VARIETY 2011
 

Ok, so, it's Ringo's one and only most notorious album ever, VARIETY. To many, it's Ringo's ST. ANGER, her METAL MACHINE MUSIC and now you can add LULU to that list! To others, it's OK. And to a select few it is a great album.

What I'm asking is whether you're opinion has changed and how you feel about it 4 years on.

TBH, I think it has had more lasting appeal than Sports and seeing as I think Daihakken is Sports 1.5, it will probably outlast Daihakken too. I always could tell it was a weaker or even 'weirder' album than Kyouiku and Adult but it wasn't until I started really getting into Ringo and searching around that I realised what an infamous record it was. I think this notoriety (and its plain weirdness) has made it so much more appealing personally :-p

Meh.

I've always wondered though if the negative reaction stemmed from Ringo's entire fanbase, or mostly foreign fans (EM) or vice versa. Like, what do Japanese fans think of Variety?

I came in after Variety but focused on the solo stuff first. Overall, I believe SR>>TJ.
For me, Variety is hard to like a lot, but it has sonic textures that I like & haven't heard elsewhere. But these male voices singing up front is unforgivably unacceptable.
On some level -- or in some instances -- it might be as avant-garde as a really mainstream Japanese pop act could be in 2007. It might be ahead of its time, or I may be fooling myself. It's challenging with moments I love to hear, but it's the most track-skipped TJ CD for me.
Ambivalent-positive with no vote.

At least with Sports, someone realized the boys should be auto-tuned.

Professional reviewers, those without a lot of experience in solo Ringo, mostly liked it. They saw it as "pop music for adults".
I liked it, I didn't love it. My first TJ song was OSCA, and I liked it enough to look more. I like about half the songs on the album, but I also feel like the production was pretty terrible. I guess overall I'm indifferent?

EDIT: Ooops, I like Butoumin, I guess I should kill myself now.

Its as awful as it ever was. Songs are half baked and/or completely misguided. Album sequence is one of the most atrocious I've encountered. The band I think believes they were trying to be cool and smart and "pomo" but was poorly handled and came across as unoriginal. It is an awful experience through and through. I honestly believe at this moment that 4 people are idiots.

Variety definitely widened the scope of what type of music they could make. The concept of a variety album looked to me as a weak way of disguising that there was no focus and they threw a bunch of songs at a wall and hoped some would stick.

aside from that, there were several songs from that project that I liked alot. some of those songs werent even on the album.

what i didnt like was that there was zero representation from Ringo when it came to compositions. not even one song by her because she was hoarding them for SG. tsktsk

Trust Jihad to name-call :lol: Keep it to yourself brah, you don't see me writing that Oasis fans are idiots and they're one to complain about things not being original :P

There is no option for:

"sometimes I do, sometimes I don't"


Then, what do you think about Dai hakken. It seems that way to me too.

Okay, well whether you meant to or not, bringing up Oasis in reference to Variety brings up some interesting thoughts. Variety has it's fair share of homages-slash-creative borrows, and Oasis is a band that more or less made a career of doing it. So why, in my opinion, is it forgivable for Oasis and not Tokyo Jihen?

At first glance, Oasis had been doing this since the beginning -- their second single and second album track ever to be exact. Tokyo Jihen had two albums under their belt with no signs of this practice before Variety. But wait! You might say, Variety is essentially the first "phase 2" album. Moving on, I think the biggest issue lies with overtness coupled with conspicuous inclusion.

Lets take a look at Oasis' fourth single, "Cigarettes & Alcohol." The opening riff is a straight rip of T Rex's "Get it on." The whole song is essentially built off that, and anyone that listens to Oasis is likely to at least sense familiarity if not recognize it immediately. On the Jihen stage, the song "Tsukigime-hime" builds up to a concluding organ riff that came straight off of The Doors' "Light my fire." Not a few tracks before, the song "Botoumin" is built off of the bassline of the song "On Broadway." Botoumin sits a bit easier in my stomach, but neither I find very comfortable. So why is that? Lets go back to Oasis. Oasis doesn't hide them borrowing riffs or chords, and they seem to borrow from a specific range and era of artists and songs (T Rex, David Bowie, Rolling Stones, 70's 80's rock) and they build their own very focused, very compatible, range of songs. It sounds like the songs they borrow from are the ones that inspired them to make music to begin with. Tokyo Jihen may very well have been inspired to make music by The Doors and Broadway -- but do those songs really work together? Jihen borrows on Variety from a very inconsistent sample from eras and genres, and uses them in songs that don't really match. Should you think of "Light my Fire" during a kind of cutesy chamber-pop song? Does "On Broadway" really elicit the feeling of a sexy rendezvous? And I'm not even sure their audience is supposed to necessarily recognize these songs. Now, you can re-contextualize ideas like this, and maybe that's what the band was aiming for, but it takes a rather skilled hand which I don't think Jihen showed. Oasis didn't bother with re-contextualizing, making a sound seem like something its not; would you think of drugs and partying while singing along to "Get it on, bang a gong, get it on"? Sure, why not!?

Lets talk about the good things about Variety. It stands out. Chances are, you have a strong feeling about it. The same can't be said for Sports or Dai-hakken really. Variety is handily the most discussed album on EMF. Variety had a clear concept. Yes, the concept was "a mish mash of random songs" but it sounds like that's what they went in to make. On the contrast, Sports and especially Dai-hakken are also mish mashes of random songs, but by happenstance rather than choice. And for better or worse, it does sound like the band aimed for something and went for it. I might not like it, but some people are okay with their aim.

Should they be though? I don't think so. It's okay to have a dud, at least it's a dud out of experiment (like the movie Sucker Punch. It's awful to sit and watch, but after thinking you think Snyder's heart may have been in the right place.) I find so little to enjoy in Variety, and what is is undercut by the songwriting and awful sequencing. To me it seems most of the positive opinions are Variety are built off from people who have no idea albums before it existed and people who just have to defend it because some people said some mean things. Let's address the latter. This has been true with EMF always, even when I would get excited about new releases, but a percentage of the active user base at any time suffers from "Waifu" syndrome. Where Shiina Ringo is their perfect dream waifu and they have to defend her fictional honor from any big meanies on the internet. Certain people just cannot be critical because Shiina Ringo is hands-on involved with the project. So yeah, I don't believe there is much enjoyable in Variety unless you cannot be critical, or honestly ignorant (which isn't permanent and can be forgiven.) Or of course, just plain idiotic.