Duncan Cooper spends a lot of time on the internet. Every other Monday, he pays tribute to the hours spent with
Last Thursday, Acéphale's Patrik North tweeted, "a problem w/ @thefader and @pitchfork and @stereogum and @dummymag is that they don't cover IMPORTANT MUSIC," with a link to 18-year-old model-blogger Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's "PONPONPON."
I love stuff like "PONPONPON", and not just for the visual spectacle of faceless, cross-dressing plus-size dancers or the floating toast with 3-D eyeballs or when Kyary’s head turns to pink Picasso slime. “PONPONPON” was written and composed by Yasutaka Nakata, who is sort of like the The-Dream of J-Pop, an auteur whose work guiding female vocalists like Perfume, Capsule and Meg always follows an instantly-identifiable, common perfect thread. In their world, Nakata and his artists make music sublime, a happy marriage of early-2000s French electro and soprano Auto-Tune. Watch this video from Perfume—same kind of sound as “PONPONPON,” and even though the aesthetic is totally flipped, it’s still basically the happiest shit imaginable:
I could write a treatise. I’d love to. But what the fuck is that song called? What does this title even mean? “ナチュラルに恋して 2010.4.14発売！” ??? Easily one of my top three most-watched YouTubes last year, and it took a way-more-than-moderate amount of digging to figure out the song is “Nee (ねぇ)” and the video’s part of an ad campaign for Natural Beauty Basic, a Japanese lifestyle brand with a website I can’t read. If we assume this is coverage-worthy emerging music for a FADER audience, as a person trying to give Perfume (or “PONPONPON”) a non-insulting, non-cultural-tourist, non-meme American voice, it journalistically scares me that even at the most practical level I have no idea what’s going on.
“PONPONPON” is even more complicated, with it’s super-kawaii bedroom set designed by 6%DOKIDOKI, like a grotto of hyper-pastel, toddler-vamping, non-threatening fantasy. For Western audiences whose primary exposure to Harajuku style was through our reigning icon of oversized sex in music, Nicki Minaj, the almost-immediate reaction to actual female Japanese artists is usually as perversely neutered child-expressions of repressed male desire. But is that right? Visually, the best Western corollary for “PONPONPON” is the adult Candy Land video for Katy Perry’s “California Gurls,” with its breast-ejaculate whipped cream and full-nude cotton candy cloud shots. Is that what’s going on here? Seems like no, but if I can’t even read the title on the video, I feel at least two semesters away from halfway getting it.
Before “PONPONPON” or her soon-to-be-released autobiography Oh! My! God! Harajuku Girl, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu was a successful teen model, radio host and a popular fashion blogger (again, she's only 18). Last year she released a line of tsukema (artificial eye lashes), and Time Out Japan asked her how they were selling. “A lot of people came to buy them, and I’m happy they liked them,” Kyary said. “One man bought so many of them and I’m wondering what he is going to do with them… (laughs)!” I just don't know, man. Her debut album Moshi Moshi Harajuku comes out in Japan at the end of the month. I'm sure I'll find it somewhere, but the best thing I could write about it would probably be a dozen smiley faces. The last thing I want to do is facilitate other people not understanding.
