Sorry, Today, You Lost to Yesterday
Listening to Shiina Ringo’s Shouso Strip at the moment, which isn’t even my favorite Shiina Ringo album, and it so clearly destroys anything that has come out of the Japanese pop music scene in the last six years. This album should sound dated and terrible — that’s how pop culture works — but the total stagnation of J-Pop makes it sound like some kind of futuristic gift sent back in time from an altrusitic advanced civilization. “Gibusu” is like ideal utopian socialist fantasy of a J-Rock ballad.
Buffalo Daughter’s “LI303VE” also stands up. (I am writing about both artists for a magazine.)
Many deride necrophilic obsession with the past, but what do you do when the past so clearly and objectively kicks the present’s teeth in on a daily basis? The collapse of this pop culture thing has made us all Classics majors and historians.
October 30, 2008 at 1:18 pm
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0h-At1hBd4M
October 30, 2008 at 1:35 pm
This is so bad that I am not even sure whether it’s allowed into the conversation to support my thesis.
October 30, 2008 at 2:20 pm
“The collapse of this pop culture thing has made us all Classics majors and historians.”
It actually did with me.
So is American pop music doing just as poorly?
October 30, 2008 at 4:30 pm
This makes me love “j-pop-culture” even more. I can actually listen to all the bands I fell in love with between ’98 and ’03 and still not seem outdated
October 30, 2008 at 5:38 pm
I not-too-recently translated an English song written for her by a real classic class-act American songwriter. I don’t really follow what she does, but it should be out any day now
October 30, 2008 at 5:47 pm
I ♥ old music.
October 30, 2008 at 6:56 pm
I currently have Three Durutti Column,two SMITHS and one JOY DIVISION CDs in my car.
I love the 80′s.
October 31, 2008 at 12:33 am
“but what do you do when the past so clearly and objectively kicks the present’s teeth in on a daily basis?”
Accept that you are now officially old.
October 31, 2008 at 2:09 am
Does Supercar count as old? Because they’re still the best band to have come from japan in recent history. It’s a shame they broke up, because they were fantastic, especially when they started venturing into the more electronic territory. Then again, I don’t know if they fall under your definition of “pop music” either.
If we venture outside the realm of “pop culture” there are plenty of stand up artists coming from japan as far as I’m concerned.
October 31, 2008 at 3:26 am
I think good pop music stays good. Why does “old” and “new” really matter?
October 31, 2008 at 4:07 am
Marxy is (and perhaps rightly so) on this kick about how there is nothing impressive coming from the Japanese cultural scene in the last few years.
It’s not a matter of something still being relevant; it’s a matter of nothing relevant being produced anymore.
October 31, 2008 at 4:56 am
I do agree with him on current Japanese pop,
I just think the stuff he mentioned would still stand up regardless of whether or not there was something “relevant” coming out of the Japanese pop scene.
October 31, 2008 at 7:29 am
I think “This album should sound dated and terrible — that’s how pop culture works” is… kind of not true? I take your point about how current japanese pop is entirely lacking in innovation, I think it’s true, but the idea that something that was popular eight years ago should sound or look or read ridiculous is misguided (is this a fashion thing? that whole ‘gee eighties clothes were so stuuupid but we loved them then’ idea?). Even something that sounded futuristic eight years ago can still sound futuristic today – there’s a ton of techno and r’n'b from 1999-2001 that’s still weird and exciting and innovative-sounding today, regardless of later developments.
October 31, 2008 at 10:23 am
I feel even more dated and terrible. I still listen to Rebecca, The Roosterz, and my all-time favourite Zelda, all 80s stuff — not to mention some 70s folk and pop….
October 31, 2008 at 10:53 am
I am old. There’s no question about that.
Zelda’s not bad, but the recording quality is unfortunately pretty rotten.
November 1, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Saying that it “objectively” kicks the ass of the present is begging the question, though.
In 10 years’ time there will be 30somethings moaning about how nothing in the late 2010s measures up to Perfume’s late-career output, and asking why pop culture just isn’t RELEVANT the way it was in 2008, when they happened to be impressionable young adults.
November 1, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Just like all those kids growing up in the ’70s still talk about how much better Wings was than the Beatles.
November 2, 2008 at 12:41 am
Matt: My bet is they won’t because the hyperabundance of music in the broadband era has made relevance to the times more or less obsolete. The “current” is just a tiny fraction of the gigs of music you’re walking around with in your pocket.
