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No No Girls watch, pt 2
Feb. 23rd, 2025 03:43 pmAt this stage of the competition, being chosen for the group has as much to do with group fit as it has to do with work ethic and talent.
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No No Girls watch, pt 1
Feb. 14th, 2025 02:29 pm“They were labeling us as the ‘real girls,’ like we were gonna be very, very authentic,” she said. “So they thought the name [Faky] showed self-awareness—like, we’ll call this fake, because we’re so real.” Never mind, she added, that the name was made up by the company.
No No Girls is last year’s idol competition show from BMSG headed by pop/rap star Chanmina. “No No” stands for girls who ‘had been told no all their lives’, or more simply: “No FAKE, No LAZE, No HATE”.
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Faky: a look back
Nov. 27th, 2023 08:27 pmJapanese girl group Faky is going on indefinite hiatus. To those of us familiar with pop group lingo, that means they’re disbanding.
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On idols, idol history, and idol fandom
Dec. 9th, 2022 02:50 amTaking a break from usual programming to rec The Idol Cast for anyone into the history of East Asian idol pop. The site is split into sections — the main page with the podcast (newer episodes are transcripted), the blog posts, and a few other sections.
As someone who grew up around EAsian pop and used to pour over articles in 11pt Arial or Verdana I can no longer find, it’s been really nice to read articles by someone who writes like they were there for it.¹ I’m still working my way through the posts and transcripted podcasts, but anyway here’s a few highlights amidst my grand thesis of boybands.
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intersection update: group on indefinite hiatus and kazuma and william have left avex. as i called back when 3/4 of intersection first went on chuang.
boyband sports update
Apr. 5th, 2022 08:14 pmIt’s so interesting to me how different J-ent companies are approaching boybands right now. You have JE transforming their newest boybands into utaite; Stardust chugging along in the 2010s musically but now with TikTok-ready dances; BMSG going full K-pop from the audition show down to the “fan”cams; and Avex replicating 2000s K-pop, except for the one group trying for something similar to Why Don’t We until they pivoted and went C-idol pop (although half of them are still doing R&B-lite solo releases). And now Yoshiki is doing a boyband audition show!
Like, obviously girl groups and boybands are very different markets, but I’d love to have boybands with an identifiable sound. (I don’t necessarily want a consistent producer, although that helps — Nakata and Perfume being the most famous example, but Suiyoubi no Campanella was originally meant to be a girl group, and a lot of indie girl groups have a single producer.) The Stardust groups probably come closest to having an identifiable sound, if you exclude Choutokkyuu for being a meme and GenJibu’s original incarnation, and it makes sense because Stardust is better known for its girl groups.
If you were expecting actual sports, I can do a belated figure skating worlds update. Kaori gold! Roman Sadovsky did okay! Adam Siao Him Fa is the only dude with decent music. And obviously very happy for Stephane and his son Shoma.
Links roundup:
You can now buy piano sheet music for Gris! I kind of want the physical book, of course, but I would probably wreck the edges so fast if I used it with an actual piano. The arrangements are quite good.
An essay about Dutch baroque typography, and how modern typography is unnecessarily gendered.
Chaoyang Trap S2 E1 — this is a great newsletter about Chinese pop culture and internet life, and this specific issue covers how the Taiwanese indie scene is perceived in and operates on the mainland. Of course, it touches on cross-strait politics and the shared cultural nostalgia around Teresa Teng; but there’s also an entire section of how machismo gets associated with authenticity, rock music, and Beijing. It also comes with a playlist (Youtube / Spotify). [CW: the music videos by Chthonic and Obsess have violent imagery. Also there’s a bunch of smoking and alcohol in various videos and lyrics.]
Tags:
pick me not
Aug. 27th, 2021 05:24 pmWell, Produce 101–style shows have just been banned in China along with unofficial fanclubs and gossip accounts. No more dairy wars. Also, it looks like we’re going to see more celebs apologize for their fans like XZ.
under nineteen
Apr. 26th, 2021 07:47 pmThis whole Lelush situation with Produce Camp / Chuang remembered me of that time a contestant of Under Nineteen, another idol factory/bootcamp reality show, staged a revolt and tanked the entire show.
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As some of you may know, Avex has a Japanese-American boyband called Intersection which debuted in late 2017. I’ve been lowkey following them since autumn 2018 because I thought their marketing was interesting. Japan Times has a good interview with them from early 2020, which some of this post is based on. ( Read more... )
