In the summer of 2009 (as mentioned before) I decided to do a YouTube search for Japanese music. I had just seen a rerun of Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift on TV and became interested in the music. One of the first hits to pop up in the YouTube search for "J-Pop" was Juicy, by Koda Kumi. I liked the video, for obvious reasons, and decided to delve further into this artist. What I found was probably the most diverse Japanese singer of the past decade, and I became an instant fan. Kumi started out in December 2000 with her first single Take Back, not a great song but you have to start somewhere. After that she released around 20 singles and 4 albums before she really broke trough in 2005/06 when she started the 'ero-kakkoii' trend as shown for instance in Candy or the more recent Pink Spider. Ero-kakkoii which translates into 'sexy cool' can be seen as the opposite of the in Japan popular 'ero kawaii' sexy cute, although Kumi has also mastered this latter one, as shown in Lovely. Besides the sexy and cute concepts Kumi has a third distinct song style; love ballads (see Yearn for You). As I said she's a diverse and well rounded singer, something I've experienced myself when I attended one of her 2014 concerts during my internship in Tokyo.
In total
Kumi has released 57 singles and 12 albums, of which 8 have reached the #1 chart
position in Japan. Last year she celebrated her 15 years in the music business
and, luckily for me, she doesn't show signs of stopping anytime soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment