Issue #22: Can't Stop Fallin' in Love
Discussing Anna Takuechi's new album, Globe's "Can't Stop Fallin' in Love," and the scene of new pop rap gaining buzz
Hi! Welcome to This Side of Japan, a newsletter about Japanese music, new and old. You can check out previous issues here.
These past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about this quote by Lyrical School’s Hime from an interview on the October digital issue of TV Bros.:
Rappers like Rinne, Sorane and Kubota Kai, who make these sensitive, emo songs are really popular right now. I really like them too. They’re very pop with easy melodies and hooks and a lot of love songs as the main topic, and I hear more people check (rap idols like) us out thanks to pop rap like theirs being popular and providing a new entry point. There are a lot of girl fans too. Including someone like Kojikoji, a singer-songwriter I have a good relationship with, there are many songs that are catchy for people who aren’t die-hard rap fans, so I want people who think hip hop isn’t their thing to also listen to them. I think it’s also easy to sing on karaoke.
I was reminded of this observation while listening to Zettakun’s new song, “Midnight Call,” featuring the aforementioned vocalist Kojikoji. Zettakun is exactly the kind of rapper who Hime describes above with easy-going flows, usually over a sleepy boom-bap beat, and a rapped story centered on love or some specific moment in a romantic relationship. He has a very different musical focus as a rapper compared to, say, the acts of Bad Hop or Kandytown: Zettakun and his ilk are concerned more about mood and narrative than a display of ego or style. Their focuses as well as personalities are also consistent and defined enough to categorize them together into some subgenre or at least a collective of like minds.
I’m tempted to call the music made by these like groups of rappers “TikTok-core,” mainly inspired by Rinne and his viral hit “Snow Jam,” which took off via the app, but also because they are well built to be interacted with and circulated in the context of SNS. The sentimental lyrical content invites you to share the song on your social media feed when certain lyrics relate to your current mood, perhaps during the late nights when the want to overshare inclines. “Midnight Call” seems almost designed with that in mind: “Midnight, it’s usually Netflix / and though that’s great / if I could talk you by my side, today would be feel good,” Zettakun and Kojikoji duet over a whispered boom-bap beat.
Posting “Midnight Call” as an audio post on Instagram Stories might do the job—akin a gesture to posting the lyric as an away message of AOL Instant Messenger—but the more camera-confident and app-savvy may opt for the TikTok route. Rinne’s “Snow Jam” went viral with the fragment of its opening lyrics used to narrate a variety of video collages, all documented in the hash tag #LoadingDeSusumanaiMainichi. One can lean into the lonely lyrics of “Midnight Call” in a similar way, and Zettakun’s song also presents a very specific narrative tailor-made for users to sum up their late-night yearning with a series of 1 a.m. selfies all in sync to the music.
From a quick skim, the “Snow Jam” hash tag seems to have become so widespread that there’s no longer a common narrative or rule one must follow. The consistent factor, though, is this expression of sentimental, borderline-sappy affection for another person. Even if the lyrics don’t exactly correspond, the soft, fuzzy beats with an acoustic-guitar riff here or a wistful keyboard chord there hits on the intended mood, and the bedroom pop feel of it all grounds a sincerity that invites intimacy without judgement. The saving grace that keeps it from going full-on saccharine is the presence of rap and hip hop, anchoring the song and the resulting videos with a faint semblance of cool.
The ease in which the sweet lyrics and tender beats can be used as a backdrop of endearing videos also speaks to how accessible and welcoming these rap songs can be for people who don’t normally interact with the genre. It’s similar to how Hime as part of the rap-idol group Lyrical School primes non-rap listeners to the genre by using idols as a vehicle to ease them in. Artists like Rinne and Zettakun plays with the genre in even more of an organic way, treating rapping simply as an established pop trope.
Rap can seem like an intimidating scene with so much foreign internal code. Softening the fundamentals into something pop-friendly can help relieve that stress. While just how central these artists are to the genre is a discussion for another day, their music at least provides a nice, friendly starting point for whom viewed rap to be not so approachable. If “Midnight Call” or “Snow Jam” inspires people to eventually give Bad Hop and Kandytown a try, then that’s a win for me.
