Mid-Year Lists 2010

[koganbot]

Mid-Year Lists 2010

Singles First Half 2010: "Blah Blah Blah" is the big hairy dance-mess that's dancing over the world, while Aggro and Dizzee are the only other representatives here of 2010's dance-pop mess. Not enough country on this list, and at this time of year that's usually my fault, but this time I think it's country's. (Probably not

Comments

[anonymous]

(E.via can start her first music video doing a critique of the ways singers (girls) are portrayed on mainstream music: they are as silly as their music and they act in the same way (doing cute poses to gain attention, shamelessly using their sexuality to fulfil their material and social desires, subsumed to man, etc.) but when she pushes to hard with the video of “Shake It” and gets banned from TV, she does a dance shoot version and goes to live shows where idols go to be adored to do the same than the rest. Kara and After School come from the same place. Talent agencies/management agencies/record labels (they are less or more the same) do auditions and select a certain number of teenage girls and boys. Then they train for at least four or five years, ten, twelve or more hours each day, they sleep on flats with other talents of their same sex, to assume responsibilities or get more competitive, until they broke or are mature enough to debut. Then they sign a contract (something that they don’t have as a secure thing when they start doing all this) and get in the circle of hype and netizens’ opinions).

Don’t know if I have explained anything, but it is always difficult to start talking about this, later you go to more interesting things… But it really depends…

[koganbot]

Another question, at least as difficult, is what is the relationship to American music? The K-Pop and J-Pop you've posted is very derivative of American music, but at the same time no one would mistake the music for actual American music. The K-Pop and J-Pop is glistening, makes Lady GaGa seem rough-hewn in comparison. And, while European countries have trouble preventing American music from being all over their top 40, Koreans and Japanese seem mostly to listen to stars from their own countries (at least, that's whom the kids listen to).

[anonymous]

But Lady GaGa, like many other artists, is “Big in Japan”. They are “divine” and “full of creativity”. SNSD are going to Japan this August. First they are going to release a DVD with all their music videos, then doing one show for 10.000 people and then release their first single in Japanese. Many sites devoted to K-pop are collecting what “celebrities” and fans from Japan are saying on their blogs, and less or more, you could say the same things: more sophisticated, more interesting, more… But let’s try to answer your question, even if it is with generalizations…

These girls are Idoling!!!, a Japanese idol group. I really like this video because it shows how autoreflexive about the consumer process are both artists and fans. Multiple screens on display, girls that go into the “story” and then back to be faces, dance shoots. They give you something and you work out what interests you. They give you a dance shoot and it is a dance shoot but also something you have to decode. You have to look for your favourite girl (because their faces are intensifiers, because they are so communicative, because they turn you on, it really doesn’t matter,..), how they interact between them, who are friends with who, which formations are new, etc. If it is a text, it is filled with footnotes and hyperlinks that you have to carve yourself. Let’s go to what we want to say: around 2:15, when secretaries are going to fall in love, you can above, three girls doing the same dance. That is wotagei. Becoming a feedback process, hardcore fans on live shows, just don’t listen the singers sing and dance for them, they dance and chant also for their idols. There are parts of the song where you can scream determinate words (her or his name, repeat the lyrics, do musical motives, or standard chants).

This is not the best example, (the song was the ringtone for the last short by Takashi Murakami for Louis Vuitton “Superflat First Love”, the girl is cosplaying the main character, Murakami did the cover for that AKB48 single where this song is one of the coupling songs) but you can how even the members of the group go through that. So, even if not all J-pop is like this, what western pop music is equipped to do that?

To return to your question about the influence of western music, like how 50’s American idols influenced Japanese idols, or how The Shadows or The Ventures influenced the Japanese Eleki sound (that one you can read it on “Japrocksampler” by Julian Cope), I think the best answer I found it on “Beauty Up, Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics” by Laura Miller so I’m going to quote it, even if it is a long, long quote:

"A study of the Japanese beauty industry presents a good case for evaluating theories of globalization. In interpreting recent changes in beauty ideals, many critics see in these developments a straightforward process of Western domination. When I show my students photos of J-Pop stars with dyed hair and colored contact lenses, they automatically ask, “Why do they want to look like Americans?” One scholar wrote that “the Japanese woman paying for the face job has had a race change. . . . She has altered her appearance until she appears to be white”. In this book I hope to provide a critique of this trope of emulation.The eagerness to see everything as a Western import obscures the historicity of particular practices and suggests an ethnocentric stance.

