The end of an era: Perfume will be going into cryosleep in 2026

25 years is an amazing run. I've loved a lot of their releases, but lately I've been paying less attention to them so I'm not super sad they're ending, just happy that they gave so much for so long.

Alright, it's been about a year, and as we're picking apart the new single I wanted to go back to this one: Any changed opinions? Any new insights or deeper appreciations? Have these held up over time?

Some thoughts on these two from the last couple of weeks:

The radio rip of Akaruku was awful quality. How do we still have crappy radio rips in 2025? Glad the PV came out soon after.

I'm still confused why they release the full PV on Youtube a month before the song's available. Is it to drive up ...

I hear you on reading comprehension. On the other end of the spectrum from that, Youtube for me is still just for the occasional music video. I can't sit through a 20 minute Youtube video explaining something that could've been 2 or 3 paragraphs and taken up much less of my time. It's such a waste ...

Labels are funny-- I wouldn't say I'm a Broadway musical person, but I enjoy attending them and I've seen like 50 at this point. When the first Hamilton US tour was announced in 2017, one of the only ways to get tickets in SF was to through season tickets. So I signed up for the season membership ...

After years away from the board, I wanted to make a post about the book that led me back here: "Escape: How a Generation Shaped, Destroyed and Survived the Internet" by Marie Le Conte .

I forget how and where I first came across it, but in 2023 I found this memoir about growing up alongside the ...

Fresh off her run of Six this sort of fits into that style of sound.
Very true. I had that in mind when I was thinking about her "sound" in the last post.
Speaking of. Can I just say, it's so weird seeing Sonim, Suzuki Airi and Tamura Meimi in a cast together?
They are going to the West End in ...

I initially watched the full thing at 1.15x without realizing it, and it sounded 1,000% Kpop. I played it at the correct speed on second listen: it sounds less KPoppy and more of the funky bass comes through, but I still see what y'all are talking about.

I don't know much about Airi's solo ...

Along the same lines of no B-side, I've noticed that the MM triple A-sides have died down and now they're just doubles. I was going to say that the last triple was in 2021, but even beyond that there have only been 3 in the past 8.5 years. I wish there were more, and I did some stats math to show ...

Farrah wrote: Sun Apr 13, 2025 6:51 amhalf the group practically banded together to systematically bully a 13 year old out of the line-up back then!

Which incident was this?

This is double cross appreciation post since it involves two former H!P members. Airi and Meimi.

They were both cast in an upcoming production of SIX (It's about Henry the 8th wives). Everyone is double cast, but Meimi will be playing Anne Boleyn (Only in the Tokyo and Aichi performances) and ...

Ha ha, Muppet Musume! Those are awesome. What program did you use?
This is just ChatGPT with the latest image improvements. Nothing too elaborate, including the prompts I used, though half the time it told me that it was against its content policy and I had to try phrased slightly differently.

I ...

You GUYS.

https://i.ibb.co/gbxmYxJG/Love-Machine.png
https://i.ibb.co/6cN1T1z8/Morning-Coffee.png
https://i.ibb.co/gFvJGPSY/Rainbow-7.png
https://i.ibb.co/bjy96VLY/Platinum-9-Disc.png
https://i.ibb.co/LzdgqtJd/RR21.png
https://i.ibb.co/zVz0KLfx/Shabondama.png
https://i.ibb.co/CN3QtBz ...

Solarblade wrote: Sat Mar 15, 2025 7:37 am10. Nandaka Sentimental na Toki no Uta
11. Dokusenyoku / Ikuta, Nonaka, Makino, Yokoyama, Kitagawa, Yumigeta

Hah, I love it!

Damn, excited for this! It was fun to follow MKB's releases back in the day, even if their songs didn't quite hold up for me over time.
At the same time, sad to hear about Ohtani. H!P and idol life exist in such a bubble that someone being a real person and falling on hard times ~15 years later ...

I've been waiting for this round! Because Suki ni Naccha Ikenai Hito is one of the best H!P songs in its 25+ year history, period-- I flip between it and Ayaya's cover of Uchuu de La Ta Ta (feat. Inaba Atsuko) as absolute top H!P song ever released.

It's not a perfect song by any means: it has its ...

SIX is one of my favorite musicals!

Part of why I think the music so good is the wordplay/rhyming/double entendres in the lyrics, especially in Katherine Howard's (Airi's) main song. It loses something in translation, sadly, and it's evident in the song above-- take a look and listen to this ...

JPope wrote: Tue Oct 01, 2024 3:45 pmAlso, I just created a 6-way tie, so have fun with that!

6-way tie?! We can do better than that!

This entire album is fantastic from beginning to end, easily in my Top 3 H!P album list. So this is the hardest round; I'm listening through it to see if 5 bubble up above the others, but damn.

I hate the single channel audio since I don't hear as well from my left ear, but it's still fantastic.
I thought they changed this for the single (or Apple Music) release and was pleasantly surprised, but then I remembered I had turned on Mono Audio in Accessibility. :hahaha:

I'm back to ...

I was thinking about this (and my initial reaction) some more: with Youtube, the definition of one-hit wonder has changed from what it used to be. Previously it was mostly based on Billboard chart success and sales figures, which were proxies to "Is it a good song? Do many people enjoy this song ...

Who's this guy, and why should we care about his opinion? This is the problem with Youtube (and other social media), it gives way too many people a platform who probably shouldn't have one.

PSY's had a lot of great songs, it's just that most people never cared to listen to them.

Decent representation, all great songs. I'll have to go through some of those I don't recognize to see what I missed out on.

The distribution is suspect/disappointing, though. Not just H!P which is limited to the peak Golden Era, but the rest of the list as well. I went through and cmd+F each year ...

Aww, good for her. I always wondered what happened to her, she was great in the shuffles and C-ute would've kicked more ass had she stayed longer. She was the Juan Soto to Airi's Judge!

Shoujo Q wrote: Fri Aug 02, 2024 4:57 amNot sure what the cat prints on the paper mean.

I think just that the cat helped sign.

Most sound weird, but I think that's mostly familiarity with the original. Some of these could turn out to be good. I always love hearing different interpretations of songs (covers, fanmixes), so looking forward to this as well.

The concert version sounded terrible but gave hints at how good the studio mix could be, and here it is. I hate the single channel audio since I don't hear as well from my left ear, but it's still fantastic.

SaiKIYOU has grown on me a lot, too. There are a couple of spots in both songs where the ...

Ok, that makes sense. Thanks!

Shoujo Q wrote: Thu Jul 25, 2024 5:40 amOn a rare occasion an music video director might add a little something to make it more appealing. But it's rare.

Do you have examples of this?

Are the Youtube Promotion Edit PVs ever different from the official ones released on BR?

Echoing all the above-- song's OK and may still grow on me, but the PV is pretty neat and adds a lot to the song, as does the studio version.

It also sounds old school-ish, but I can't quite place it. A little bit 90s?

That was great! They should do more classical compositions so they can do a full concert like that.
The applause at the end of that was weak.