This week’s features include: Hakubi, 空白ごっこ (kuhakugokko),
米津玄師 (yonezu kenshi), コアラモード. (coalamode.), ヒグチアイ (higuchi ai) 

Ooh baby a triple! That’s right, your eyes are not deceiving you, and this is in fact a third week of the Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft for this month of June 😎 As I mentioned in the previous week, the dates just so happen to align in such a way where we’re getting an “bonus” week as opposed to the usual two that we have every month. Lucky us! 😊

If you already know where to go from here, feel free to go on over ahead to this week’s picks. However, if you’re new to the blog and/or you’re not quite sure what this series is about exactly, here’s a quick little primer:

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 13 of the Draft; exactly halfway through the season. Man… it feels like we just started yesterday too.

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Batter up!

Here’s a fun fact: these five bands/artists have all done anison (XD)

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x アカツキ/akatsuki by Hakubi

Here we have yet another song in that’s getting a second crack at breaking into the Draft, this time around coming to us by way of the series’ most prolific band (going by the sheer number of appearances they’ve had on here) Hakubi, with the track Akatsuki. When this song was first featured back in Season 1 I specifically talk about how I thought this didn’t feel like the right “speed” for the band and… unfortunately I’m going to be doubling down on that for this season of Draft as well. I’ve since listened to a lot more Hakubi’s music since, and I can thus more confidently say that the band is at their musical best performing songs at a faster tempo. Vocalist Katagari in particular does her best work (in my opinion) when she’s not having to sustain as much as she does here.

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x プレイボタン/play button by 空白ごっこ (kuhakugokko)

In a bit of a contrast, oddly enough, I almost have the exact opposite sentiment for Kuhaku Gokko’s Setsuko. Specifically, I do think a mellower style might actually suit her more, and would be something that I’d interested in hearing more of. Which is to say, Play Button *could’ve* been the song to highlight specifically that, with it having as controlled of a vocal performance as we’ve heard from her (if at least compared to her otherwise more explosive style) but her singing gets buried just a touch too much here for my tastes. Maybe if the track itself was able to make up for I might’ve given it a pass, but I wasn’t too too impressed with the arrangement side of things either. Definitely feels like more of a contextual track that more than likely works better when listened to in the album it’s from.

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♥ ひまわり/himawari by 米津玄師 (yonezu kenshi)

Having an all too recognizable voice, such as Yonezu Kenshi’s, is something that I look at as both a blessing and a curse. Of course, unique vocals are going to be a plus more often than not, but by that same token there are times when it distracts from the listening experience *because* of how distinct they are. …That is not AT ALL the case with Himawari here. Absolute banger track from beginning to end. The guitars in particular were insanely good and catchy. Easy pick up here. Definitely gonna go check out the rest of the album that this track was from as well.

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♥ アンダンテ/andante by コアラモード. (coalamode.)

Speaking of bands/artists whose albums I retroactively would want to go back and rediscover is that of COALAMODE.’s, which is a duo that I distinctly remember having come across when I was first getting into the hobby but was not yet equipped to be able to appreciate the kind of sound that they have. Especially after hearing Andante here and me now thinking how much I’ve missed out all these years. I mean, in truth I’m always just gonna be a fan of acoustic guitars being paired with keyboards so COALAMODE. will always have that going for themselves, but Andante is also just my kind of good fun too.

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♥ 猛暑です e.p ver/mousho desu e.p ver by ヒグチアイ (higuchi ai)

“Newer” fans of Higuchi Ai who found out about her through her jaw-dropping 2022 anison offering Akuma no Ko which was used as one of the ending themes for the acclaimed Shingeki no Kyojin series (which also earned her our Roundup Awards Best Vocals of that same year), might not necessarily know how much of a virtuoso she is both on the piano and just in composition in general. I was just lucky enough to have that revelation much earlier in my music listening experience and as such she will always be someone whose work I’ll admire. Then again, not like Mousho desu leaves you with much room to be considering otherwise. Now, I’m not entirely sure why bands/artists oftentimes do a Chinese-inspired track like this (lol) but hey, it’s a vibe so (XD).

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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.
NO updates have been done to the Draft Wait List.

Not a *fantastic* week for Spotify, all things considered, but also not the worst; banking 3 ♥‘s for its trouble. That being said, we’re only at 46 tracks now (49 if we add in the Wait List), which is just below half of this season’s Score to Beat of a 100. I think this is where we’re finally seeing these none 5 ♥ weeks start to matter. But again, last season was as close as it could’ve come so who knows, we might get a repeat of that this year.

Let me know what you guys think of this week’s Draft down in the comments! Likewise, lemme know too if you think Hakubi’s Akatsuki should get a third shot at being in the Draft playlist.

Monthly Roundup, for those tuning in, drops tomorrow. See you there 😉