Article on Morning Musume, Johnny's and music industry
 

I found this article and though it might be interesting to some, although it might seem a bit disturbing.

Feel free to delete if it's been posted before.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/s...550807,00.html

i dident read all of it but i am from the uk so i will say this. The guardian are **** who **** stir

No matter what you think of the paper, the article is right on target regarding parts of the Japanese entertainment industry. Though I'm a fan of Morning Musume myself, I know for sure that their popularity is due to the lolita complex many Japanese men have. Some statements about how Tsunku chooses the girls are frighteningly astute (though, as with anything, it's not the case all the time)

they never know how nice japanese song was compare to western generic song

what a long article! so many girls went for the auditions eh

Interesting read. Thanks for posting the link.

Yes, some things in the article is quite obious, like the fact that Tsunku doesen't pick out "perfect" girls. Most girls of morning musume have some "handicap". This is true for most idols though, at least the young ones. This increases the innocent not-being-able-to-take-care-of-myself factor. Even in the singing style of morning musume this is quite clear (the whining sound to it).

I read the whole dang thing. @.@ It was definitely interesting. I already knew about the "otaku" thing, but I didn't know about the deal with the Johnnys. I don't listen to either side, but it was still a very interesting and informative read.

So true:

Kago - weight
Nozomi - Teeth
Kaori - Height
Mari - Height
Miki - Attitude
Hitomi - Masculinity
etc..

:dead2

^ LOL

Sayumi: vocal ability [XP]

aww that's kinda good though, how he doesn't pick the girls who already get "everything"

I think there are a couple of them that seems to be "perfect" idols, most prominently Natsumi Abe and Aya Matsuura. This kind of becomes their "character".

But it makes them a lot more interesting, like when watching a movie or theatre, the characters are the ones people remember the ones who stand out in some way.

Wow... that's so true... But I kind of liked that. I always noticed that Kago was slightly bigger than the other girls, and I thought it was nice, that they all weren't copies... And Kaori too... so tall~~

I already knew about this though (and I only read about half of the article), and I know how comercialized they are, but they are so different from western music... and I just really love them... they are so cute ^^; And they also seem like good role models....

The weird thing about Tsunku's music (especially the morning musume) is that allthough it's something totally new in many ways there's VERY often something that seems really really close to another hit song. I'm not trying to suggest that he is plagiarizing, because he makes it so unique that it would be inappropriate to call it that. But as the article suggests, he "steals" or borrows a lot. Who diden't think of donna summer's "hot stuff" when they heard the instrumental melody in "happy summer wedding"?

^oh wow! how true!...but it's never that noticable to me, he covers it up well :yes

I noticed that too... there was one song, I can't remember the name of it, that heavily sampled one old song. I thought that he might have just used samples in the songs.

The J-Pop fans mostly being guys I kind of believe :D

no one talked about Johnnys' Ent.. nyehehe

When this was originally discussed over on JPM, it was pointed out that male fans made up 55%, the rest female. I would take this as a fair respresentaion. However, this article is quite one sided in its viewpoint and fails to mention such points.

I bought the magazine that the article was in simply because it was a rare thing in a UK magazine. I dont really think a great deal of it though.

thats quite an interesting article. thanks for sharing.