This week’s features include: alcott, Lanndo, ACAね, yama
EOW, and ゲスの極み乙女。 (gesu no kiwami otome)

Hey folks, Leap here, and welcome back to another entry in the Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft; the ongoing saga where I test Spotify’s mettle by putting its recommendations to the ultimate test: my discernment (lol). If you already know all that and you’re just itching to get to this week’s pool, what are you waiting for? Go on right ahead (XD).

However, if this happens to be your first time here, 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 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.

This is now Week 12 of the current season of Draft, and we’re now somehow in the month of June all of a sudden. How did that even happen?! 😵‍💫 I swear it was just April like five minutes ago.

ーー

What do we got cooking this week?

We got a couple of heavyweight names in here looks like. 

ーー

* さくらの麓/sakura no fumoto by alcott

Starting off this week’s Draft is Sakura no fumoto by alcott. Gotta say, I’m a bit torn on this one right out the gate. I actually found myself enjoying it more than I initially expected. I think listening to mol-74 lately has really opened me up more to that melodramatic, male-fronted style of Japanese rock, and this definitely feels like it follows a similar mold. One thing I especially liked was the addition of female backing vocals. I feel they really add another layer of emotion to the song and give it some nice dimension. That said, I do feel like the track starts to run its course a little before it actually ends. I might need to sit with this one a bit longer before I can make a final call.

ーー

♥ 青く青く光る/aoku aoku hikaru feat. ACAね (from ZUTOMAYO) by Lanndo

Now, you might be thinking, “Leap, I thought ZUTOMAYO was on the Exempt List? Why’d you let this one pass through?” And yes, you’d be right, they are still exempt. That said, I do like to make room for these one-off collabs and appearances that ACAね occasionally does, like this one here on producer Lanndo’s Aoku aoku hikaru. There’s just something fascinating to me about artists from that more 2.5D side of the Japanese music scene stepping outside their usual stylized personas. It’s like watching them break character ever so slightly, and I can’t help but be drawn to that. This track is no exception.

ーー

♥ 世界は美しいはずなんだ/sekai wa utskushii hazu nanda by yama

Speaking of the 2.5D side of Japanese music, I’d actually consider yama to be something of an OG in that realm, being one of the first artists from that space to really go viral on SNS, thanks in large part to their more pop-leaning sound. That’s why their album versus the night has always struck me as such an interesting concept. For the most part, it steps away from the more electronic, heavily produced style that yama made a name for themselves with, opting instead for a fuller ensemble band sound. You really get a taste of that shift with Sekai wa utsukushii hazu nanda, where the more organic instrumentation gives the track this fresh, grounded feel. It’s a nice change of pace, and one that really lets yama’s vocals shine in a way that feels more intimate than usual.

ーー

♥ ライト/right by EOW

EOW is always going to be one of those bands for me whose talent feels wildly disproportionate to how popular they are. Granted, they did see a bit of a bump in their fanbase after vocalist Laco started doing collabs with Sawano Hiroyuki as part of his [nZk] project, but even then, I still think they deserve way more attention, especially when they’re putting out tracks like Light, which is just a smooth, solid rock song laced with R&B elements. Honestly, part of me feels like EOW might’ve just been a little too ahead of their time. The kind of sound they’ve been doing for years now fits perfectly within the current Japanese music landscape.

ーー

♥ 人生の針/jinsei no hari by ゲスの極み乙女。 (gesu no kiwami otome)

On the one hand, I’m actually kind of amazed that this is somehow the first time GesuKiwa has made it onto the Draft, especially considering how so many acts from the Kawatani-verse (lol) have already popped up in past seasons. On the other hand though, them showing up now, and me giving Jinsei no hari a listen, has got me seriously considering just adding all of Kawatani Enon’s projects to the Exempt List. Because truthfully, I’m always gonna be hard-pressed not to pick up a song by him, even though I basically know his entire playbook like the back of my hand at this point. That is, of course, a bit of an exaggeration, but whether or not I actually go through with it still remains to be seen.

ーー

This Week’s Total Likes:

* ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

ーー

The Draft playlist on Spotify has been updated with this week’s Playlist Draft picks 😊
One (1) song has been added to the Wait List.

Spotify continues its unrelenting resurgence following that minor blip a couple weeks back, delivering yet another 4 ♥ week here. Honestly, this could’ve easily been a 5 ♥ week if I wasn’t such a stickler about certain things (especially with alcott being such a near-miss), but hey, I’ve got a duty to uphold in this series too 😅 All signs point toward a strong finish for this season, provided there aren’t any more stumbles along the way. That said, if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that Spotify knows how to get back up when it gets knocked down.

What did you guys think? Drop your thoughts in the comments! And while you’re at it, lemme know which tracks were your favorites from this week too!

Happy Listening!