fitting that I put both the review together, here. I was just going to put them up here without any pics, but sucks to that, and your ass-mar (tits or gtfo, amirite?). I’ll just put whatever pics I can find. It’s cool! I can do zat!
Anyway, if you haven’t seen Doctor Who’s Christmas Special for 09-10, ‘The End of Time’, in its entirety, don’t read this. It will really confuse and/or spoil you (both would be hilarious). If you haven’t seen Ayumi’s Countdown Live My Titles Continue to Get Longer and Longer 09-10 ~FUTURE CLASSICS~ who gives a shit, no one cares about being spoiled on that. In fact, I think the Ayumi fan community eats spoilers for breakfast. They eat HATING ON AYUMI for lunch. I am part of the Ayumi fan community. I do not hate her. But I will give honest criticism.
Also, I’m sick as fuck and feeling very cheeky, so be prepared.
I wrote these this morning, who am I kidding. I’m only going through and adding pictures and other observations, durpity durp durp.
Well, I’ve listened to the ‘You were…/BALLAD’ single in full, remixes and C-sides and all.
I didn’t think the Ayumi fan community and I would find a common ground on anything, this year. But that thing is this single. I can say, without reservation, that it is her best for 2009. As a complete single, it actually beats pretty much everything from 2008, also. The last great all-around single from Ayumi, in my opinion, was ‘Talkin’ 2 Myself’.
Let’s consider each track on its own:
You were… - 3/5 - The logical choice for A-side, in my opinion. It’s a strong ballad, it carries the single even though it’s not my favorite track. In my opinion, her vocals are off the mark with this one. The instrumentation buries her vocals, and she sounds like she’s shouting to compensate. What begins as a nice, soft ballad turns into a cacophony of orchestration and jingle bells, most of it sounding very synthesized. I don’t like the way this was balanced at all. In short, I don’t like it when Ayumi is fighting against the music instead of leading a song. The bridge is even engineered in a way that drowns her out. I do like the song, don’t get me wrong. It’s a lovely ballad, the best since ‘Days’, but I honestly think the engineer should be shot for this.
BALLAD – 4/5 - This song, on the other hand, is exceptionally executed. The not-so-subtle East-Asian inspiration in the arrangement is so reminiscent of ‘Secret’, ‘Part of me’, and ‘theme of a-nation ‘03′. The entire time, Ayumi never lets her voice escape its natural range, even at the cost of a few of those annoying “hyper-vibrato” moments she’s been prone to lately (I love her vibrato, but that’s just me). My only complaint is the backing “boom-chhk” refrain throughout the song. I hope you know what I mean. The part that sounds like the opening of ‘ourselves’. I think the song would have been gorgeous just as an orchestral song. The East-Asian instruments used for the bridge are PHENOMENAL, and make the song something incredibly special. It’s soft, it’s understated, and it never hits you over the head with its melancholy power. Even the climax is staid, in a way. I love this sort of ballad from Ayumi, especially now that her voice is, let’s face it, limited.
RED LINE ~for TA~ – 5/5 – Here’s where I’ll probably differ from everyone. This is my favorite track on the single, arranged by one of my favorite Ayumi collaborators of all time (also responsible for ‘Memorial address’ and ‘Is this LOVE’, amongst others). It reminds me of some older Ayumi compositions, even the way her vocals are showcased with that almost-screechy edge to them. She sounds happy and pitch-perfect in this one. It’s like the over-produced likes of ‘Replace’ and ‘My All’ had a baby with the raw studio power of ‘Girlish’ and ‘Memorial address’ and produced this song. Yoshio even gets a bitchin’ solo! It’s uplifting without being cheesy, it’s epic without sounding too slick.
You were… (Music Box Mix-retake version-) -3/5 - A separate take of ‘You were…’ set to the barest of music box tinkling sounds. Almost a vox-only take, and when the overpowering music is stripped away it becomes clear how great her vocals really sound (maybe it’s just this take…?) Very relaxing, the verses are gorgeous, but she still sounds like she’s straining in too many parts, as if the song is written out of her range on purpose. Not okay, imo. Just like in the Original Mix, she pretty much shouts the choruses.
Sunset ~LOVE is ALL~ (Orchestra version) – 4/5 - No secret, I loved ‘S/S ~LiA~’. Strangely though, when I hear this song I think it’s too stripped-down for ‘Sunset’. The very essence of ‘Sunrise’ and ‘Sunset’ was in their respective arrangements, and though the vocals are sweet and lovely and soft, it’s not an improvement at all. It’s almost a lateral move, if anything, and only if you’re wanting something more orchestral for the given mix you’re putting together.