***
The discussion on TikTok and rap ends here, but there are more soft love songs to check out with our Album of the Week. If you like sad love songs, go on to our Oricon dive for a talk about dysfunctional relationships but also lost time. There are as always cool singles to check out in the middle. Happy listening!
Album of the Week
At FOUR EP by Anna Takeuchi [Teichiku]
Recommended track: “Love Your Love” | Listen to it on Spotify
In just two years time, Anna Takeuchi’s past three At… EPs—At ONE, At TWO and so forth—have retroactively become a precious document tracking the development of the singer-songwriter’s fresh pop style as well as this year’s debut album, Matousic. The EPs find her interrogating acoustic-guitar pop at many different angles, playing riffs in various ways while re-arranging them in other styles. She keeps on churning out new iterations in her fourth installment, but with Matousic in the rear view, At FOUR also brings a exciting promise new to the series that her music still has a lot of room for growth.
Takeuchi has mastered the art of writing about infatuation and the craze it inspires, and the songs in At FOUR continue to present the pop drama surrounding that very feeling with vibrant music to match. “Love Your Love” opens the EP with a carefree rush of golden guitars and sprightly strings. Soon as the music seems to settle into its own, the song takes a hard left with Takeuchi throwing in a zigzagging, triple-time cadence that shake up the otherwise breezy feel. Chasing that high leads her into thrilling, unexpected directions, and the lightness in which she moves along the dynamic path makes her appear as she’s floating on air.
While Takeuchi messes with vocal delivery via rap in “Love Your Love” to add a slight twist, she flips her entire guitar-pop sound anew in “+Imagination.” She sings over a glowing electro-house beat with a classic, bouncy rave riff while her trusted guitar takes a backseat, briefly surfacing back to the center for a little solo. “+Imagination,” however, moves with a swift, percussive pulse similar to her guitar-centric, love-high work. Despite the more electronic touch, it meshes well with a older track like “Free! Free! Free!” where the starts and stops of the guitar riff fits alongside the rhythmic hiccups of a chopped-up sample.
A tease of new possible avenues to explore proves exciting for Takeuchi’s future, but the best song on At FOUR has Takeuchi excelling at traditional pop craft. “Striking Gold” rises to the top of her city-pop-leaning work such as “Ride on Weekend” by simply checking all the boxes of a well-built guitar-pop. She strolls down one scenic route in the verse to get to the sparkling titular chorus. Even without a rap-inspired structure change or support from a pumping electro bass line, Takeuchi can still bring the delightful high of infatuation to life.
The At… EPs have resembled a personally crafted mixtape of sorts, compiling new forthcoming ideas and a hand-picked cover song. The track list on At FOUR goes into far different places, but the variety only reinforces the mixtape feel of these EPs. The sprawl is hopefully something Takeuchi retains as she continues to tinker with how to better write about love at first sight and bring that heart-fluttering feeling to life in fresh, dazzling ways.
Singles Club
“DeadRock” by Miyuna [A.S.A.B.]
Miyuna has wandered from genre to genre in last year’s Yurareru EP to find a definite identity as young new Reiwa artists wont to do. The production of “DeadRock,” the lead single from her forthcoming album, Reply, finds the sweet middle between her genre-hopping, juggling fragments of a sliding acoustic-guitar as the main riff of a slightly melodramatic R&B piece. The singer, meanwhile, takes us into her teenage mind. “A new generation getting into new trends / I feel like I’m being left behind,” she begins the song, trying to find footing in a world conspiring against her. Her psyche is intense as the youth can be when attempting to comprehend things out of their control, but more than some distinct genre, this teenage intensity makes Miyuna a defined pop voice of the new generation.
Reply is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “Neverland” by Lozareena; “Masshiro” by Yama
“I Am Fed Up with My Life Song” by Nagasawa’s Onion [self-released]
While the defeated, straightforward title may suggest otherwise, Nagasawa’s Onion sound anything but lethargic in “I Am Fed Up with My Life Song.” The band’s Takujiro saves the screaming for another song in the 19 EP—as in, yes, COVID-19 if you wanted to locate where some of their teenage rage comes from—but the emo-rock act goes in equally as furious. The rhythm section clocks in a rushing beat while the guitars lay down an angular, slightly glossy riff. Takujiro’s fed-up moans are indecipherable as he wriggles around the commotion. If you really need to know, though, I think he’d gladly point you to the title of the very song.
