Once upon a time, I told Mister Mister that I’d be happy to feature any boy bands that did the music to warrant it. It was a safe, innocuous kind of comment, less a promise than a “we’ll see” with a smirk. After all, thought I at the time and plenty of times subsequently because yes I sometimes think about you guys who comment (what of it?), when has the relentless boy band machine that is mainstream J-pop ever turned out something on par with even, say, that lone K-pop outfit that I find significantly entertaining?
Cue up last week’s Weekender and said Mister Mister:
And that, friends, becomes the moment when I abjure all remaining pretense toward “normal” J-pop.
The spirit of discovery compel you! I actually know nothing about SUPER DRAGON just like with Dreamcatcher, which means a little dive into the Internets. And it’s kind of funny how much idols are described the same regardless of sex! If you want better examples, go look at their Twitter. They even have subunits! Also funny how this group is associated with the same company as Momoiro Clover Z and a-few-times-here-featured Batten Show Jo Tai, which is a machine of high-quality stuff that no, I’ll never pretend to try to get all the way into.
Here’s another number, well-titled but less-crushing:
So they’re like Q’ulle, basically
This is not to spawn a sudden new interest in boy bands or anything — I typically limit such to nostaglic celebrations of Backstreet hits and the occasional NKOTB number, or when I want 90s R&B and put on the likes of BLACKstreet — but to keep throwing open those windows. Hey, the site’s about idol, right? And the male idols are in fact umpteen thousand times more popular than the girls, by and large. If SUPER DRAGON and whoever else wants to get a little nasty in their sound, I’ll be more than happy to celebrate that, too. The hard side of idol knows no particular bounds of gender!
I expected to hate this (BOY BANDS?!) but that was quite fun. I’m not sure I love them enough to be buying their music but if they were support at a show I’d want to watch. It did get me thinking though how awesome it would sound if some young fellows like that were to collaborate or even be in proper units with the type of idols we normally see here. Co-ed alt-idol if you will. I was a big fan of Kiyoshi Ryujin 25 and loved the mixed vocals on those songs but we don’t really have anything like that in alt-idol excepting the more, er, novelty types like Ladybeard and Bucho. I don’t suppose the Japanese wota would go for it though and that’s what counts.
Team Homicidols is very pro Cinema & Boy CQ, which I’m sure that Papermaiden would be beyond happy to tell you all about.
Oh yeah, forgot about them. I dunno, although I’m generally on board with the art-idol, I found it *too* arty, like I wasn’t clever enough to understand it. I confess I only watched that last MV and thought “What was all that about?” which is by no means an unusual thing to think about idol videos but I didn’t enjoy the music on any kind of gut level. Maybe I need to try harder…
What I really want though is fun upbeat loud stuff with three or so of those Super Dragon types in a unit with three or so WACK rejects – come on Watanabe, bring some boys in!
Yay!
To be fair i am not really a fan of theirs, i just liked this song. 🙂
Their only other song that i have listened to repeatedly is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAZLg8dEVaI
Feels kind of like they were making a Batten Shoujotai song but they were all out of ska and used hiphop as a substitute. ;p
Since we are talking about boy groups i will just put a couple of links to more of them doing stuff that is somewhat interesting(these are all one-offs, unfortunately(also i think i might have posted these in various comments here in the past… Oh well.)):
Since you mentioned Dreamcatcher here is what happened when INFINITE hired Dreamcatchers usual songwriters and told them “Make one of those for us”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz-K4y7RtG4
Here is Hey Say Jump! with a really fun song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfHDFFYZgHY&feature=youtu.be&t=31
And here BTS are covering a Seo Taiji&Boys song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvjJwk1YrUI
And if you don’t know Seo Taiji&Boys… It’s kind of a band, kind of an idol group, everything from pop to hip-hop, rock, rap-rock, metal-ish stuff…
And, oh yeah, it’s pretty much the basis of K-pop.
It’s an internet hole i highly recommend you fall into some time… It’s weird and interesting.
No boy group seem to be really committing to a more intense sound which is honestly a bit odd as it seems like it’s a niche that could have some popularity.
But maybe they figure Visual Kei has that covered or something…
Honestly, much as Johnny’s entire business model pisses me off, KAT-TUN had some pretty heavy stuff back in the day.