I think the end of pop history occurred around 2001.
November 2, 2008 at 4:28 am
amida: I can’t follow that. how has the internet made “relevance to the times” obsolete?
And don’t you think that “end of pop history” thing is a little…not true at all?
November 2, 2008 at 8:37 am
OK, I will grant you that the Beatles were objectively better than Wings. I’m not saying that anyone should like all bands equally, just that I don’t think that Shiina Ringo is objectively better than all pop music currently in stores. As other posters pointed out, you haven’t succeeded in differentiating your argument from that of previous generations who believed that the rocks and rolls and such were objectively worse than Lawrence Welk. That doesn’t mean there isn’t an interesting essay on the topic, but at the “your favorite band sucks” level, it’s an opinion piece, not an investigative report.
Amida: I guess we can argue about definitions of pop history. I’m not trying to argue that the pop music scene of 2008 is exactly analogous to that of 1998. Just that there will always be bands we like and bands we don’t like, their sales will go up and down, but people’s response to music will still have little to nothing to do with quality and everything to do with context, marketing, and other factors entirely unrelated to the music itself.
Look, I don’t mean to be a total musical relativist. I just don’t think it’s wise to confuse personal taste with objective facts. That road leads to Yngwie Malmsteen albums.
November 2, 2008 at 9:04 am
Although I have pleasant memories of the Shiina Ringo albums, I don’t think that’s why I think they are great. I loved Letters to Cleo too, but I wouldn’t for a minute offer them up as evidence of past cultural superiority. I think Shiina Ringo’s 2nd and 3rd albums were just massively innovative within the J-Pop genre. She did things, which can even be quantified objectively (symmetrical song titles, extremely difficult words in lyrics, dramatic use of all kinds of noises, lots and lots of instruments, good electronic elements programmed by first-rate people), that no one else is doing now. I am not sure anyone right now on the Oricon charts is trying so hard to make their albums into “text” open to critical exploration.
If we are comparing all art by its meaning to viewers/listeners, you have a point, in that everyone tends to overassociate value with music that liked at the time when that music really “reached” them. Pop music just sounds better to teenagers than 30 year olds. But I don’t think that means that critically speaking, in that strange formula in which we read the value of music from a semi-objective standpoint, J-Pop today in any way holds up to what has come before. It certainly doesn’t in sales and in reach, and I am arguing, it also doesn’t in “critical value.”
November 2, 2008 at 9:17 am
She did things, which can even be quantified objectively (symmetrical song titles, extremely difficult words in lyrics, dramatic use of all kinds of noises, lots and lots of instruments, good electronic elements programmed by first-rate people), that no one else is doing now.
OK, that is a sensible argument, although still with elements of subjectivity (were her electronics more “good” than e.g. Perfume’s?). I don’t really follow the pops, so I don’t know whether it can be countered effectively, and I won’t bother muddying the waters by throwing in other potential value systems (“Serious-seishun pop-punk is a powerful reaction against that overelaborate stuff! Ayumi speaks for the gals!”). But I will observe that your list of positives sounds like it was borrowed from a Yes vs King Crimson usenet thread.
November 2, 2008 at 9:44 am
Yes vs King Crimson usenet thread
Ha.
I also find Shiina Ringo’s songwriting more impressive than most everyone else. But her combination of this with innovation in the production and lyrics makes her a greater force than others. Perfume’s songs are fun, but I think they are going to age extremely poorly because of the over-autotuning and amazingly FLAT compression.
November 2, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Shiina Ringo’s one of those artists that crop up every once in a while, who end up producing something impressive and enduring. Perfume are bubblegum. You enjoy them in different ways and I’m not sure either is particularly representative.
That said, I’m trying really hard to come up with some recent examples that contradict Marxy’s point but I can’t. In the late 90s and early 2000s labels were throwing a lot of money around and I think bands had a lot more freedom to mess around, but nowadays they seem to have tightened up a lot and no one’s funding diversity and experimentation unless it’s by proven bankable artists.
November 5, 2008 at 3:19 am
Screw J-pop, just give me some more Boris and Mono.
November 13, 2008 at 2:39 am
there’s good music coming from japan. it’s just so underground. it’s next to impossible to get unless you are in that specific small circle. j-pop isn’t even a genre worth considering in my mind anymore. also j-rock. or j-anything. at this point the whole idea is slightly offensive. your either making good or interesting music , or your don’t. your place of origin should have no count.