Raymond's excursions into East Asian pop music, episode 4: Yuki
When my story left off,
a colleague of mine had dedicated himself to finding some
good Japanese pop music,
and what he found was
this music video
of the song
JOY
by Japanese pop star
Yuki Isoya,
who performs under the stage name
YUKI.
The video was mesmerizing.
The Flash Gordon extras.
The dance steps.
The blinking.
The hyperventilating.
(Though I don't think the blue dress suits her;
she's not a teenager any more.)
But the best part is the retransition from the middle section.
After the wiggling fingers, she just leans into the big note
and swings her arms in, well, joy.
I have no idea
what she's saying, but somehow that doesn't matter.
My colleague became obsessed with his own discovery,
buying all of Yuki's solo albums.
Apparently, he's in good company;
she seems to be quite popular.
The JOY video won the Japanese
Space Shower Music Video Awards
prize
for
Best Video of 2006.
During my
tourist day in San Francisco earlier this year,
I stopped by Japantown and bought two CDs.
One was
the album
JOY.
Would the other songs on the album be as infectious as its title track?
Fortunately, I was not disappointed.
They're all great.
The other album I bought was
Katamari Fortissimo Damacy
(塊フォルテッシモ魂),
the
soundtrack to the video game
Katamari Damacy, thereby
bringing the story full circle.
