Hey it’s day four of “50 Days of YMM MVs”, a deep-dive analysis into 50 music videos (as of this writing) by YOU’LL MELT MORE!! We’re still pretty early in the group’s history at this point, when the group had eight(!) members, including what I’d consider the “core” of the group that we’ve come to most closely associate with their name. This song is called “Sayonara Bakachan”, let’s check it out…
One thing I’m enjoying already about this project is the opportunity to revisit these earlier tunes when YLMM! were still very much under the radar for a lot of folks, and I’m including myself in that statistic. At this point, I had heard of the group, but really hadn’t checked them out with an attentive ear yet, which I’ve since come to realize was my loss during that period. Let’s face it, they were always good from the beginning!
Another interesting thing I only picked up on learned recently: YOU’LL MELT MORE! were briefly signed to T-PALETTE records, the label of choice for other off-the-beaten path idols like Negicco, Vanilla Beans, and Sayonara Ponytail. Their EP Hako Melt More! was their sole release on the label, and this MV is one of the two listed T-PALETTE’s YouTube channel.
The MV explores one of the classic idol industry video tropes: The behind the scenes montage where the girls are shown bonding with other…..Y’know, dance practice, singing karaoke, eating lunch and mugging for the camera. (That’s what idols do all day you see…) It’s not a ground-breaking video, but it’s quite pleasant to watch and gives you plenty of feel-good vibes. You kind of start to get a feel for how YLMM! would evolve in the years to come and it’s interesting to look back on this and see how the group progressed.
I really like the song too! (It’s another collaboration with the band Hakoniwa no Shitsunaigaku.) It’s got a nice n’ breezy lazy Sunday kind of feel with lovely harmonies that sounds very unmistakably Yurumerumo! in all the best ways. My impression is that while this group went through quite a few line-up changes, the musical goals of YLMM! were always pretty consistent. And before long, we’d really see that vision become even more fully realized…
