This week’s features include: あいくれ (aikure), プルモライト (pulmolight),
ジェニーハイ (genie high), 植田真理恵 (ueda marie), and 秋山黄色 (akiyama kiro) 

Yooo, what’s cracking? 😁 And welcome back to another week of the Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft, the Internet’s one and only rogue-like Japanese music playlist builder series. I am your host Leap as always, and if you’ve been through this with me before, you should know where to go from here, but if this is your first time here and you’re not quite sure what this is all about, please give the following primer a quick read:

The Draft, inspired by player drafts in traditional sports and the draft formats of popular trading card games like Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh, is a bi-weekly series where I tackle a simple question—

How good is Spotify at recommending songs to me ?

In this series, I put Spotify to the test by seeing how well it can recommend songs I’d enjoy based on the ones I already do. I do this by leveraging Spotify’s built-in suggestion feature for user-created playlists, using my ongoing Recommendation Roundup Playlist as the starting point, coupled with the final Draft playlists from the previous seasons.

This curated pool of over 800+ songs will serve as the basis for Spotify’s recommendations, fine-tuning its algorithm to better predict the songs it thinks I’ll enjoy.

I’ll let Spotify generate 5 (five) recommendations for me to check out every two weeks. Songs that make it onto a Draft playlist and will count as successful picks. Tracks that didn’t make the cut last season get a second chance if Spotify suggests them again. The ultimate goal? To see just how big this playlist can grow by the end of the year.

In Season 2, I added two mechanics to spice things up. The first was the Score to Beat, which sets the season’s target. Last season’s score was 101, so this year, Spotify needs to hit at least 102 successful picks to “win”.

The second change we implemented was the Wait List, a smaller, separate playlist (with a cap of three songs) which allows me to save tracks for later reevaluation.

Now, for this season, I’m shaking things up again by introducing a new mechanic: the Exempt List.

Think of this as a “hall of fame” of sorts: any bands or artists placed on the Exempt List will have their songs automatically ruled out for drafting this season (and possibly in future seasons as well). The idea for this came up while prepping for this year’s Draft. I noticed a pattern—Spotify kept recommending a lot of songs from the same handful of artists. While they’re all great, I felt like the series might start to feel repetitive if the same five or six names kept popping up every other week. The Exempt List, then, is my way of (ideally) ensuring we keep Spotify’s recommendations fresh and different each week.

Check out the Week 1 post for Season 3 to know the rationale behind the following artists being exempted from the Draft: Yorushika, ZUTOMAYO, YOASOBI, みゆな (miyuna), Hakubi, POP ART TOWN, whaledontsleep

Bands and artists can be removed from the Exempt List over time, though naturally, more names can—and likely will—be added as the season progresses, depending on how things shape up. Something to keep in mind.

We have now reached Week 7 of this season of the Playlist Draft, now entering the second quarter of 2025. … Jeez, where’d the time go huh?

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Show me what’chu got.

Dude… talk about a throwback selection.

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♥ シロツメクサの指環/shirotsumekusa no yubiwa by あいくれ (aikure)

If you’ve been rocking with the Roundup since the early days (like, 2018-2019 territory), you might remember aikure as one of the first bands who I found out about when I was just starting to really get into Japanese music. I remember becoming such a fan of theirs at the time, and honestly, it doesn’t take long listening to Shirotsumekusa no yubiwa to see why. I’ve always been a fan of Yukimi’s clear and resounding vocals in particular, and even though I admittedly fell off a bit after aikure disbanded, getting to hear her again after all this time is such a treat.

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♥ 8回目のマニフェスト/8-kai me no manifest by プルモライト (pulmolight)

Pulmolight is another band I actually got to know pretty early on, though funnily enough I never ended up featuring them in a Roundup (which genuinely surprised me when I double-checked while going through this week’s Draft picks). Revisiting 8-kai me no manifest now after all these years, I’m starting to think I might’ve come across them a little too soon, back when I probably didn’t have as much of an ear yet for these kinds of high-octane alt rock tracks like I do now. I distinctly remember being a little puzzled at the time by how this song managed to go semi-viral based on the view count alone, but looking back now… yeah, I totally get it.

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♥ 卓球モンキー/takkyu monkey by ジェニーハイ (genie high)

For what it’s worth, I’d long considered Genie High (at least up until the emergence of Raisan) to be the least Kawatani-esque of Kawatani Enon’s projects. I always figured that had something to do with the members involved, who never quite struck me as being as malleable as his usual collaborators, each bringing their own strong presence and distinct musical flair to the table. That said, Takkyu Monkey flips that notion on its head, and is probably the most I’ve ever felt Kawatani’s influence in a Genie High track. The chorus especially is steeped in his trademark melodic sensibilities. Replicable as it may be, this is trademark Kawatani at its most fun, and as such I’m hard-pressed not to like it.

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♥ ふれたら消えてしまう/furetara kieteshimau by 植田真理恵 (ueda marie)

Ueda Marie is back again in the Draft in back-to-back weeks following her most recent showing this season not too long ago in only Week 6 where I also talked about how it seems as though Spotify is trying to all it can to get me to be belatedly be a fan of hers. And, to its credit, it has worked as I do find myself more and more appreciative of her work the more of it I get exposed to through this series, with Furetara kieteshimau being yet another song of hers that I do enjoy for all the same things that I’ve been enjoying her music thus far in just her charming approach to pop rock.

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♥ ナイトダンサー/night dancer by 秋山黄色 (akiyama kiro)

Speaking of Spotify seemingly trying to put me on certain artists, Akiyama Kiro is another one who’s ended up becoming a bit of a Draft regular, despite me having had zero prior exposure to his music before kicking off this series. Now, I wouldn’t say he’s had the strongest track record here compared to other frequently featured names (he’s 1 for 1 this season and 2 for 2 overall) but like I’ve mentioned before, there’s a lot about his sound that I do find promising. Night Dancer, for instance, leans into that familiar male pop rock lane but throws in a slick, guitar-forward catchiness that’s hard not to vibe with.

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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 Playlist Draft picks 😊
No new changes or additions have been made to the Wait List.

What is even happening right now? How are we suddenly racking up so many 5 ♥ weeks? Is it me?? Am I just getting too soft on these tracks as they come in? Am I not being discerning enough? Or… is it actually just Spotify showing up and bringing the heat this season?

I’m genuinely curious. Drop a comment and let me know what you think is going on here.

Before I let you go, just a quick heads-up, if you’re not yet subscribed to my Substack newsletter, the next issue of the J-Music Advance Party is dropping tomorrow, April 6, 2025! I’ll be going over some of the Japanese album releases I’m personally looking forward to this month, so if that sounds like your kind of thing, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you get notified as soon as it goes live! Hope to see you there! In the meantime, feel free to browse through the entries from previous months in case there’s anything you might’ve missed. You never know, your next favorite release could be hiding in one of those older issues!

Happy Listening!