AKB48 is a group made up of, you guessed it, around 48 young girls age 13 to 22. The actual number seems to shift by a few from time to time as “old” members are “graduated” (the Japanese idol scene's way of kicking out the girls who are no longer young enough) and new members are indoctrinated. The “AKB” in their name is derived from their home base in Akihabara where they also have their own exclusive theater. Akihabara is a mecca for all aspects of Japan's otaku culture, including anime, manga, video games, technology and music. As much of the otaku culture is focused on the adoration and worship of all things moe (basically the feeling one gets from looking at cute, young, lovable girls) AKB48's location is certainly no accident.
Style wise, they are exactly like Morning Musume, another large group of very young girls singing sparkling pop songs and dancing around. The music production is extremely artificial, loaded with synthetic strings, orchestral stabs and the occasional guitar. Perhaps unsurprising, the music takes a back-seat to the vocals. While some of the songs focus on one or two solo singers, most are made up of thickly layered and effected choruses of the entire group. It's all extremely up-beat and positive, with the sing-along sections in full force as well as the earnestness and “innocence.” You know, moe. Yet their songs, along with their extremely young appearance, point toward their intentions being far from innocent.
While the music is nothing particularly innovative or ground-breaking, it's the marketing behind this truly massive group that is something worth mentioning. The hook with AKB48 is that producer Akimoto Yasushi makes it absolutely no secret that the group is a pre-packaged product aimed directly at older otaku men. Fans can even call up their own favorite member and chat with her after the shows. Naturally, fans will do anything to follow their own special idol, which most often means buying whatever CD, DVD or photobook they are a part of.
The true genius (if you can call it that) behind this format can be seen in their albums. The large group is divided into three smaller sub-groups, A, K and B, consisting of 16 or so members each. The three sub-groupings each release their own singles and albums. The things is, each sub-group sings many of the same songs as their compatriots, so fans are essentially buying the same albums three times. Even the one regular album they've released, SET LIST -Greatest Songs 2006-2007, is essentially a re-issue of all of their previous singles and b-sides.
As so many other things in Akihabara, AKB48 is first and foremost a disposable commodity, something to be sold on the basis of its glossy surface alone. They do have catchy songs, but it's really the girls who are for sale here, and that doesn't exactly make for a great listening experience.
"Iiwake Maybe"
Official Site
Members:
Team A
Itano Tomomi / Kawasaki Nozomi / Kojima Haruna / Komatani Hitomi / Maeda Atsuko / Masuyama Kayano / Minegishi Minami / Nakanishi Rina / Narita Risa / Ohe Tomomi / Oshima Mai / Sato Yukari / Shinoda Mariko / Takahashi Minami / Tojima Hana / Hirajima Natsumi
Team K
Akimoto Sayaka / Hayano Kaoru / Kasai Tomomi / Kobayashi Kana / Masuda Yuka / Matsubara Natsumi / Miyazawa Sae / Noro Kayo / Ohori Megumi / Oku Manami / Ono Erena / Oshima Yuko / Satou Natsuki / Umeda Ayaka
Team B
Hirajima Natsumi / Inoue Naru / Kashiwagi Yuki / Kikuchi Ayaka / Katayama Haruka / Matsuoka Yuki / Nakagawa Haruka / Nakaya Sayaka / Noguchi Reina / Oota Aika / Saotome Miki / Tanabe Miku / Urano Kazumi / Watanabe Mayu / Watanabe Shiho / Yonezawa Rumi
Graduated Members
Usami Yuki / Uemura Ayako / Orii Ayumi / Hoshino Michiru / Imai Yu / Takada Ayana / Watanabe Shiho / Deguchi Aki / Masuyama Kayano
Releases:
SET LIST -Greatest Songs 2006-2007 (2007)
Sakura no Hanabiratachi
Yuhi wo Mite Iruka?
Skirt
5 comments:
From Wikipedia:
Tickets are 2000yen for men, and 1000yen for women and children. The special prices for Himawari-gumi shows are fixed at 3000yen for men, and 2000yen for women and children.
Now that info speaks for itself.
[i]The three sub-groupings each release their own singles and albums.[/i]
This is not exactly true. This sometimes happens with their "theatre" albums. On Official or major singles they select certain members from the whole AKB48 (most popular ones) and re-record songs they're already singing on their Akihabara theater. That's what I call Intelligent Recycling.
