Keys to Everything

Be very afraid of how stream-of-conciousness this is… I stray from my initial point many a time. Don’t expect a simple solution.

!!!BATTLE POST!!!

At the expense of doing an actual review for C-ute’s new album I’m doing this. And this will by my first personal post on KtoE, I feel I should have done this sooner.

I’ve listened to C-ute’s new album once. And that’s the grand total. I just haven’t had the motivation to sit down and go through each track with a clear, open mind and I never risk not liking a song just because I’d had a bad day before I turned my CD player/iPod on. On first impressions I like it… but it doesn’t hit me as the best thing I’ve ever listened to.  Berryz’s 5(FIVE), I haven’t dedicated much time to either, you know I liked it – I scored it B+ on my initial review – but it didn’t have the longevity even album tracks should have.

In the end all I seem to find time for is the single tracks. Yuke Yuke Monkey Dance, Tsukiatteru no ni Kataomoi and Dschinghis Khan on Berryz’s album and Namida no Iro, FOREVER LOVE and Edo no Temari Uta II on C-ute’s. Maybe it’s the repetetive play because of the wait from the initial single release until the actual album release, the fact that you have time to learn the words and dance moves before you get this deluge of half-arsed tracks that you either quite like or aren’t sure are worth your time.

What I consistantly find with H!P albums is that the album tracks just don’t have that impact or the power of a single and this is why I’ve never felt much motivation to buy any of the earlier ones – I don’t feel that the odd fabulous track is really worth my money. Morning Musume falls into this trap too, but they’re not the subject here so we’ll ignore them for once.

But now that I have that rant out of the way, I’ll get to the real point of this post. After all, it is a battle post.

It’s going to be more than just ‘which album is better’. There’s more to it than that, it’s more of a general talk about C-ute and BK. C-ute hit a home run in my H!P rankings when they released Edo no Temari Uta II because, bloody hell – how awesome is that song?,  before I hadn’t liked them much and I hadn’t cared enough to try. Ookina Ai de Motenashite was a guilty pleasure of mine but I didn’t find myself falling pray to their more recent appeal.

But I’d liked Berryz Koubou almost immediately after I heard Dschinghis Khan. They were my constant. 7 girls that I knew I could depend on the entertain me, to some degree at least.  Imagine my shock when C-ute suddenly usurped them and I had a new favourite H!P Kids group.

I’m fickle. I am so amazingly fickle when it comes to my fandoms. It goes in ebbs and flows whether I like something more than something else and I can make an incredibly definite statement one day and then next week I’ll change my mind and have to retract the statement. I don’t apologise for it – just be aware that this may be the most self-destructive argument you’ve ever heard.

Well, that’s a fine example of getting off the point.

FAVOURITE MEMBER CHAT

Risako is my favourite member of Berryz Koubou, she gets a lot of stick and she’s not the most consistant performer, but I still love her. How much can you criticise a girl who’s only got a decade and a half of life experience and even less in performing experience? What I like about her is minorly inexplicable. She’s pretty but so are the others, but in the end I think it’s my Britishness coming out. Brits make it a rule to support the underdog, so I see her getting a bashing from bloggers and my heart goes out to her.

I can’t choose a favourite member of C-ute. I think I’m more ambivalent than indecisive, C-ute’s members don’t strike me as much more than a unit. Airi is an admirable performer, as is Maimi, Nakki is scary when she smiles, Mai is a twenty-year old stuck in a far younger body, Chisato is…there, Kanna is… with Chisato and Erika is getting prettier as the days go by… but I’m screwed if that makes any of them my favourite.

The other Berryz girls each have something about them that appeals to me, positively and negatively – if that’s not an oxymoron. Saki is an awesome dancer with a faily voice (Ah Merry-go-round was surprisingly good though), Maasa and Chinami displayed so much humour in Yuke Yuke that I fell for them there and then. Plus, Chinami looks effing gorgeous in Dakishimete Dakishimete (post coming soon). Miyabi was my favourite but then I fell out with her, somehow she lost favour in my mental ranking and I stopped caring for her much… that could all change when I listen to Buono!2 though. Yurina hasn’t made a huge impact on me yet, I’m sure she will at some point, she must’ve before but I forgot. Momoko is the only one that annoys me – she IS NOT CUTE. That pinky is calling for me to break it!!! O-O erm… sorry about that. A bit harsh. But yeah, she overplays it and it comes off as fake and I just don’t want to see that when I’ m enjoying a video or something. I can just about stand her in Buono! (Ah merry-go-round notwithstanding).

THE ACTUAL ALBUM CHAT

Akogare MY STAR is a bit samey. There I’ve said it. SAMEY. The only thing I feel that it offers me is an okay amount of cheesy genki tracks. And then some… rap? There’s more chore to it than charm in my opinion and so many missed opportunity I’m almost prepared to tear my hair out. Maimi gets an awesome song… but why couldn’t that be a group song? Seishun Song would be the most kick-ass concert song but noooo, it’s a solo. I still really like it but it’s not a good idea when the other girls -minus Airi- get loaded with pretty dull songs which won’t have much to offer an audience really, at home or in the arena. Why do I feel that this paragraph is turning out to be more aggressive than I wanted it to be? It doesn’t thrill me, that’s the thing and while, Yes I can enjoy the songs on their own, but as a continuous play it’s too much (or should I say too little) for me. It’s predictable and it doesn’t really offer me much that I wasn’t expecting and that’s really it

5(FIVE) only just wins by about three album tracks that I was actually impressed with. There was more than a modicum of time where I felt disconcertingly surprised by what I was hearing. For a start Happy! Stand Up hit with a rich electronic disco sound – maybe I haven’t tried hard enough but I hadn’t heard anything like that from Berryz before. Baka ni Shinai de was the same  but Ah Merry-go-round slammed me to the floor in shock. Momoko and Saki, two very contradictory voices, coming together to sing an R’n'B ballad and pulling it off without a hitch. That I would never have been conciously waiting  for. And REAL LOVE was a Risako solo that no-one could really pick huge wholes in. What fails the album (apart from the not-mentioned album tracks) is the replay value of the non-single song. While akogare MY STAR doesn’t strike immediately, 5(FIVE) did but then lost its steam and to some extent that’s more disappointing than not liking an album much in the first place.

I don’t even know what this post was in aid of but I hope you found it interesting, although you may have just shaved off minutes of your life that could have been spent doing something productive, like… curing cancer?
Well, in order to not leave this at a crossroads I’ll try and take some conclusions from this post;

• The later I write a post the less sense I make.
• I like Berryz Koubou’s music more than C-ute’s… For now.
• akogare MY STAR was expected, reliable, therfore musically boring.
• 5(FIVE) was a bit of a punch in the face on some songs.
• I need to write about Dakishimete Dakishimete
• I reeeeeallly like tangents and block paragraphs
• I really need practice writing personal posts

Have a good day.