After returning from Los Angeles I felt a bit burned out on the whole Jpop thing, so I've been listening to a wide variety of music since then. Mainly, my new favorite form of music has turned out to be "post-war optimism" stuff like Guy Lombardo and Les Paul. I'll sneak the occasional Aiko/Mi-chan/Perfume songs in just to be fair, but as far as new-era Morning Musume is concerned, I'll be back to it in a while.
I ran out of the Hello!Party for a short while to avoid hearing a karaoke version of "Yume no Naka", from the very first Morning Musume album. Apologies to whoever that was, but I don't care if you're the reincarnation of Karen Carpenter; that song is just sacred in so many ways. So I got the urge to listen to that song a couple days ago and played the whole album for good measure, what the hell...
In many ways, the latest incarnation of Morning Musume is like Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos; they didn't exist a while back, and they're really good. By comparison, 'old-school' Musume is like the Cool Ranch Doritos we were downing by the metric ton in the '80s. It just felt right. My point with this admittedly goofy analogy is that, to be sure, what we saw at AX was certainly the same brand of Morning Musume, but what we saw was certainly not the same group it was 11 years ago. I know what you're thinking, it's not the same members, but there's more to it than just who's holding down the stage.
With the exception of "3, 2, 1 Breakin' Out" and maybe a couple of others, they've abandoned group harmonies in favor of a more powerful lead vocal style. The group has gone from the old-school cool harmonies to balls-out chaos (think 'Koko ni Iruzee!') to uber-cuteness (like 'Ai Araba...' and 'Mikan'). It's taken them this long to get back to a more mature, dare I say 'sexy' style with 'Shouganai Yume Oibito'. And I place the blame squarely on the 4th Gen.
Look at the numbers. Musume recruits Goto Maki, the world's head explodes, and Love Machine/Koi no Dance Site sell a collective 400 billion copies. Then comes the 4th Gen to KILL THEIR SALES. As much as I love them, once you bring in Rika, all the girls in the audience turn their attention elsewhere, then the crazy man-fans show up and take over the place.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure that Yossie has kept a lot of girls in the buying mood. Ladies, I'm not suggesting that you're *that way* but it's pretty obvious that the chicks dig Yossie, so don't freak out on me yet. She did what she could.
Aibon and Nono were good role models for girls for about eight weeks or so, until (as I've discussed) they decided to *not* be role models and just do whatever-the-hell.
It was Tsunku who took the group in the direction they went, who went for the male demographic overall and decided to stop catering to more feminine tastes. And suddenly, in place of the original group is this over-caffeinated group who's bouncing off the walls instead of paying tribute to the jazz masters of old. Maybe it's Ichii Sayaka's fault.
Sayaka (who, if I'm not mistaken, was referred to as "Kaa-san" by the other members) should never have left. Watch for her in old concerts, she's got soul (*and* she's super-bad!) She certainly looked and acted more like a grown-up than any of the current members, and for whatever reason, when she left it allowed the Nacchi's and Rika's to take over and wreck up the place. Observe, then, the cover of the second Morning Musume album with most of the old-school members:
Notice anything? Like the fact that they're not wearing any makeup? If I was a record-buyer of the female persuasion I'd be thinking to myself, these girls are bold. They're not afraid to be their true selves. And despite it all, yes, they're still really pretty. Would you expect the same kind of attitude from the group now?
Uh, don't hold your breath. And it's not that I don't like what they've become, far from it. But as I'm listening to the Kaa-san era albums, there's no mental connection, no spark in my brain that says "this is the group I saw". But you know what? Technically, this *was* the group I saw, where the name and the forces behind it are the exact same. Beyond that, it ain't selling quite as well these days as Love Machine did. The audience has shrunk. Where did all those women go?
What makes a hit record? Let's look at some contemporaries. SPEED, in some two-and-a-half years, sold enough records that when Morning Musume finally surpassed them it was a bona-fide ACCOMPLISHMENT. Women bought the hell out of those SPEED records because they didn't stray from the formula that made them big in the first place. Look hot, look cool, and you've got buyers on both sides of the aisle.
The Beatles sure sold a lot of records, just as many (if not more) to women who were totally after them like stalkers. It was their wide appeal in songwriting and general aloofness that gave them mystique. People bought their records in the hope of unravelling some of that enigma, and to this day it's still intangible in many ways. They're *still* selling records, forty years after they broke up.
And the greatest-selling record of all-time? Thriller. Why? Young, old, black, white, male, female... it doesn't matter, that record broke so many boundaries and has an appeal to almost any buyer on the planet.
Back to Morning Musume, July 2009. They're raking in the cash, they're arguably more successful than ever; but their goal should be nothing short of world-domination, to be the talent behind the as-yet-unnamed greatest-selling record of all time. One that makes Thriller look like some slip of the world consciousness before we all started buying really good music.
They *can*. But all this motto-kawaii-ness is keeping a few people from buying into the hype. It's time to get *real* again, and they're headed in that direction, it seems, so keep your fingers crossed. Before long, they'll each have a zoo and a theme park in their back yards, if they can remember how to keep everyone's attention. "Yume no Naka", indeed.
Last order of blasphemy is this: as far as every Japanese girl, famous or not (as I've heard) wants to be blonde and Pam Anderson-esque... again, let's get real. Every one of them in their current state, be they Kayo Aiko, Nagasawa Nao, Saito Michi, Hoshii Nanase, the Morning Musume's, the girls from SPEED (especially Hiro, no question) is cooler than I could ever hope to be. I'm just buying records, trying to unravel some of that enigma.