This week’s features include: LELLE, Shikidrop, yonige,
長靴をはいた猫 (nagagutsu wo haita neko), and DADARAY

Another week, another installment of the Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft!

This is a new series on the blog that I started this year, but just to bring you up to speed –

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 the Recommendation Roundup Playlist on Spotify. Specifically this involves making use of Spotify’s built-in suggestion feature on user-created playlists to gather a total of 5 (five) songs for me to check out and listen to. Songs that I like will get “drafted” and go on a separate Draft playlist, where the goal is to see just how big said playlist will get by the end of the year.

If it makes it past a hundred, Spotify gets the W over me, and if not, we get to declare the Recommendation Roundup playlist as the vastly superior playlist (XD)

Spotify had its “weakest” week yet back in Week 4, adding only two songs to the Draft playlist. Let’s see if it can rally back this week.

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Here’s what’s coming up:

Something I noticed is that I tend to gravitate towards bands and artists that I know *of* but don’t necessarily listen to as regularly as the ones you see more on the Roundup which I thought was interesting.

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x 火花/hibana by LELLE

I think we’ve reached the point in the Draft now where you’re really gonna start seeing how nitpicky I can get when it comes to male vocals specifically. Like, LELLE’s Hibana is by all accounts a catchy tune (kinda reminds me of Negoto in some spots too) but as I alluded to in a previous Draft week there’s just a particular kind of voice that I like and vocalist Sakurai Kentarou’s isn’t it unfortunately.

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x バベル東京/babel tokyo by Shikidrop

… I didn’t really intend to drudge the point I just made, more so since it’s one out of personal preference and thus born out of subjectivity, but I don’t pick the songs, and Shikidrop’s Babel Tokyo just so happens to again be representative of the kind of male vocals that I tend to not seek out for myself. There’s nothing wrong with the song is the thing. It’s just… not one I’d put on my playlist.

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♥ 健全な朝/kenzen na asa by yonige

Kenzen na Shakai might just be yonige’s most underappreciated release yet, especially coming after arguably the band’s most well-received release to date in HOUSE going by the numbers. Granted, the former doesn’t really have clear blowout A-side tracks like Revolver or Nigatsu no Suisou, and as a result otherwise songs like Kenzen no Asa gets passed up. Not here though.

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♥ 泪の街/namida no machi by 長靴をはいた猫 (nagagutsu wo haita neko)

Listening to Namida no Machi here, now three years removed from when it first came out, makes me think that Nagagutsu wo Haita Neko is one of I’m sure a lot of other bands never got a fair shake due to the global pandemic that halted basically everything and everyone around the world, as I can’t imagine these kinds slick rhythm switches and hyper emotional delivery not being popular otherwise.

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♥ ハートの合図/heart no aizu by DADARAY

I’ll be the first to tell you that I really don’t give DADARAY enough credit. Like, it’s unjustly the Kawatani Enon project that I’ve paid the least attention despite there being newer ones that have come out well after them that I do follow on a more regular basis by comparison. On the brightside (?), as a direct consequence that means their songs are more likely to show up here.

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This Week’s Total Likes:

x x ♥ ♥ ♥

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The Draft playlist on Spotify has now been updated with this week’s picks 😀

Not as strong as its opening weeks, but it does feel like it’s trying its best to run it back so let’s see if Spotify can keep up the positive trend. For what its worth, the Draft is just barely still on track to make it to a hundred songs by the end of the year. Might come down to the wire even, but that’s neither here nor there yet (XD)

For now though, what are your guys’ thoughts on this week’s Draft? Lemme know down in the comments!

Happy Listening!