Top ten 2019-misses of 2020

As list-making season always invites a host of anxieties about albums and singles missed out on, it’s important to remember that we have, indeed, missed out on great stuff, and that our lists are, necessarily, not complete. In lieu of this admission, here are ten of the best albums released in 2019 that I missed last year, listed chronologically. Naturally, most are from the last two months of the year, when life gets rushed, and quality listening-time and Twitter-scrolling trash-time drastically plummets. News slips through the cracks of holiday obligations, albums don’t get uploaded to Spotify in time, personal budgets run out for physical copies, lists need to be written and posted — well, there’s a lot of things happening. Now let’s imagine all the great 2020-misses we have to look forward to next year!

Reol: Bunmei EP
(2019.03.20)

Reol has made a real impact on Japanese popular music this past year, with her hyper auto-tuned electrobot vocals barely distinguishable from the hyper auto-tuned electrobot vocals of, say, MAA, who burst across the music scene for a mere firework of time, and offers something her predecessor never could: longevity and lasting impact. As her star rose ever higher on the charts, it was interesting to take a peek back at earlier work that has taken her to where she is today.

Will Young: Lexicon
(2019.06.21)

Britian’s first Pop Idol winner, back in 2002, has released seven studio albums, but none as worthy of a re-listen as this breezy synth-by-way-of-Sam-Smith collection released at the start of 2019’s summer. I don’t know if this style is any more “Will Young” than any of the other identities he has flirted with over the years, but it’s a style that suits him nicely as an update on the stale options made available to him throughout his career.

Miyuki Watanabe: 17% -REPACKAGE-
(2019.07.10)

Repackages have the chance to make it all better, and 17%‘s does just that, adding additional life to an average album release earlier in the year. No AKB/SKE48 member has ever moved any mountains, but frothy hits like “Cheek-tic-Cheek” don’t have to. They just have to be better than whatever song the group-of-the-week is putting out. Luckily, it’s not that hard!

Misaki Iwasa: Misaku Meguri ~Dai 2-sho~
(2019.11.06)

Misaki Iwasa has made a cozy niche for herself in the enka-pop world, and delivered a second collection of re-worked standards and originals, here growing into her role as a youthful, pop-adjacent entry into a very traditional genre normally reserved for your grandma and the out-of-touch CD-buying population of the Oricon charts — I’m basically both now, an ancient, CD-buying troglodyte, but enka has never struck me as worth the effort until this former-AKB48 member released her gently accessible full-length debut in 2016. As on that one, she seems to be having fun with the songs and style in a manner of playing dress-up that also happens to come off as very earnest, charming, and almost accidentally successful. Here’s hoping she gets more originals to her name in the future.

Doja Cat: Hot Pink
(2019.11.07)

A fall release and busy schedule left me pushing this one down the listening queue until early 2020, when I was immediately crushed not to have discovered it earlier. “Say So“‘s climb to the top of the charts had true potential to be a defining track of the summer, hampered only by aggressive competition from a cascading pile of hits that included The Weeknd’s own slow rise to Song of the Summer victory (official crowning ceremony to be held the evening of Sunday, February 7).

Louise Burns: Portraits
(2019.11.08)

Synth-pop has never sounded so understated as this elegant album of gentle, new wave-inspired tracks by Canadian songstress Louisa Burns. These light-weight, cotton-candy concoctions could use a bit more vigor, as in the somewhat anemic “Over You” which begs for a bit more muscle over atmosphere, but otherwise enchant as much as they occasionally frustrate.

Lady A: Ocean
(2019.11.15)

Back when Lady A were still going by Lady Antebellum and beset by a different type of cringe, they released this competent collection of country-pop hits. Neither the group’s best, or sharpest, it nonetheless boasts a tight production by Dann Huff, long-time veteran of pop and country legends from Mariah Carey to Selena to Shania Twain.

