This week’s features include: 日食なつこ (nisshoku natsuko), Hakubi,
yourness, majiko, and 三月のパンタシア (sangatsu no phantasia)　　　

It’s been two weeks since the last one, and you know what that means… Yes! 😀 It’s time for yet another installment of the one and only Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft! 😛

Draft regulars, you may now proceed to go over this week’s Draft picks. First-timers, please stick around for this next section for a quick primer on what this series is all about 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.

We are now in Week 12 of Season 2 and after a very brief stumble (really just a single week) of Spotify underperforming, it’s still looking like Spotify is gonna run away with it this year based on how its going so far.

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Let’s see if it continues to prevail with this week’s selection:

… It’s like ghosts from my music listening past are haunting me.

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♥ 泡沫の箱庭/utakata no hakoniwa by 日食なつこ (nisshoku natsuko)

Starting us out this week is Nisshoku Natsuko, who gets another crack at the Draft here after an unsuccessful first attempt not to long ago and, can I just say… Utakata no Hakoniwa is much, MUCH more my speed compared to her previous showing. I was alluding to it even before, but I really do find her singing enjoyable for the most part, where I think it’s just able to shine more here compared to Danzale. At the very least, I think this sort of tempo suits her voice really well where she’s able to navigate through her beautiful ranges much more comfortably. Admittedly the mixing could’ve been a little cleaner, but I’m not gonna hold the song to it. This is a go.

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♥ 誰かの神様になりたかった/dareka no kamisama ni naritakatta by Hakubi

I might as well have reviewed Hakubi’s era album with how many of its songs have since made it on here (might be something to consider in subsequent Draft seasons, maybe putting a cap on songs from a specific album making it on the picks). In any case, here we are now with the *sixth* song from said album to make it on to here in Dareka no Kami-sama ni Naritakatta. You know, I started out being particularly critical of this band on their first couple of appearances here on the Draft, but I’ve really warmed up to them since. It’s hard not to with songs like this that’s just raw emotion. I particularly also really just like the structure of the song where it starts out with only guitars and vocals and then picks up midway through. There’s also a nifty switch up towards the end that really gives it that nice live house-y feel.

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♥ 少年少女をやめてから/shounen shoujo wo yametekara by yourness

For those of you who were here for the first ever season of Draft you would know that yourness came in clutch for Spotify right at the literal very end, with their song Hibi, Tsuki wo Miru gave us the last ♥ we needed to make it to a hundred. Up to that point I had pegged the band as primarily being more Balladic (a la back number). Color me surprised then when I now listen to Shounen Shoujo wo Yametekara. I would never have guessed that yourness could go this “fast” with their songs, nor that they were capable of some pretty gnarly Alt Rock-y/Prog-y riffs reminiscent of one of my old time favorites cinema staff.

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♥ 一応私も泣いた/ichiou watashi mo naita by majiko

I was honestly, more than likely, a bit too young to appreciate majiko when I first found out about her. As was a similar case with Miyuna from Draft S1, majiko would be one of the very first Japanese artists that I’ve ever talked about here on the blog, appearing in my *first year* of doing the Monthly Recommendation Roundup. I didn’t do as good of a job keeping up with her work since having her on and… I belatedly realize that that may have been a mistake, as I very clearly missed out on tracks like Ichiou mo Naita here. I mean, I always knew majiko could sing based on what I’ve heard from her in the past, but kinda like with yourness I didn’t expect her to sound as good (arguably better, even) with a track that has a bit more speed to it.

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＊花冷列車/hanabie ressha by 三月のパンタシア (sangatsu no phantasia)

Hanabie Ressha is a fascinating song, to say the least. Though I say that, it would actually take me a decent while to figure out what exactly about it was so intriguing. Specifically, there was something about it that felt familiar, just that I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time. In the hopes of elucidating my thoughts, I thought to check out vocalist Mia’s appearance on THE FIRST TAKE where she sang an acoustic rendition of this song, and that’s actually where I would come to the realization that this song was composed by none other than Shinsei Kamatte-chan’s noko and that I was being reminded of their song Front Memory. Of which, I have no particular qualms about. Rather, I actually really like Front Memory a fair bit. It’s just that… Hanabie Ressha can’t sink it’s hooks into me the same way for some reason, at least not yet, and I honestly kinda want to give it some time to know for sure so… yeah no, we’re gonna put this on the Wait List.

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This Week’s Total Likes:

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ＊

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This Draft playlist on Spotify has now been updated with this week’s Draft picks 👍

There has now also been an update to the Wait List where, after much deliberation, I’ve taken out Kinsei feat. Daoko by 女王蜂 (“Ziyoou-vachi”; “QUEEN BEE”) which, will unfortunately not be promoted into the Draft playlist this year. I’ve given it an ample amount of time I think, but in the end it still wasn’t able to win me over. Who knows, maybe we come across it again next season and it’ll have its redemption, but for now we bit it farewell.

Impressive week otherwise for Spotify, bringing home another 4 ♥ week! Let me know your guys’ thoughts on whether or not you think these songs were actually deserving, or if Hanabie Ressha even needs to be Wait List-ed in the first place.

It’s one of those months where we actually get *three* weeks of Draft because of how the dates line up, so yeah, hope to see you guys here again before we wrap up June 🙂