I feel like just recently Niji no Conquistador has started to get their fair shake as an exciting group. And it’s true that their music has gotten more and more interesting and exciting over time. However, I still have a lot of affection for Nijicon’s earliest music, and their second single is probably my favorite. Brand New Happy Days isn’t the most interesting song ever, especially compared to other songs like Yarukkyanai 2015 or Alien Girl in New York. However, it has little hints of weirdness, like the dark bridge near the end that comes out of nowhere and the spoken sections. Despite this it’s one of the catchiest, cutest songs and one that always brings a smile to my face.

I normally don’t bring up music videos in this segment, but as much as I like the song the video is where Brand New Happy Days really shines. All of the backdrops are clearly in person, the props are all held up by the members. The entire thing has the feel of a group making their own video, which goes along with the group’s theme (the group was formed by the art-sharing website Pixiv). While not as glossy as something like Yarukkyanai 2015, Brand New Happy Days has a homemade aesthetic that I always like.

Every so often I go back and relisten to the AKB48 music I listened to about 4-5 years ago, and while there’s been a lot of great tracks from them, one of my favorites is NMB48’s Bokura no Eureka. It’s beautifully put together, but what I love about it is the feel of the song – the melody and the strings make it sound almost bittersweet, which fits well with the rambly, story-driven lyrics. It has a feel that not a lot of other songs have, that bittersweetness – Dempagumi.inc’s Not Bocchi… Natsu has it (which I’ll probably recommend for a song of the day sooner or later). It’s the type of song that’s upbeat and fun to listen to, but at the same time tugs at your heartstrings in some imperceptible way, that makes it feel more like a ballad. It’s hard to describe just why it makes me feel this way, but Bokura no Eureka feels a bit like heartache, in the best possible way. It’s a great song, and even if you’re not a big 48 group fan I encourage you to check this out.

I love songs that have some sort of theme, some sort of gimmick. LinQuest, LinQ’s RPG themed song, is not only a fun gimmick (with the occasional chiptune sound on a backdrop of orchestral music) but it’s a good song. Written by my favorite composer Maeyamada Kenichi, LinQuest ~Yagate Densetsu e~ has an epic feel, a lush beautiful instrumental, and feels like it should be in the soundtrack to a movie or a game. It’s a well put together song that I discover something new to love during every listen. Just listening to the background instrumentation I focus on something new every time I revisit this song – the electric bass, the chiptune, the flutes, the timpani. It’s lush, beautiful, and a treat to listen to again and again.

Happy 50th Song of the Day! I have to say, the fact I’ve managed to stick with this for fifty consecutive days of blogging makes me more than a little proud. And when I opened this post I had no ideas on what songs to pick. So I decided to check out my YouTube recommendations and see what songs it had, and luckily enough W’s Robo Kiss came up.

W is a pretty interesting Hello!Project group, all things considered, because they started out doing covers. Not covers of currently popular songs, but popular songs from the Showa era, mostly things from the 60s and 70s. Their first album, Duo U&U, was all covers of female duos from that period. So when it came time for original music, it’s kind of amazing how much of that style they managed to retain.

Robo Kiss was their second original single (after Aa Ii na) and more than anything it reminds me of a Pink Lady song. It has the same kind of weird sensibility of songs like UFO or Southpaw, and the melody reminds me of songs from Pink Lady as well. The entire song sounds like a modern, updated version of a Showa era song, only it was written in 2004. I still had to look up and make sure it wasn’t a cover.

Robo Kiss is weird and entirely catchy. It’s one of those songs where, even if I hadn’t listened to it for months or even years, I feel like I could accurately sing it. It’s got a great melody, both Kago Ai and Tsuji Nozomi play it up, and it’s ust delightfully weird.

Along with Jpop, one of the things I’ve been listening to a lot for the past couple of years is Broadway cast albums and soundtracks. While there are some idol stage shows out there, the song that has sounded the most theatrical for me is i*Ris’ Gensoukyoku Wonderland. While I don’t pay all that much attention to the group, Gensoukyoku Wonderland is one of my favorite tracks of the past few years. It has an almost theatrical feel to it, with a bouncy, upbeat orchestral instrumental. I don’t know what about the melody feels like it should fit right into a musical for me, as I don’t really know any musicals that sound like this. I think it has this driving energy to it, though, that I could see working well in that setting.

