When this first hit Twitter about 45 minutes ago, I was like, “Oh great, another weird swerve for the Artists Formerly Known as a Couple of Different Things.”
But after listening to it a few times and going back through GANG PARADE‘s Soundcloud, is “WE ARE the IDOL” a return to form?
A few synth sections aside, there’s nothing denpa-y about this one; it has energy much more akin to “Plastic 2 Mercy” from back in the day (well, a year ago), a traditional pop ballad. It’s a nice song.
And I was still prepared to bag on it a little bit — this being a case of including an artist of interest more than music that fits the amorphous mold — until I actually looked at the video, and you know what? I think this is a piece of commentary, a little throwing-open of the soul, “we are the idol” being a humanizing and (dare I say?) empowering message. That makes the promo images make a lot more sense than “why are the A-pop girls glaring at the future?”
The lyrics are subtitled in the video — do any of you Japanese readers care to share some insights into the actual theme of the song?
I also officially have no idea where GANG PARADE’s going from here; the denpa thing was a pretty sharp departure from where they’d started, and now here’s a track that’s going back to the heart of their origin.
It’s more moody than Queen of POP, but it doesn’t have the electropop punch that the precious few P2m songs had. Everyone who was stoked on P2m badly wants to hate POP/GP, but really it sounds fine in a vacuum. Live and let live!
I can only imagine that you’ve seen some of the more active YouTubers. There are some seriously passionate Kamiya Saki people in this world.
I’m not so sure there’s any departing or returning going on. I’ve been assuming that they’re just carrying on BiS’s fine tradition of general disregard for genre boundaries.