19 EP is out now. Listen to it on Bandcamp.
See also: “Even Though” by Yes Means No; “Yuunagi” by Zanelli
“Books” by Sawa Angstrom [Thanks Giving]
“Books” finds Sawa Angstrom making their way back to where they started after continuously expanding their micro electronic pop through a stretch of three EPs last year. The trio’s pointillist approach to programming sounds as well as the glitched ways in which those sounds move would delight fans of electronic music of the Click + Cuts variety. Though, “Books” is nowhere as sterile as the stereotypical IDM and instead cozy and intimate as autumnal bedroom-pop. If anything, the song is even more light on its feet than Sawa Angstrom’s usual output, shifting its music more towards the realm of pop.
See also: “Touch” by Le Makeup; “Pop Out!!” by Lil Soft Tennis
This Week in 1996…
“Can’t Stop Fallin’ in Love” by Globe [Avex Trax, 1996]
No. 1 during the week of Nov. 11 and Nov. 25, 1996 | Listen to it on YouTube/Spotify
The music video for Globe’s “Can’t Stop Fallin’ in Love” appears basically as a promotional vehicle with various clips of their past concerts flashing by in tune to the song. Tetsuya Komuro, Keiko and Marc Panther together command a huge arena; Komuro shamelessly wields a keytar while Marc Panther wears the biggest smile like this is the best night of his life. But there’s a vivid melancholy to be felt from watching this whole thing knowing that the scenes are certainly a relic, a glorious moment in time that these three can no longer get back to.
Komuro’s impact in shaping J-pop during the ‘90s has been told tirelessly, but it is undeniable nonetheless. He helped bring in new sounds and rhythms to the charts as he adapted rave music, Eurobeat and Europop to his production for idols such as Namie Amuro, Ryoko Shinohara, Tomomi Kahara and many more. He indulged further in his dance-music interests in his own groups, first with TRF and then the band Globe with singer Keiko and rapper Marc Panther. The trio’s debut single, “Feel Like Dance,” basically updated the make-up of Komuro’s old arena-minded synth-rock outfit TM Network with ‘90s rave-house motifs.
Komuro made such a mark in the ‘90s that his releases subsumes the public memory of ‘90s J-pop almost completely, and they sound forever stuck in that respective decade. They were partly destined to sound dated, thanks to the referenced dance genres such as Eurobeat and trance not necessarily built to age the best. But it also had to do with the kinds of songs Komuro wrote with this music. He often wrote bleak, hopeless narratives of people being consumed by city life to the point it threatens to erase their identity. Globe’s biggest song, “Departure,” used reminiscences as a form of escape with the protagonist gazing into a photograph and getting lost in her memories to slip away from the pressures of the present. His singles were songs about yesterdays by design.
“Can’t Stop Fallin’ in Love” from their second album, Faces Places, continues this exploration of reminiscences as an escape from a grim present. The mellow, melancholy trip-hop starts with scenes of a possibly dysfunctional marriage: “You always had your ring off / but you even locked arms with me last night,” Keiko sings with her eyebrows raised at unexpected behaviors from her partner. The song hints repeatedly at issues and conflicts we as listeners never to get to know, but the deeper point is how the chorus blacks all that out for a brief yet powerful moment of clarity. “After seeing you dance / and then our love began / the moment I touched your hair / I knew / what I can do,” she sings, like flashbacks and attached sensations long forgotten suddenly started rushing back.
There’s a lot in the music and lyrics of “Can’t Stop Fallin’ in Love” to layer with the unfolding scene of the song’s music video. The slo-mo fittingly syncs with the mellow tempo but the distortion of time also turns the visuals into something more dreamy, like a faded memory they attempt to recapture. That key imagery of her lover dancing, a trigger to unlock essential memories, parallels with scenes of the members of Globe enthralled by the music: this is what we once felt when we were up there, feeling our music, they seem to express. There’s a heartbreaking irony in Komuro’s songs yearning to return to a lost time as the songs itself succumb to the changing times, forever left behind trying to be elsewhere but the cruel present.
Next issue is out November 11. You can check out previous issues here.
Need to contact? You can find me on Twitter or reach me at ryomiyauchi9@gmail.com