Therapie TAXI: Cadavre exquis
(2019.12.06)

French-pop trio Therapie TAXI may have lost some of their dance-pop chops to take a more straightforward approach to their sometimes-absurd tongue-in-cheek style, but to excellent ends. While I miss the rush and energy of tracks off of Hit Sale, Cadavre exquis boasts the same spirit, an attention and care to electro-pop not often heard outside of the high-brow, curated nooks of DJ booths. Their trademark sense of play only enhances this group’s uniqueness, promising a future as bright as the risks they’re clearly willing to take.

Airi Suzuki: i
(2019.12.18)

Former °C-ute and Buono!-member Airi Suzuki has one of the most infectious, warm stage presences I’ve encountered: if you were lucky enough to catch the limited-time solo live uploaded to her account, or one of the limited-time concerts from °C-ute, in the spring, it was easy to catch the piercing charm whistling through the screen. Unfortunately, a bright smile only goes so far, so it’s a good thing that Suzuki’s music is upper-tier material, harking back to both mid-90s and early-00s J-pop trends. With i, she assembles a sophomore collection more than worthy of following up 2018’s brilliant Do me a favor. Suzuki has real potential to fill the desperately vacant top-J-pop-girl hollow, if only Hello! Project’s rules about streaming allowed her the space to.

mirage²: KISEKI
(2019.12.25)

Idols are a dime a dozen in the industry, so there was never any hope that anything major would come of a cut-and-paste group like mirage², destined to exist for a mere year as a tie-in with a TV drama, but the group shared a bright, kinetic aesthetic across its marketing that culminated in a breezy, joyful EP of inoffensive, niji-iro joy. RIP miracle², and sisters mirage² and Girls².

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Top ten albums of 2016

Any year-end list is relevant only in context, with the strongest and weakest albums only as good as their release date-companions, and 2016 proves the rule more than ever. There were a lot of good releases, and a few really solid pop albums, but nothing great enough to be called the best of anything, (not, for example, like last year, where I dithered for weeks on which albums to cut out, or something like K-pop in 2011) except the best in a year full of other pretty good albums. Here are ten of them, in no particular order.

GEM: Girls Entertainment Mixture: I’m a sucker for Avex’s dance-groups, and GEM fits in nicely where Fairies went on some kind of unspoken hiatus (only one single release the entire year) TOKYO GIRLS’ STYLE is spiraling out of control (one member quit, and their aesthetic quickly devolving into a stale, throwback-90s tribute act since abandoning their idol status) and FAKY? was, more or less, a failed experiment. Overall, Avex Trax’s dance groups aren’t doing nearly as well as they should this year, mostly because they keep trying to create markets that don’t need to exist right now – lol anyone? While E-girls are still doing the all-female dance group better than anyone right now, GEM are more than capable of holding their own with this collection of loud dance-pop hits. Plus, I’m not in the habit of handing out awards to best-of collections, so while E-girls killed it this year (“Pink Champagne” was a very strong contender for track of the year), since their next original album is due this coming January, I’ll save a spot on next year’s list and let GEM have their well-deserved moment now. Listen: “Do You Believe?” “Baby, Love Me!” “Star Shine Story“

Sumire Uesaka: 20 Seiki no Gyakushuu: Definitely the winner in this year’s bat-shit crazy, hard rock album of the year category. As usual, we’re dealing with a hyper-kawaii female idol with an angle (she loves Russia and Russian things?), contrasting those high-pitched, delicate vocals against music the likes of which would find a comfortable home on a Metallica album. You either love it, hate it, or are slowly getting sick of the sheer number of albums that come out in Japan like this in hopes of both appealing to otaku and breaking through that niche market. Still, Uesaka’s stab at it is quite fun, a 22-track almost-rock opera of Russian space-age miscellany. Junk culture at its most entertaining. Listen: “PARALLAX VIEW” “Inner Urge“

Arashi: Are You Happy?: 2016 was the year J-pop boy bands in general, and Arashi in particular, finally managed to chip away at my icy, stone-cold heart. Only a time machine could correct the mistake of keeping Japonism off the top 10, and I’m determined not to let any mistakes like that happy this year. Though lacking the bold brushstrokes and concept of Japonism, Are You Happy? is a decent follow-up, with enough cheery disco-pop to keep even the most die-hard haters closer than arm’s length. Plus it contains the best pop song of the year, a ballad that isn’t just pandering (“Miles away”), and, most importantly, with the demise of SMAP, the evidence of Arashi’s evolution from a run-of-the-mill Johnny’s group, to the new de facto face of Japanese boy bands. No pressure.

