The end of today all over the sky

[koganbot]

Trying to start a conversation over on poptimists about the new IU video ("Good Day"):

http://community.livejournal.com/poptimists/793519.html

By the way, what would you say are the best IU tracks? I've heard very few of them. I like the one variously translated as "MIA," "Missing Child," and "Lost Child"; and I totally love her live version of "Gee"/"Sorry, Sorry."

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[petronia.livejournal.com]

The perception of bogusness w/r/t Seiko has to do with the context at the time - there was something of a divide between the popular singers who behaved cutely/girlishly, versus the ones who did not. In particular, Nakamori Akina was set up as Seiko's rival and ideological opposite: a mature-sounding, sophisticated, "real" singer (powerful vocalist) and "real" woman (ownership of her sexuality). I mean, if you just look at their song titles, Seiko's are all "Sparkly Angel Kisses" and Akina's are all "Passionate Tears of Desire" or whatever. And the Akina type of "mature" female singer has a longer history in Japan - enka, as troisroyaumes mentioned - so it was the Seiko type that needed a new word in the 80s.

The kicker is that Seiko was the one who was nakedly careerist - that is, she refused to retire after marriage, which for Japan at the time was as outre as Madonna. She dated celebrities. She had extramarital affairs. She dated foreigners who wrote tell-all books. In a major Debbie-Liz, Jen-Angelina moment, she stole Akina's boyfriend, and Akina attempted suicide. Somehow her career survived all this.

(If anything there is a lesson for Taylor Swift here, both in terms of who she seems to be as a person and how she's perceived - and how ppl assume she wants/is trying to be perceived.)