This week’s features include: ゴホウビ (GOHOBI), Haku., WEAKEND WALKER,
アイラブミー (I LUV ME), and 女王蜂 (“Ziyoou-vachi”; “QUEEN BEE”)

Helloooo~ Hope y’all are having a fine weekend as I’ll welcome you guys all back again to none other than the Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft!

If you know the drill you know where to go from here, but if you’re new to the blog and/or this series, here’s a quick primer on what to expect ー

The Draft, inspired by player drafts in traditional sports and draft formats from popular trading card games like Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh, is a bi-weekly series where we try to answer the question;

How good is Spotify at recommending songs to me ?

In this series I will test Spotify’s ability to recommend to me songs that I would like based on songs that I already do like in the form of my own ongoing Recommendation Roundup Playlist on Spotify.

Making use of Spotify’s built-in suggestion feature on user-created playlists, we will have it gather a total of 5 (five) songs for me to check out and listen to. In addition to my own playlist however, for this season we will ALSO be including the 100 Draft picks from the previous season into the mix, thus (in theory) refining Spotify’s recommendations even further while also ensuring that we don’t get any repeats (songs that weren’t picked from last season though will get another shot if they get recommended to me again). Songs that I like will get drafted on a *new* Draft playlist, where the goal is to see just how big it gets by the end of the year.

What else new in Season 2 of Draft, you might ask? Well, we will actually be introducing a couple more things that weren’t present in the previous season. The first, is what we will be calling the Score To Beat. Last time Spotify only needed to reach a 100 songs for it to get the W at the end of the year. We will treat that 100 as the *current* score to beat for the series, so for this season Spotify now needs to get 101 or higher before the end of the year in order for it to win.

To keep things fair however, seeing as Spotify juuuust barely reached its goal last year, we’ll be incorporating the Wait List; a separate playlist of songs (max 3) that I think I might reconsider drafting should it come down to it.

This is now Week 6 of Drafts, so y’know, still in the single digits and still so very early in our little competition here. As I said in the previous season though, every song counts and it could all come down to just one or two songs by the end, so really you never want to be missing a week 😀

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Here’s what’s on this week’s menu:

Whenever I *don’t* see a band/artist on here that I featured on the Roundup at some point, it does make me feel like I’m doing something right, lol

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♥ NO RAIN, NO RAINBOW by ゴホウビ (GOHOBI)

I seem to always have a bit of a soft spot for bands that have twin vocal setups like the one GOHOBI has here. I think a lot of it is primarily due to how there’s not that many of them around (at least that I’ve come across) so whenever I find one I tend to just be very optimistic about them. And of the ones that I have, I do find it fortunate that I’ve found all of them enjoyable which also helps. If I had to say, I really do just love the interplay of male and female vocals (especially when done well) and NO RAIN, NO RAINBOW is a good example of exactly that and then some, as we also get a taste of the band’s very bright and lovely Light Rock sound.

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x ワタシ/watashi by Haku.

Haku. is one of a good handful of bands that get recommended to me a ton by Spotify, largely because I also listen to their contemporaries a whole lot too; the likes of Hakubi who have become a Draft staple, along with bands such as Kaeri no Kai and Nakigoto who have made appearances on the Roundup. Now I do take note of these bands whenever I happen upon them, but I do like to wait till they come out with a song that really grabs my attention before I start following them in earnest. In that regard, while Watashi is a pleasant little tune here it doesn’t really standout either. Willing to bet this is far from the last time we see Haku. here on the Draft though.

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♥ Nights Out by WEAKEND WALKER

If I’m being completely honest, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect when I first saw Nights Out by WEAKEND WALKER in the selection process for the Draft. I actually had to confirm first whether or not the group was even a Japanese unit to begin with (lol). Sure enough they are though, and not only that, they’re not half bad either! I more than likely have to thank Suisoh and Sugawara Kei for having WEAKEND WALKER come my way, as artists who all occupy this Doujin-y R&B/Hip-Hop space. Unfortunately, as I look more into them, it does appear that the unit was only ever active back in 2020 as they’ve yet to come out with much of anything else since. Bit of a shame as I do really like what I’m hearing here.

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♥ 負け犬戦士/makeinu senshi by アイラブミー (I LUV ME)

I don’t know the exact numbers off the top of my head, by I LUV ME has to have some of if not the most appearances here on the Draft. Not for nothing though, as every time they’re on here it does feel as though they show up with a completely different sound from when we last heard them. This of course has led to their songs sometimes missing the mark for me as a direct consequence. For what it’s worth however, Makeinu Senshi might actually be the song that I like the most from them thus far, as it reminds me of one of my favorite Yorushika songs. Particularly that intro I think feels like it took some inspiration from Toubou. 

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＊金 星/kinboshi feat. DAOKO by 女王蜂 (“Ziyoou-vachi”; “QUEEN BEE”)

I guess no one was gonna tell be that Ziyoou-vachi and Daoko worked on a song together huh… Well, in any case, I know about it now and, not gonna lie, I do struggle with this one. On the one hand, Daoko was straight up *killing* the verses here in Kinboshi like nobody’s problem, and even her solo chorus towards the end I thought was pretty solid. On the other hand though, I thought Avu-chan sounded like they were forcing it in way too many parts than I would like over the course of the song. Kinda feels like they were struggling with the tempo a bit. Granted, it might just seem that way to me too because I don’t listen to Ziyoou-vachi as much so… I dunno, might have to put this on the Wait List for now and spend some more time listening to it to know for sure. 

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This Week’s Total Likes:

♥ x ♥ ♥ *

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This week’s Draft picks, as well as our new addition to the Wait List, can now be seen in their respective Spotify playlists 🙂

Interesting week to say the least. We got a couple of picks, a miss, *and* a Wait List entry for the trifecta. I don’t expect that to happen too often though I guess we’ll see in the coming weeks if that’s the case. As a reminder since it might come up, we’re only gave have a max of 3 songs on the Wait List at a time so if we get to 3 and I want to put another song in, I’ll have to boot one out either by promoting it into a Draft pick or passing it up for good. 

Leave a comment down below if you think I should promote Kinboshi from this week 😉