BABYMETAL: METAL RESISTANCE: There’s a lot to process here in my top ten East Asian pop albums list, namely the inclusions of groups and styles of J-pop that I have been historically averse to (idols, I mean idols). But with the challenge to myself to be more open to embracing the ubiquitous new styles of J-pop, comes the freedom to enjoy even the most media-saturated groups that top the Oricon chart to the chagrin of “true” music fans. 2015 saw no lack of effort in my attempt to study and begin to understand what, in 2016, I was able to reconcile: the gap between what I always traditionally associated “J-pop” with and what “J-pop” has become today. And J-pop, if nothing, is more idol-centric and divided on lines of gender than ever before. “AKB48-sounding” and “Johnny’s-sounding” is too simple a description, reducing the genre to its most base definition, but it is also, whether we like or not, as fairly accurate a summary as any outside of indie and critical circles. BABYMETAL don’t exactly fall outside of this circle — their brand of cute young girls as the conduit to some of the heaviest metal you’ll hear out of Japan this year isn’t original, or even the best example, but with a bit of expert marketing, they’ve managed to capture the eye of the public overseas, making just the tiniest dent in the West. In this case, the album isn’t all just talk: it’s a dynamic piece of constantly moving chess pieces, each square an opportunity to showcase a rock style, a drawn-out solo, or an instrumental exercise in long-form musical discourse. While I still believe other groups are more deserving of the fame (I used to think it was a group more like PASSPO☆, but with their move to a major label, the group has crumbled like a house of ancient LEGOs, bearing little resemblance, sonic or otherwise, to the group they started out as), BABYMETAL is an interesting piece of performance art meats genuinely good music. You can read more of my thoughts on the phenomenon here. Listen: “KARATE” “THE ONE“

Tomomi Itano: Get Ready: And quite possibly, my favorite album covers of the year, as well. I was a late-comer to Itano’s brand of pop, unsure and slightly uncomfortable with what angle they were getting at with 2014’s SxWxAxG. Get Ready is a bit too mixed-bag to be a cohesive original album, with teen house-party dance (“COME PARTY!”) mixed with some genuinely interesting creep-factor pop (“Hide & Seek”) and hard-hitting EDM (“You Should Try HARDer,” of course), but the parts that don’t make up any kind of  logical whole are fun, if a bit questionable. Perhaps if they stopped pushing Itano in four different directions and gave her sound and image more focus, with the capability of filling in some kind of needed gap in J-pop, we’d get something that resembles a bit more of the solo singer she is capable of becoming. Listen: “COME PARTY!” “Hide & Seek” “Gimme Gimme Luv“

AKB48 Alumnae 2016 Debuts: Misaki Iwasa: Misaki Meguri ~Dai 1-sho~/Minami Takahashi: Aishite mo Ii Desu ka?/Atsuko Maeda: Selfish: Three former AKB48 members released debut albums this year, with Maeda and Takahashi cornering the pop/rock market and Iwasa making inroads with a somewhat poppier, mainstream-friendly enka in the vein of a Yuko Nakazawa. They’re all fun albums without anything in particular to say, though the lead track off of Selfish definitely offers the best of the three, with the album coming in as a respectable mirror image of AKB48’s 2015 album Koko ga Rhodes da, Koko de Tobe! And I rather like Iwasa’s album, even though I’m not very interested in enka, and even though I think, in terms of what the genre demands, she has a long way to go to produce the necessary vocals it requires. Still, since this list is basically turning into a run-down of J-pop at its most J-pop, you can choose any one of these three for this spot while discarding the others and I’d be okay with whichever decision you’d make. They’re really that interchangeable. Listen: “Gomen ne Tokyo” “Selfish“