Yasumoto was also the creator of Onyanko Club (1980s), a HUGE idol group -a.k.a. pre-Momusu?
Now they have an entire new group, SKE48, and it seems they're going to be a national project...
GREAT blog.
Greetings from Argentina!
Yasumoto? I mean, Yasushi Akimoto xD
I don't know how you can slag the songs off based on rockist bias. "Synthetic strings", so what? The songs are well written and arranged etc. there's nothing actually wrong with the tunes. They are great TaTu-esque odysseys of drama, emotions and hooks (don't laugh). And POWER. Not navel gazing, middle aged record collector appeasing indie / Pitchfork wank like most of the shite on this site (with the exception of P-Model/YMO et al.)
Boris? You might as well listen to the Melvins. Asobi Seksu? You might as well listen to Ride. Merzbow? Might as well jump off a building. This is music-lover rock for iPodders who listen to music like it's an annual cake eating competition. The same tedious fucking cake over and over again till you're ready to puke. The same self satisfied feeling of achievement when you eat the most cake. Again. The same insiduous tedium and middle-class doom. Usually the same fat glasses wearing journalist blokes as well. They don't actually like music.
Mind you, Perfume are pants. So clearly there is no genre / demographic boundary when it comes to rubbish music.
You are just put off / snubbing the aesthetic, which is fair enough if you really feel that way (ie. not basing it on superficial cred concerns - this is why certain pop is suddenly okay to like because someone decided it was cool). But there is a rather lame trend to claim that image-inspired music naturally takes a back seat to the promotional aspects and is ergo shite. It's either that particular extreme, or people looking at the image and thinking all the music is amazing as a result. Rarely do you get people who talk about the music objectively.
"On Official or major singles they select certain members from the whole AKB48 (most popular ones) and re-record songs they're already singing on their Akihabara theater. That's what I call Intelligent Recycling."
Recycling? That's no different to bands playing new songs live and releasing them on the next record, or the album version of a song being mixed differently to a single.
Had no idea the bloke behind Onyanko Club founded AKB48. Makes sense cause I heard some old Onyanko Club songs before and they were HITS!
@nobjockey:All I can really say in response is already in the about text on the blog:
"...Here I hope to share with you a comprehensive (!!) list of Japanese artists and bands (with a strong focus on underground and indie acts) that you may or may not have heard of, in the hopes of expanding our mutual awareness of Japanese music.
I don't mean to suggest that everything I listen to is great. Quite the contrary, I hope that you will take the time to recommend your own favorite artists in the comments so that we can all learn a bit more about the huge range of Japanese music that's out there."I don't cover a lot of J-pop in-depth simply because I don't listen to much of it and I like even less. That's not to say that I can't hear a talented act when it's presented to me. I just think that there is a difference between natural or hard earned talent and a product that exists only to be sold. The individual people involved in creating AKB48 and other J-pop groups might be extremely talented, but their own unique qualities are the first things to be hammered down when they become part of a mass-media creation.
And you are correct. You can't, and shouldn't, judge a book by its cover. Sure, you might have a pretty good idea what to expect when you see the members of a viz-kei band take the stage, but obviously the music isn't dictated by the costumes. However, I think it's impossible to neglect to mention the gross amount of marketing that goes into the creation of the music for groups like AKB48. They would simply not exist if there wasn't already a large (however specialized) market for their CDs, posters, books, DVDs and daily live shows.
When I mentioned the artificiality of the music, I was speaking literally, not figuratively. Well, at least not entirely figuratively. While it may have changed since I first wrote the post, the music I heard at the time was 100% generated by synths and studio black boxes. The sound pallets used were not particularity sophisticated or unique. Now, if you look around more of the blog (which it sounds like you have) you'll see that I love electro music just as much as all the guitar-based "middle aged record collector appeasing indie / Pitchfork wank" you talk about. (And for the record, I have never read more than a page or two of Pitchfork.) I certainly was not pointing out its inherent artificiality in an effort to cut it down.
This is all a very long winded way of saying, if you want adoring praise for [insert name here], than do a Google search and find their fan page. There are likely to be at least a handful for any band you could care to look for. I'm not doing this to blindly reinforce anyone's goo-goo eyed opinion of their favorite group. If you love them already, then that conviction should be strong enough to carry you through any smarmy comments from some know-nothing blogging jerk-wad like me.
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