This week’s features include: Fujifabric, Ikuta Lilas, LELLE,
cadode, くじら (kujira; “whaledontsleep”),
and ひかりのなかに (hikarinonakani)

We aaare back! Yes, friends, it is time for yet another installment of the J-Music Spotify Playlist Draft! I am your host Leap, as always, here for this week’s round of Draft picks to go through courtesy of Spotify. If you already know how things go, you may proceed to the songs proper, but if this is actually your first time seeing this series, underneath is a short primer on what this 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 Week 16 of Draft and, going by last week’s performance it feels like Spotify is looking to switch it up into high gear as we start to round out this second half of 2024. Let’s see if that rings true for us this week.

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Alright, run it.

Feels like a bunch of album covers we’ve already seen before, lol

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x たりないすくない/tarinai sukunai feat. Ikuta Lilas by Fujifabric

I’m of two minds about this track. I remember when it first came out YOASOBI had just released what is to date still one of the pair’s most popular songs in Bakemono just weeks prior, which in turn just left Ikuta Lilas and Ayase radioactive in terms of generated hype where it seemed as though anything they touched or got associated with was just gonna be as hype. At the very least that’s what I remember feeling when I first listened to Tarinai Sukunai some three years ago now but hearing it again… it’s just, okay. The verses have some neat singing parts by both parties here and there, but the chorus just felt really flat, if at least for me personally.

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♥ 時鳴りの街/tokinari no machi by LELLE

I mentioned in a previous Draft week that third time’s usually the charm, and that maybe LELLE’s third crack at a pick is what’s gonna finally net it for them… Now, let me first start by saying that again, I still really, reeeaaally wish vocalist Sakurai Kentarou had a better singing style. Maybe it’s just me, as I’ve said so in the past as well, but I don’t vibe with it. However, if you would recall I’ve always been appreciative of the band’s instrumentation. In particular I’ve likened their sound to negoto before. We get more of that in Tokinari no Machi here and then some, especially once the violin hits at around the ~2:40 mark. Very nice work there.

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♥ 三行半/mikudarihan by cadode

The Draft has done a good job turning me into a fan of cadode’s with how often Spotify seems to want to recommend their music to me, as I otherwise don’t think I’d blindly try to go into one of his albums. That being said, I also don’t think that a couple of years ago I would be as receptive to modern-sounding pop ballads like Miikudarihan here as I am now so that’s also a contributing factor. It helps that the prod work on the track itself here too is just super clean.

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♥ 寝れない夜に/nerenai yoru ni feat. yama by whaledontsleep

Right, so… What’s funny about this is that in my first edit of this week’s Draft, I accidentally had the original/vocal synthesizer version of Nerenai Yoru ni instead of the one with yama as the guest vocals, and here’s what I originally wrote ー
“Like, I don’t think the song itself is bad, rather I actually find it to be well written, it’s just that… I’d rather he had someone provide vocals for it. Not to say that I’ll always pick against Vocaloid or voice synthesizers in general, but at the very least I felt we could’ve gone with a different one than the one he uses here.“
Oops… (XD) I was going to write off whaledontsleep’s historic Draft run as having officially come to an end, but yeah, looks like it’s not over just yet.

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♥ 大丈夫/daijoubu by ひかりのなかに (hikarinonakani)

Hikarinonakani was just something so special looking back. Not so much in that I think thought they were revolutionary in what they were doing or anything of the sort as it’s not as if we haven’t heard anything like their music prior to or beyond their first foray as a band, but there’s just something about seeing that tiny spark in them and hoping to have seen how it would’ve gone off like a firecracker under more ideal circumstances. In that regard I love the energy that Daijoubu brings, with the drums in particular feeling so electric and lively. Such a nice little pick me up of a track.

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This Week’s Total Likes:

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.

Not gonna lie… that whaledontsleep track being the one featuring yama as opposed to the original version probably matters a whole lot in the grand scheme of things (XD) At the very least, it would’ve been the difference between a 3 ♥ week and a 4 ♥ week, and as I say every so often about this series, every song counts. Bit of a happy accident there in that regard.

What are your guys’ thoughts on this week’s Draft? Let me know down in the comments if you would’ve given the ♥ to the original version of Nemurenai Yoru ni anyway.

Happy Listening!