This week’s features include: 植田真梨恵 (ueda marie), Ratrium,
Genie High, AiNA THE END, くじら (kujira; “whaledontsleep),
and あるくとーーふ (arukuto–fu)

If you saw my last post you should know by now that I’ve actually been gone for the past couple of weeks. If you’ve only been following the Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft (first off, you’re an awesome human being, but secondly), it might not seem like it since the series has thankfully been able to keep to its schedule for the most part 😉 However, if none of that concerns you as you’re actually new to this series, please give the short primer underneath to familiarize yourself on what this 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.

It feels like I just stepped out of a time chamber when I say that we are now in Week 19 of Drafts. That’s about well over two-thirds of the season now and, all of a sudden we find ourselves nearing the home stretch.

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Run it.

whaledontsleep dgaf dude wtf XD

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♥ ”シグナルはノー”/“signal wa no” by 植田真梨恵 (ueda marie)

Kicking things off for us this week is Ueda Marie with “Signal wa No” (cute title fwiw). One of the stars of this season has actually been Ueda Marie who has so far gone 2 for 2 leading up to this week’s appearance… and I’m happy to say she gets the hat trick with her third entry here on the Draft. I really love how the song hits a switch from seemingly being a mild-mannered track to a something a bit more grating and powerful once the electric guitars and the drums start to kick in. Kinda reminiscent of Kinoko Teikoku’s Tokyo in that sense. If I were to change anything about it I would maybe just bring her vocals a touch more forward but yeah no other than that just a beautifully written song all around.

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♥ Kawaii Never Die by Ratrium

Oh boy, where do I start? If you’ve been following the Roundup since the start you would know that I was actually very much high on Ratrium (formerly Groovy groove) back when they first made their artist debut. Known mostly for their acapella song covers, it was interesting to see the duo of Mori and Shige try their hand at coming up with original songs, Kawaii Never Die here being one of them. The pair have since unfortunately disappeared from the scene which, is a shame, considering how much of a vibe this track is. I mean, it’s essentially a Wed Camp song, and Utaha’s killing it right now so could just be a case of being a bit ahead of their time.

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♥ 不便な可愛げ/fuben na kawaige feat. AiNA THE END by Genie High

I can’t count the number of times I rechecked whether or not I actually featured this song on the Roundup as I was so sure that I must have talked about it at some point on here but I guess I never did, and I’m actually a bit surprised at myself for not having done so. I already hold Genie High in… high regard (pun notwithstanding) being another Kawatani Enon super group of sorts, but Fuben na Kawaige holds the unique distinction of featuring AiNA THE END as a gues vocalist singing alongside tricot’s Nakajima Ikkyu. Admittedly, I haven’t heard AiNA THE END sing for a long enough time where it almost feels like it’s my first time hearing her voice again here and… there’s nothing quite like that feeling.

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♥ 悪者/warumono by くじら (kujira; “whaledontsleep)

I’m not sure if this record will ever be broken in future seasons of the Draft, but this week’s appearance by whaledontsleep now makes it their seventh overall in just this season alone. If that wasn’t insane enough, the man has also gone 6 for 6 in picks and trust me, each time he clears a week I do consciously try to be a bit more critical of his work the next time he shows up. I would like to think that that was the case this week here with Warumono with me being as objective as I can about it and… I can’t bring myself to not like it. That chorus is just too damn catchy.

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♥ 次回予告のその後で/jikai youkoku no sonogo de by あるくとーーふ (arukuto–fu)

Closing it out for us this week is five-member Pop Rock outfit Arukuto–fu and their song Jikai Youkoku no Sonogo de which, in itself does come across a song that would fit perfectly as an ending theme for a slice-of-life themed anime with how wholesome and uplifting it sounds. It’s a shame that the band doesn’t appear to have truly been able to take off before calling it quits as there was certainly a ton of potential that can be heard from this track alone. Who knows, maybe we see them again at some point in the future? Only time will tell. For now though, they do get some retroactive hype from me.

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This Week’s Total Likes:

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

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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.

And that’s how you do it. Easy 5 ♥ week. No questions asked. At a crucial juncture of the season too with only however many Draft weeks remaining before we make the final tally. Spotify is definitely going to need more of these if it wants to beat last season’s score.

Lemme know your guys’ thoughts on this week’s Draft down in the comments!

Happy Listening!