TAEMIN: Press It: SHINee is one of the best  boy bands in East Asia right now: they had an incredible 2015 with Married to the Music, an album that I’ve returned to far too much this year, and while this year’s follow-up, 1 of 1, was a cute, but somewhat gimmicky pastiche, the effort was appreciated: commitment is releasing a cassette-tape version to go with your primary-colored suits and Nick Carter bowl cuts. But TAEMIN’s solo was really SM Entertainment’s stand-out release this year. The group’s most skilled dancer, all fluid lines and calculated movement was a joy to witness, whether on “Press Your Number” or his Japanese solo debut “Sayonara Hitori.” SM Entertainment’s work with SHINee and its solo members (minus Jong Hyun’s Joha (She Is)) is the only group with the most successful attempts at carrying on the legacy of Michael Jackson — and if Michael Jackson is the epitome of pop music (agree or disagree, but recognition is in order), then SHINee is one of the only groups bothering to acknowledge the realms it is possible to take pop with the benefit of his influence every step of the way. Listen: “Press Your Number“

callme: This is callme: You can argue that Perfume’s COSMIC EXPLORER had better singles (“FLASH” is pretty good, “Miracle Worker” is even better), but overall, I think This is callme works better as a package. COSMIC EXPLORER is disappointing: while the trio might be gaining popularity overseas, with stops in more and more major cities on their tour, their producer Yasutaka Nakata has checked out creatively years ago, ensuring that this is a group whose fire will go out gradually, rather than suddenly. It’s too much to hope for a comeback and I’m content re-living the glory days spinning GAME and Triangle (can you believe I once named it one of the most disappointing albums of the year? What a difference time and perspective makes) while keeping an eye out for a worthy successor in the J-electro market. I’m not entirely convinced it’s going to be callme; for one, their songs lack a certain strength and pep, even while indulging in some of the most elegant melodies you’ll find on an Avex release this year. And secondly, their members (three former members of idol-group Dorothy Little Happy) lack the personality of a group like Perfume, whose earnest and formidable members are really one of the only reasons to continue supporting them. Since This is callme is a direct answer to their debut album Who is callme? as neither a derivative slide, nor envelope-pusher, and could, by all logical means, be the conclusion of this somewhat-experimental project, it will be interesting to see what a potential third album would sound like. Listen: “Confession” “Can not change nothing“

G-Friend: LOL: LOL was chosen, in part, for all the similar-sounding K-pop albums it represents then on the strength of just itself. Alone, it’s a great album, but is it really any better than all of the other girl groups re-creating SNSD’s debut? Not really. Fortunately, SNSD had one of the greatest K-pop debuts years of all time, and their most ardent imitators, OH MY GIRL, G-Friend, Lovelyz, and WJSN (Cosmic Girls), have their work cut out for them tirelessly working to soothe the broken hearts of S♥NEs official and casual alike. Though there will never be a group just like Girls’ Generation for a long time, I’m happy taking the scrappy-seconds of groups like G-Friend; all criticism aside, it’s really quite a fantastic album. Listen: “Neo Geurigo Na (NAVILLERA)”

Nicole: bliss: Despite the number of great K-pop EPs and mini-albums to come out during the course of the year, their Japanese-release equivalents can and do often surpass their Korean offerings. AFTERSCHOOL was one such group, and now ex-KARA vocalist NICOLE can be added to the list, with her Japanese-debut album bliss, a quaint, mellow take on the most common-denominator pop known to the genre. Despite this critique, it’s nowhere near as tedious as it might sound: there is still ample space to add hints of something special on an album that is the very median of pop music in the 2010s, and NICOLE’s producers make the most of this stab at inoffensive, disco-lite, average groove, the very opposite of the lengths K-pop will sometimes go to churn out louder-than-the-last trendy hit singles. Both have their place on my list. Listen: “Don’t Stop“

Honorable Mentions:

APink: Pink Revolution
Ayumikurikamaki: Ayumikurikamaki ga Yattekuru! KUMAA! KUMAA! KUMAA!
Cheeky Parade: Cheeky Parade II
Gesu no Kiwami Otome.: Ryouseibai
LUNA: Free Somebody
predia: Byakuya no VIOLA ni Idakarete
Wa-suta: The World Standard
Tiffany: I Just Wanna Dance