Monday Playlist: Shibuya 1999

Happy Monday! Long time no playlist...

Today, I'm bringing you a playlist inspired by the photo collection Shibuya 1999 by Mike Nogami and Masami Takahashi. You may be familiar with this collection through my previous fashion study posts or perhaps from the scans I've posted on Tumblr.  

It's an incredibly intimate photobook that captures a fleeting and fascinating moment of fashion and aestheticism in Japan. It also includes a forward from Yusuke Arai, a social anthropologist, who sheds some light on the formation of gyaru culture. 

90s-era gyaru has quickly become my favorite decade of gal, and in celebration of this period, I wanted to create an accompanying playlist. 

The songs featured are all popular Japanese tracks from the 90s. As I use Spotify to host my playlists, there, unfortunately, will be no Namie Amuro or KinKi Kids, despite both acts being extremely famous during this period. Neither of their discographies are on Spotify. Regarding Namie, I read somewhere that it's due to an issue with her label. It's an immense loss. 

Sigh. If only I could burn a physical mix tape and hand deliver it to you all... But alas. 

Monday Playlist: とりま

 

As you've no doubt seen from the previous two playlists in this series, there is a lot of music (from gyaru musicians to Para Para/Eurodance) that is explicitly connected to gyaru subculture. However, I often hear music that outwardly has nothing to do with gyaru but gives me strong gal vibes. Here's a collection of 19 such tracks. 

The title of this playlist, torima, comes from the shortening of toriaezu maa, which means "for the meantime" or "well..." To be honest, I wasn't sure what else to name this playlist and was sort of going for "Well... here's some music." 

ꉂ(≧▽≦)

Monday Playlist: Yababababa

Today's tracklist features (primarily femme) Japanese rappers and hip-hop artists. They are either explicitly singing about gyaru, are gyaru themselves, or the song reflects the spirit of being wild and sexy. 

The title of this playlist is derived from relatively recent gyaru-go. It's a play on the very versatile Japanese word "yabai" which can mean anything from terrible to amazing to "omg." It's not uncommon for "yabai" to be shortened to "yaba," and now, gyaru (in our infinite wisdom) have added extra "ba's." It's cute and fun to say. 

やばばばばばば ( ✧Д✧)

Monday Playlist: Agepoyo

This was inspired by Rookie Magazine's (rest in peace) Friday Playlist, which I listened to religiously as a depressed high schooler. I used to burn CDs for all of my friends, and I wish my stupid MacBook still had the capacity to burn CDs, but it doesn't even have a USB port anymore. (ꐦ¬_¬)

Anyway.

I loved how homespun the Rookie playlists were, with the curator's hand-drawn tracklist and personal blurb. It was warm. This is my homage to that.

Agepoyo is old gyaru-go. 

"Age" means to raise, whereas "poyo" means... well, nothing really. It just sounds cute (and isn't that enough?) Combined, it's used as an expression of enthusiasm, a la exclaiming, "I'm pumped up!" or "I'm so excited!" That's the mood I wanted to capture in today's inaugural Monday Playlist. The songs featured are either explicitly about or convey (through melody or rhythm) a sense of pure excitement. The sort that bubbles up inside you, and when it reaches its peak, you can't help but say, "Agepoyo!"