[anonymous]

More than twenty years ago, an influential article in the Harvard Business Review stated that the age of globalization would eradicate all vestiges of indigenous cultural tastes and replace them with homogenized products and services. Characterizing local consumer preferences as befuddled and idiosyncratic, the author had this advice for global corporations: “Instead of adapting to superficial and even entrenched differences within and between nations, it will seek sensibly to force suitably standardized products and practices on the entire globe” (Levitt 1983: 102). Scholars have effectively countered the idea that cultural diversity will be completely submerged by globalization in their ethnographic accounts of what actually happens to rationalized products and services at the point of consumption. There are modifications to business practices and offerings, as in McDonald’s in East Asia (Watson 1997), and local responses to transnationally circulated images, as in bridal photography in Taiwan, which is
“full of Taiwanese agency” (Adrian 2003:12). Condry (2000) shows how American hip-hop is mediated in Japan thorough local sites and language. These and other studies illuminate the manner in which borrowed elements are given new meanings, uses, and values when they arrive at a new cultural setting (Howes 1996), highlighting the agency and innovation enabled by consumption activities (D. Miller 1995). Anew focus on breasts as an aspect of female beauty, which I believe is linked to American beauty imaging, nevertheless did not result in massive numbers of women going to surgeons for implants. Instead they seek noninvasive alternatives, including prayer at a Shinto shrine. The ways in which beauty is formulated in Japan are complex, and there are at least four dimensions that take us beyond simplistic notions of uninvited homogeneity and avid imitation.

One point to keep in mind is that some contemporary beauty practices reflect indigenous ideas. Pale skin was valued during the premodern period among male and female nobility, but over time the white face became a marker of ideal womanhood for middle-class women (Ashikari
2003). Contemporary Japanese consumption of skin-lightening products is linked to ideas with their own local history, so to claim that a desire for pale skin is merely a new form of postwar deracialization brought about by hegemonic Euroamerican beauty ideology is a failed analysis based on a belief that the West is always in an ascendant position. Within the Japanese beauty industry, many products and services, including knowledge about skin care, are described as superior to foreign ones by virtue of their presumed status as natively Japanese.

A process of cultural blending has been going on for more than a century, as Japanese have engaged in creative syncretism within mass culture forms since the 1800s. During the prewar period, people of all classes were actively struggling over the meanings, symbols, and images they encountered through consumption of new mass-produced goods, which even then were not synonymous with global homogenization. During the 1920s Japanese scholars began the study of “modernology ” and were producing analyses that worked against a simple dichotomy between West and East (Silverberg 1992). This process continues today, as many forms of beauty meld East Asian and foreign (most often Euroamerican) ideas. Tobin (1992) uses the idea of “domestication” for this phenomenon, but I think the concept of creolization formulated by Hannerz (1987) also provides a framework for discussion of this dimension. Creolization (I also use the terms syncretic and syncretization in this book) is a process of cultural interpenetration, an intermingling of two or more discrete traditions or cultures to form a unique outcome. One example is an aesthetic salon treatment called the Royal Hawai‘ian Facial, which includes face exfoliation using a small electrical unit that looks something like a mini-sander, a beautifying device I doubt was a traditional part of Hawai‘ian massage.

[anonymous]

In addition, it is not only that “outside” ideas are combined to create new creolized forms. Together with creolization is co-occurrence of the Japan-created Other and a reinvented notion of the traditional in unblended coexistence. Goldstein-Gidoni (2001) presents a refined thinking about the processes in which the foreign and the local interact through examination of patterns and changes in the modern Japanese wedding ceremony. What she describes is neither cultural homogenization nor creolization, but rather a complex domain where imaginary or contrived Western and Japanese constructions commingle. The artificial wedding cake and fake chapel are Japanese abstractions of Western ritual, and the traditional Shinto wedding is not rooted in legend but is a Meiji-era (1868-1912) invention. Similarly, “French” or “South Asian” beauty industry goods and services often do not “arrive” in Japan but are created there. Thus we find an aesthetic salon treatment based on Western astrological signs and Shiseido’s faux-French Clé de Peau Beauté series of skincare products. Aesthetic salons are always busy inventing putatively indigenous beauty treatments, such as the Ama Massage, named after Japanese women shellfish divers. Despite its venerable Taoist name, the Yin Yang Five Elements treatment originated in the minds of the marketing staff at an aesthetic salon, not in the ancient Chinese past.

(end of quote)

I think this process is the same, and you could check how American R&B goes in South Korea or France from “originator” to specific bits that fit with the local thing… But there are scholar books about reggae, hip-hop, hardcore rock and jazz in Japan, so probably they could give you a better framework than what I can do…

[koganbot]

I knew Laura Miller slightly when I lived in San Francisco - assuming it's the same Laura Miller, and given her interests and writing style it probably is. I'm impressed with her thoughtfulness here.

Why Japanese music has a huge domestic share 1 of 2

[anonymous]

In the Japanese market, the share of Western music is about 25% to 30%, which is lower than in most other big music markets, and has been so for the past 30 years or so, but used to be bigger in the past.

Western music, and not only American music, had a lion share of the market in the 50's to 70's period, and the Yé-yé girls from France, like France Gall had a huge influence on idol singers. In fact, the name idol comes from the movie "Look for the Idol" called "Aidoru wo Sagase" in Japanese, and which stared Gall and was a huge hit in Japan.

