Faky: a look back

[adevyish]

Japanese girl group Faky is going on indefinite hiatus. To those of us familiar with pop group lingo, that means they’re disbanding.

Faky started in 2013 as a 5-member group with a worldwide outlook. There were 3 English speakers; New Zealander Anna and Japanese-Americans Diane and Tina, though the latter two left the group after a mere few singles. I became a fan of them in 2015, just as Avex released teasers of LA-born Akina joining the group.

Although press often compared them to K-pop girl groups, Faky took more influence from Western pop. Lil Fang wrote songs and sang with an American-style power vocal; Anna’s styling was pure LA girl. The first single featuring Akina, “Candy” (CW: nsfw-ish), looked like Little Mix lite, “Surrender” (CW: flashing) could have been on a Neon Jungle album, and “You” was clearly Britney-inspired. (Also check girl group power ballad “Who We Are”.)

But in lieu of success, Avex fell back on old habits, putting out anime ending ballads (“four”) and Taku Takahashi productions (“Summer Dive”). Some of these were not bad (horror movie tie-in “Futaikoito”), but they did not sound Faky. Other efforts at popularity included stabs at at more mainstream pop that fell into the same trap. Anna left in 2019 to pursue an acting career and has since been feted for her role in Pachinko.

Avex hasn’t had a good run at pop groups lately. lol is a locally-marketed co-ed group which yo-yos between styles even worse. FEMM, also recently disbanded, was a Euroclub cult favourite for their android image but also became limited by it (with one exception). And Intersection, the disbanded boyband originally marketed at the West, which I’ve written about previously.

It’s not that Japan hasn’t managed to push new successful pop groups internationally. There’s Chai, which is a pop group in the same way Herman’s Hermits or the Beatles were, as I’ve argued previously. In the idol realm, there’s now weird-art-pop group Atarashii Gakko (50 million views on Sony channel The First Take!) These groups may have very different styles and images, but what they do have in common is a strong artistic vision that distinguishes them from the multitude of pop groups springing up from all across Asia. And that is something Avex has yet to manage.¹

Hopefully, the soon-to-be members of Faky find success in other areas of the industry much like Anna has.

To sign off, I’ll share a few more Faky songs I liked back in the day:

• Better Without You
• Chase Me, which should have been a single tyvm
• Afterglow
• circle, with FEMM and Yup’in as supergroup FAMM’IN ²
• and finally, their swan song Departure

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¹ I am especially including Avex’s latest girl group XG in that.
² “circle” follow-up “Animus” even got a Dazed feature!

Comments

[luckyzukky]

great write up! i was a big fan of faky for a short period back in 2019, and candy/surrender/you were fantastic singles (my favorites also included suga sweet and girls gotta live!). your descriptions of the three songs are on point. it's a shame that they weren't more successful, but they were very much born out of the little mix/fifth harmony era and i'm not surprised that they followed a similar downturn as those two groups

[adevyish]

Girls Gotta Live looked so fun live — tbh Faky were a really strong live group in general, which isn’t very common nowadays.

I wish there were groups with a similar image but a current sound. HUR+ is the closest group I’m following atm but I also see them going the same way 🥲