Gensoukyoku Wonderland is also one of the most polished idol songs I think I’ve heard. Everything is perfect, the audio mixing is great, the vocals are polished but don’t sound fake. It works incredibly well as a song.

I know I just wrote about Momoiro Clover Z yesterday and I don’t like to talk about the same group twice in a row very much. However, today was International Women’s Day, so I wanted to have one of the most girl power songs I could think of.

My road with Otome Sensou is a weird one – at first I really hated it. I think the main issue was that the song had been too hyped up – this was just after a great single, the single covers looked really cool, and everything about this single seemed to be amazing and I didn’t think that the single lived up to what I hoped it would be. However, as the years have passed, I’ve grown more and more affectionate of Otome Sensou. I still think the sum doesn’t equal its parts, but it’s good nonetheless. The energy at the end of the song especially is really forceful, and strong. The chorus is not quite as powerful as it could be, but in hindsight I now like how the song builds to the ending. The quiet choral section near the end where one by one members join in has always been a favorite section of the song for me and it works great.

I didn’t like it very much at first, but Otome Sensou has somehow become a favorite.

I feel like I’ve gushed about Momoiro Clover Z’s two albums Amaranthus and Hakkin no Yoake a lot, but they are both two of my all time favorite idol albums, and that’s especially Hakkin no Yoake. Pink Zora was a perfect way to end Hakkin no Yoake, and it’s a song that I would not expect from many idol groups. It’s part gospel part psychedelic rock part soul in a really great way. Every aspect of this song is fantastic, from the vocals (including the more gospel-sounding backup vocals) to the horns, to the melody. However, what I like most of all is the general mellow vibe. I feel like idol songs often fit into two categories – they’re either mellow or very upbeat. Of course there are tons of exceptions, but I feel like it’s rare to have a song this mellow but with so much going on musically and that doesn’t drag.

If you like idol music and you are not listening to Momoiro Clover Z yet you really need to get on that.

Throughout 2017 my goal has been to listen to as many new idol songs and watch as many PVs as possible, so I can have a fuller grasp on the idol industry as a whole and help recommend what I think is good music instead of just doing the same “listen to Team Syachihoko please!” song and dance I do every year. One of the biggest surprises of doing this has been Tsuyogari Sensation’s single UG Stepper feat. MIZ, which is almost absurdly good for coming from such an indie group (I hadn’t heard of them before this).

It’s a pretty great rock tune that has a solid energy to it, but the real star is the violin part, provided by violinist MIZ. It works really well and works surprisingly well with the quality rock sound they have going. The instrumentation is great and actually works as a rock song, not watered down rock for idols. It’s a fast-paced song, and has a lot of energy to it. I feel like this song would be really intense and fun live.

While indie idols often have great music, UG Stepper is flat out fantastic and has a polish to it I didn’t expect from a relatively small group like Tsuyogari Sensation. I hope they catch on, because I can definitely see big things for this group in the future.

Since I’ve been writing about groups that are going to disband soon lately, how about a group that actually disbanded! GALETTe was an idol supergroup that didn’t get a huge amount of attention in the international idol community, which is a real shame because they had some really great funk/disco songs, pretty epitomized in She is Wannabe.

While there have been groups that have gone the funk/disco route as of late (which I’m extremely happy about), not many lean into it so much as GALETTe did. While many of their songs are great, She is Wannabe is incredibly catchy (just hearing the chorus once made this song stuck in my head forever), fun, upbeat, and undeniably disco. While I’m sad that GALETTe disbanded, I only hope these songwriters keep doing what they’re doing in writing catchy, happy disco tracks.

I’m going out to an exhibit by and about Guillermo del Toro in about an hour, so I wanted to make this quick and thematically relevant. While I don’t know if any idol music gets quite as intense as his movies (though maybe BiS comes close), the first thing that came to mind is Up Up Girls’ Bijo no Yajuu, considering the title and song literally refer to beasts, and monsters are a big theme of this exhibit.

The thing about Bijo no Yajuu I find most interesting is how it’s a bit of a departure for Up Up Girls. While Up Up Girls’ have had more party-themed music or songs with electronic instrumentals, a lot of their early music is upbeat, happy, typically idolly. There’s nothing wrong with that, but within the past couple of years UUG has tried to differentiated themselves by having more dance centric songs, epitomized in 2016’s Party People Alien. Bijo no Yajuu has a dark, interesting beat that doesn’t sound idolly at all, but is still one of my favorite UUG songs.