This week’s features include: Ivy to Fraudulent Game, GOOD ON THE REEL 
MAISONdes, yama, 泣き虫☔︎ (nakimushi), Genie High,
相沢 (aizawa), and くじら (kujira; “whaledontsleep”)

Aaand we’re back! Fresh off a triple Draft week in June to close out the first half of the year, it’s time once more for yet another installment of the Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft! We have now entered the latter half of 2024 and things aren’t trending as well as they were last year as far as Draft picks are concerned. Spotify has a bit of work to do starting this week in that regard.

Before all of that though, if none of that made any sense (lol) and this is actually your first time here. Here’s a primer on what this series is all about:

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 14 of the Draft, and now the first of this second half of the season. If there was ever a time to start to turn it on for Spotify, this would be it.

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Let’s see what we’re cooking with:

These are… some colorful band/artist names I’ll tell you that much (lol)

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♥ 革命/kakumei by Ivy to Fraudulent Game

First up in our queue is Kakumei by Ivy to Fraudulent Game, who you yourself might remember having come across at one point in time just by virtue of their band name being what it is (which, according to them are words that they picked out in relation to how they envision their career as being; like that of ivy that can spread its reach far, and also subverts expectation like a fraudulent game). Now, fair play to them, their brand of Pop Rock does serve them well in that regard, but it never did appeal to me personally during the times I’d come across one of their songs. That being said… the Folk-y guitar work they have going on for this song in particular was actually enough to win me over.

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x サーチライト/search light by GOOD ON THE REEL

I conversely don’t have much to say about GOOD ON THE REEL’s Search light here. It’s in that same Pop Rock mold as Ivy to Fraudulent Game which, like I just mentioned, isn’t something that normally gets me going. Like, vocalist Imaruoka Ryouta does some interesting stuff in the verses but the everything else leading up to the chorus (as well as the chorus itself) feels a bit too cut and dried for my liking.

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x Hello/Hello by MAISONdes, yama, 泣き虫☔︎ (nakimushi)

Would it surprise you to know that this is actually the first feature that MAISONdes has ever done? Because it sure surprised me. For those who are unaware, MAISONdes is a project that pairs producers and vocalists together where, rather than being directly involved in the music creation process, they instead provide the “space” for the artists to collaborate in (which, in their words is “an apartment building somewhere). Going back to this featured track between yama and Nakimushi, it might shock some of you that this isn’t going to be a pick for me here. Perhaps because this was the first MAISONdes feature, I think both came in here a little bit reserved and thus not at all sounding like themselves. I mean, you’re certainly hearing yama’s voice and Nakimushi’s guitar, but it doesn’t *feel* like either of their music are really being showcased here where this song in turn just ends up sounding very middle of the road as a direct consequence.

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♥ 夏嵐/natsu arashi by Genie High

Kawatani Enon is a man of many musical talents, as I’m sure most of you are already aware. He is most known for his songwriting and composition work, both of which he has showcased to great effect through what I’d consider as his “main” projects Gesu no Kiwami Otome and indigo la End, as well as in his side-ish projects DADARAY and Raisan. It felt as though when it came to Genie High, most of what he was going to lend was instead his guitar-playing (one of the more underrated aspects of his musicality in my opinion). However, for Natsu Arashi, what we’re hearing here is actually another one of Kawatani’s skills being put on display, and its his uncanny ability to expertly draw out feelings of melancholy regardless of whether or not the song even sounds remotely melancholic. Like, you listen to this song and all of a sudden you’re thinking about the summer of your senior year of high school.

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♥ 悪者/warumono feat. 相沢 (aizawa) by くじら (kujira; “whaledontsleep”)

What’s funny to me about whaledontsleep’s Warumono being here on the Draft is that I was just talking about how Aizawa’s had some notable features collaborating and providing vocals for a lot of other producers in the past, which just so happen to include this season’s most prolific Draft entrant whaledontsleep, with this now being his fifth appearance on here. I become more and more of a fan of Aizawa’s every time I hear her voice it seems, and whaledontsleep so far has proven that he really can do no wrong with his music.

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This Week’s Total Likes:

♥ x x ♥ ♥

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The Draft playlist on Spotify has been updated with this week’s Draft picks 😊
There were no new additions made to the Wait List.

Yet another ‘just okay’ week of 3 ♥‘s which… I’d argue is not how I think Spotify would want to start out the latter half of the year (feels so weird saying that now). Of course, in this series you take whatever you can when you can but it should be noted that a 5 ♥ week has continued to elude Spotify this season. Something tells me the Wait List better come in clutch when the time comes…

What do you guys think? Did I maybe give Hello/Hello too hard of a time? Lemme know down in the comments!

Happy Listening!