As more and more Japanese bands and artists appeared, the market share of Japanese music gradually went up.

As for European countries, usually, American music has a significant share, because record majors can successfully use the same methods they use in the US:
-payola, commonly used in Europe too
-airing music videos on MTV

The use of these methods can turn any artists into a worldwide star even if they don't set foot in other countries.

But Japanese radio has been basically dead since the mid 80's, and few Japanese people have cable or satellite TV, so most people can't watch music videos on MTV Japan and similar channels, like Viewsic, Space Shower..regular terrestrial TV is where it's at for music.

If you are an artist who wants to sell music in Japan, you must get on TV. There are tons of weekly music shows like Music Station, Music Japan, Music Fair, Hey!Hey!Hey!, where artists come to sing their new songs.

Another widespread promotion tool is the tie-up, associating the song with a TV ad, a movie, a TV show (even some news shows have their theme songs), to provide exposure. Usually, the ads, movie trailers and TV shows opening or closing sequences featuring the song will start running before the release of the single to prime the audience (the Japanese music industry is still focused on the release of 3-4 singles before an album, because the record industry there never decided they wanted to kill the single, unlike in America).

Here is an exemple of an ad:
It's for AOKI, a suits maker, and features AKB48:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWe4eYs405M

The song used as background is Sakura no Shiori. The song is about graduation, and the text and voice in the ad says "Your life is going to change. But even if you become a university student and company employee, stay yourself". They are advertising male and female suits. At the end, the AKB48 girls all yell in unison "Congratulations for your suits debut!", congratulating the high schoolers who are going to graduate and wear suits to enter will university. So there is a thematic link in lyrics, ad and the product advertised.

You can also see both the name of the band and song after the music note, in the lower right hand corner at the beginning of the ad. This is standard practice in Japanese ads, but this kind of in your face tie-up is looked down upon in Western markets.If you compare to American ads like the Ipod ads, which made bands like the Caesars much more known, the name of the song or band is never stated inside the commercial. But in Japan it's commonplace since the beginning of the 90's.

Another ad, this time featuring technopop idol group Perfume (song Polyrythm), and this ad is for recycling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZFfx84TWeA

This ad made them mainstream, they used to be undergound idols liked only by otaku
before.

Another Perfume ad, for Pino icecream, featuring the song Night Flight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FCtWZbjL2A

Cellphone ad featuring 575 by Perfume:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwESzmjil28

Re: Why Japanese music has a huge domestic share 2 of 2

[anonymous]

Tv series usually have an opening sequence or ending sequence (or sometimes both) that can last as long as more than a minute and half, to showcase the theme songs, which are usually songs getting released soon, while American TV series usually have very short credits sequences.

For TV shows, tv series for example:

This is the opening of a TV series called BOSS from 2009, featuring the song Alright by Superfly

This is the opening of currently airing TV series GOLD, featuring the song Wildflower by Superfly too

This is a recent ad for two cellphone models, the 1st part features Free Planet by Superfly:

The songs Wildflower and Free Planet are not out yet, and will only be released on the 1st of September, on the same single.

Now, the single will be released in August, but the ads started running in . This is also why in Japan, music sales tend to be concentrated in one or two weeks and then fizz out. Because often the song has been heard on TV for weeks or months before getting released, so most people interested already know about the song.

Usually Japanese singles have 3 to 4 tracks, of those tracks, there are usually 2 songs, sometimes 3, and the rest is karaoke (vocal less) versions of the main songs. And the more a single had tie-ups, the more it has chances to sell. For example, track 1 is tied up to a movie, track 2 to an ad, and track 3 to a TV show.

So, since music promotion is done on TV, artists not able to come to Japan often won't appear on music shows very often. The only significant music promotion venue left to them is tie-ups.

But the thing is that the companies ordering the ads, or the TV stations producing the shows, the movies etc. usually want part of copyrights or percentage on sales of the artists getting tied-up, and many foreign artists are against that, and don't understand what a boon tie-ups can be.

There's also the fact that Karaoke is huge in Japan, so songs which are easy to sing at Karaoke are basically what sells:
songs with an easy to remember melody and rememberable lyrics (which doesn't work with songs not in Japanese of course). While in the US, songs which are danceable sell.

And K-Pop idol bands are making an impact in Japan lately, albeit this is only due to pragmatic economic reasons: the South Korean music market is small and plagued by piracy, and CD prices are low, while Japan has the highest CD prices in the world and the Japanese market is 2nd biggest after the USA, and n.1 in physical sales because of the huge dip in physical sales in the US, so it's very enticing.

While Japan's music industry is 2nd in the world despite barely exporting, and thus doesn't feel the need to export. The Japanese music industry still imports more than it exports.