[Tokyo Jihad]

I realize this is the Shiina Ringo forum and everything Shiina Ringo is going to be overblown.

Please allow to me to be the voice of dissent.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills as I read the comments in this thread. "Get Lucky" is funky, sexy, catchy and Sanpukan is flat, boring and loveless. I don't like Sanpukan, Sam I am. Not when it came in to being, and not in 2013. It almost seems unfair to compare it to Daft Punk. Really, its unfair to the latter as well.

Both songs have different aims to different audiences with different artistic perspectives.

Daft Punk are just as rabid for EDM as EMFers are for Shiina Ringo, and on Random Access Memories, they present the ultimate fan service. Meticulous attention to detail and a great respect for their influences Daft Punk pay homage as well as expand, update, and project their ideas into the future. RAM isn't an immediate album, it's made to be studied and lived in. As I listened the first few times, I acknowledged how smart it was even if I hadn't wrapped my head around the whole thing. It is quite a dense record. "Get Lucky" is the most readily yielding track and rolls up all the qualities of billboard-chart-topping songs from Chic back in the day.

Tokyo Jihen aren't that kind of act and never claimed to be. Tokyo Jihen lifts a few ideas, implants them in their songs to evoke other artists, genres, styles of music in the listener. Tokyo Jihen doesn't lend themselves to their source material and become that sound like Daft Punk does. Every Tokyo Jihen song sounds like every other Tokyo Jihen song. Tokyo Jihen announced themselves as a pop act from day one, and the aspect of "pop" they stuck to throughout their tenure was the consumability. Their songs are like potato chips. They please the listener immediately, and the listener can consume quite a bit before inevitably growing tired. However, nothing of what they just consumed gave something back to the listener passed that first second of satisfaction. Maybe the listener gets a little kick that Sanpukan borrows a dancier beat, so its like listening to a new genre, without actually listening to anything new. (Same shit for all the jazzy and showtune bullshit.)

In america we have these collections called "Kidz Bop." They are cds with top 40 hits, but covered by session musicians with little kids on vocals. They are made for parents who are uncomfortable with their kids supporting artists who may have "questionable morals" or whose songs may have dirty words. The kids get a version of the song they like, and the parent has a good conscience that they did their part.

Its dumb and silly, but these things have a place, and no one said they were supposed to replace the real thing. That's how I feel about a song like Sanpukan. It's mostly filler until the listener is ready to listen to Random Access Memories, or a Chic or Shalamar best of.