Perfume
Love The World

Beginning of the brief preamble. Perfume are three Japanese idols different from the usual: they formed the group when they were 12 years old, self-produced singles to get noticed, worked hard, and were discovered by DJ Yasutaka Nakata (the artistic heir of Yasuharu Konishi from Pizzicato Five), and after seven years of grind, they achieved remarkable success at home. End of the brief preamble.

If there's a genre I prejudicially despise, it's j-pop. I mean, let's make some distinctions: Japan produces a vast amount of music across a variety of genres (it's the second largest market in the world after the USA); Japanese pop, specifically, certainly features good artists, some even excellent artists, but most pop singers over there are more or less cute male and female idols, soloists, and boy/girl bands that, thankfully, usually don't last long. There are gems, as always: Utada Hikaru is a great artist with international appeal, for example, or Ringo Shiina, to name another. Most of the time, however, you unfortunately encounter very polished productions and very poor products.

"Love the world" is a single by the vocal trio Perfume, released in 2008, and it includes two songs along with their karaoke versions. Unlike 99% of Japanese idols, these weren't discovered in a risqué magazine or through a casting call, but rather, they themselves had been trying to break through for years until they were found by the sophisticated and scholarly musician/DJ/producer Yasutaka Nakata, a member of the duo capsule (rightfully hailed by critics) and a genius of his own. His plan for world domination is simple and effective: he took these three girls, dressed them up nicely, gave them three distinct roles (the leader, the child, the outsider), and transformed them from little girls performing at county fairs to stars performing at the Budokan (Japanese equivalent of San Siro); last but not least, these three kids are certainly puppets in Nakata's hands, but they are so delightful that you forgive him everything.

The Machiavellian detail of this mechanism lies in the fact that the quality of the material he gave them to sing has been improving: at first, he wrote them simple stuff to easily win over the otaku audience, then over time, Nakata allowed himself to raise the bar a little higher each time, and the quality of the tracks gradually rose until it reached with "love the world" a level worthy of Daft Punk, and who knows what he has in store for the future. The title track of the single is a high-ranking techno-pop song, which contains references to the cheesiest electronics (there's the Van Halen's organ from Jump) and the most refined Shibuya kei (the harp highlights the transitions between the parts of the song). The three voices are blended together in such a way as to make them a unique, changing, inscrutably electronic timbre that strides confidently over quirky and fun lyrics. The music video, finally, is the triumph of chroma key and Photoshop. Even the b-side, edge, has excellent qualities: much more relaxed compared to the danceable love the world, it vaguely recalls Roger Sanchez's Another Chance and Air's Moon Safari, yet it is unlike either of them and finds a third way in the dreamy orchestration of the synthesizer. Basically, all very beautiful.

"Love the world" was the second of three singles released by Perfume in 2008, and a new album will soon be out, which is sure to be a success like the previous and hypnotic "GAME". Can't wait.