This week’s features include: postman, ヨルシカ (yorushika), 植田真梨恵 (ueda marie),
ポップしなないで (pop shinanaide), and ZUTOMAYO

Hellooo! It’s me Leap, here to welcome you guys back again to yet another week of the Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft! Draft vets know where to go from here but if you find yourself a newcomer and you’re not quite sure just yet what to expect, here’s a quick little primer of 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.

This is now Week 5 of Draft so still VERY much early in our “competition” here. Of note however, we are trailing just a little bit behind where we were at last season. Not that that means a whole lot right now, but something to keep in mind.

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Let’s see what’s the weather for today shall we:

… Yorushika and ZUTOMAYO in the same week seems unfair, lol

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x 夢と夢/yume to yume by postman

Now, if I had to guess why I think Spotify thought to recommend me a song by postman, more than likely it’s probably because I do like bands cut from the same cloth as them (if I had to put a finger on a couple specifically it would be bands like KAMI WA SAIKORO WO FURANAI or PLOT SCRAPS). That being said, it’s the singing mainly that ends up getting me with these more Japanese Alt Rock-leaning bands and yeah no Teramoto Satsuki’s vocals just aren’t hitting for me for the kind of song that Yume to Yume is.

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♥ 爆弾魔/bakudanma Re-Recording by ヨルシカ (yorushika)

I thought it was particularly interesting that Yorushika decided to do a re-recording for Bakudanma for their Tousaku album. There’s been a lot of theories as to why; from it being an incidentally crime-themed song that perfectly fit the narrative of Tousaku to it also corresponding to the overarching narrative of “plagiarism” in the album (with n-buna too at one point stating that reiterating one’s own work is also a form of thought crime). I for one, think that another plausible reason is that the original recording of Bakudanma purely in terms of sound quality was just… not that good (XD). The rearrangement was more than welcome in that regard, and it’s just a cool song for all the other reasons mentioned.

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♥ Stranger by 植田真梨恵 (ueda marie)

I mentioned back when she made her first appearance here on the Draft that I missed out listening to Ueda Marie for years now. It seems Spotify has since caught wind of that and is now sending more of her music my way, this time being Stranger. While I do have newfound appreciation for her, especially now that I’ve started to become more exposed to her discography, part of me does feel too that the me from back when I first found out about her (around 2015-16 maybe?) wouldn’t be as receptive to this kind of J-Pop/R&B as much as I am now so if anything now’s also just the perfect time for me to be a fan of her work given how I listen to Japanese R&B now more than ever.

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♥ 支離滅裂に愛し愛されようじゃないか/shirimetsuretsu ni aishi aisa reyou janai ka
by ポップしなないで (pop shinanaide)

So, I’m gonna give Shirimetsuretsu ni Aishi Aisa Reyou Janai ka the nod. Let’s just get that out of the way *because* I do believe there’s something more pressing (lol) to discuss with regard to this song. As you think about what I might be referring to, I want you to go listen to this little number, even just the first minute of it or so. … (XD) Now, I’m just poking fun and it’s not something I’m criticizing the band for but this kind of thing was very prominent around the time this song came out and “Yakousei” was at its peak and I’ve always just been fascinated whenever bands decide to go this route and try their hand at it.

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♥ Ham
by ずっと真夜中でいいのに/zutto mayonaka de ii no ni; ZUTOMAYO

I find it hilarious that we get a ZUTOMAYO song right after that Pop Shinanaide one. Like, what were the odds (XD) At any rate… it’s Ham. It’s one of my favorite ZUTOMAYO songs ever so there’s no way I’m not taking this here. The arrangement is a breath of fresh air from the otherwise usual discordant harmony of their music, and it’s one of the few songs too that they have where because there’s simply not a lot going on so you can just enjoy ACAね’s singing a tad bit more than you normally would listening to their other stuff.

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This Week’s Total Likes:

x ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

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*Another* 4 ♥ week for Spotify. Great way to start out the month, and way to keep the momentum that it had going in, with what’s now four consecutive solid Draft weeks in a row. Well done.

What are your guys’ thoughts on this Draft week? Lemme know in the comments!