2020 Boy Group MVs I enjoyed
2020 is drawing to an end and I’m left here thinking about what a strange year it has been. Normal life was turned completely upside down. Anxiety and stress lurked around every corner. Somehow even the already toxic environment of online turned even more so as everybody hunkered down with their devices at home ready to battle it out on Twitter over petty nonsense.
But there were some highlights in the Boy Group World.
I was absolutely thrilled with how Johnny’s & Associates has bounced back in 2020. As much as I’ll miss Arashi as a group I think they’ve really done a great job giving their fans a memorable final year. From earning the IFPI’s best selling album of 2019 against some very strong global competition to their Neflix documentary (which I’ve discussed at great length with an Arashian friend in episode 28 and episode 30), spectacular online concert(s), an active social media presence on Instagram, and a lovely collaboration with Bruno Mars that hits right in the heart (“My love for you ain’t never gonna change~”).
SixTones and SnowMan (Episode 23) kept up their momentum with some great singles with SixTones gearing up to release their first album in January 2021 while SnowMan are releasing a film version of the legendary Takizawa Kabuki stage play.
Here are some of my favorite MVs from this year in Johnny’s & Associates world (and can I just say that I am thrilled that I can link to the MVs):
* A.B.C-Z チートタイム (Cheat Time)
Written by a couple of veteran Jpop songwriters (Sakamura Kenichi, lyrics and Shimazaki Takamitzu, music), “Cheat Time” is an infectious earworm of a song accompanied by a meme-worthy choreography that somehow makes me feel like I’m being trolled. The MV is a classic of the “$10 and a dream” genre, filmed on what appears to be a school gymnasium giving the appearance of a high school dance, complete with lazer light show and fog.
I--and I can stress this enough--love this song.
Absolutely classic A.B.C-Z.
* SixTones NAVIGATOR
A shining entry into the EPIC ANIME THEME SONG genre comes “NAVIGATOR,” written by Takagi Seiji. Frenetic swoopy strings, the bass line pitching through the verses like a sail boat in a storm, Kyomoto Taiga’s soaring vocals contrasted with Juri’s gutteral rapping with Jesse’s whispered “Pitched up” sprinkled throughout. It’s a wild ride, an entire action film contained in a single song!! The MV is a sci-fi fever dream and the choreography with that little electricity-wiggle hand gesture is incredibly catchy. 10/10 would watch an entire series based on this MV.
* SnowMan KISSIN’ MY LIPS
I can’t lie. I love absolutely everything about this song and MV but I especially love the chair dance choreography that must have been specially created to highlight both Iwamoto Hikaru and Raul’s impossibly long and flexible legs. I’m not familiar with the songwriters for this song, which was a tie-up with Dior Addict perfume, but I’ll certainly be on the lookout for their work in the future. The song is a slinky seduction anchored on this funk bass line that is really perfect for the type of rhythmic performance SnowMan excels at. My favorite part though is the “yeah~ah~ah~ah~” punctuating the song and also all the other parts.
* Kinki Kids KANSAI BOYA
A late entry into my favorite songs of 2020 is the Kinki Kids’ “Kansai Boya”, a song I completely missed back when it was released in June and for that I am extremely sorry. Written by Kinki Kid Domoto Tsuyoshi (who also played guitar and keyboard on the track) the song is a fever dream of retro funkadelic awesomeness--as is the MV. Look, we can’t all be Domotos Tsuyoshi and Koichi riding back to the mothership in their outerspace funk-mobile but we (read: I) can hit repeat on this song… a lot.
* SexyZone RUN
This is a bonus entry for a live performance.
Poor SexyZone just as Matsushima Sou returned to the group, Marius Yo has gone on hiatus for health reasons. But for one brief moment we had five-member SexyZone reunited in a single performance of their August 2020 single “Run”. Written by veteran Jpop writer Watanabe Takuya, the song is a masterclass in what my buddy The Bias List (Episode 31) calls “momentum”. From the staccato “止まらないで止まらないでよ” that drops into the sweeping response, the song fights against the tide, just as SexyZone has fought against everything that tried to hold them back.
(Please take care, Marius!!)
And a couple of Jpop stand-outs for me from non-Johnny’s & Associates Boy Groups:
* 三代目 J SOUL BROTHERS RISING SOUL
Another late entry to my list is “Rising Soul” which technically is going to be released on January 1, 2021 but the MV is already here so I’m just going with it. EXILE Tribe releases can be hit or miss with me but when they hit, oh baby, they hit. “Rising Soul” is a temple built to celebrate glittering 1980s electropop and I am here for every last reverb soaked keyboard riff. At first, the MV appears to be your standard-issue boy group in a box MV but there’s nothing standard about the sea of backing dancers who emerge to complete the picture. J Soul Brothers, like all of the Exile units, is a dance group at their core and what I like about the MV for “Rising Soul” is 1) the extremely competent framing used to make the scenes appear full but never crowded or confused and 2) the way the dancers amplify the members’ movements. It’s all extremely well done and is just an incredibly appealing song and MV.
* SEVENTEEN 24H
The title track from Seventeen’s Japanese mini-album 24H was… 24H and I can listen to it 24H. The song sounds extremely Seventeen-like (in a good way) and the clock-themed choreography is creative and very effective. Seventeen are one of the most innovative groups right now in terms of large-scale choreography and I always look forward to their live stage performances (I mean do we remember “Fearless”??? Wow!) but often I think their MVs have suffered due to budgetary constraints but “24H” is visually engaging, mixing the choreography with little solo moments from the members.
__________
Moving onto Korea, looking back on 2020, the idol-artists that got me most engaged were the soloists: Taemin and Mino. That doesn’t mean there weren’t some fun songs from boy groups (and soloists), too. How can I forget my Song Of The Summer aka “In Summer” by GreatGuys (click and listen for a taste of summer fun), Astro’s Moonbin & Sanha gave us the groovy, laidback “Bad Idea” (certified bop), you are going to have to pry WayV’s “Bad Alive” from my cold dead hands, GOT7 snuck in a last minute charmer with “Breath”, SuperM showed us the “Tiger Inside” and gave us one of my favorite pandemic performances with the slice of life “With You”, and Winner delivered the hands down funniest MV of the year with “Hold” not to mention putting on the first online pandemic concert of the year for their fans on extremely short notice. Plus you had Baekhyun with the pastel dreamworld of “Candy” and Kai’s sci-fi futurescape of “Mmmh”.
My favorites this year though are these ones:
* Taemin IDEA
Don’t get me wrong, I also love “Criminal” and the hand-cuff choreography is the one of the most memorable things to happen this year when a lot of stuff seemed plain and dreary and copies of copies of copies and the “Criminal” dance covers are stuff of my dreams--Astro’s Rocky and this inspired one taking place in a closed market are my favorites--but “Idea” has something extra special about it. Everything about “Idea” is next level.
The song itself is an earworm, burrowing deep into your brain and making a home there. Which shouldn’t be surprising considering the songwriting team behind “Idea” are Keyz and Ayo, who also happen to be the team behind SOTY contender “WAP”. Both song and MV are an exercise in duality as it flips from glittering pop to absolutely filthy grime-type beat that’s all hip undulations and stuttered syllables as if the singer was trying to sing while his attention was focused… elsewhere. “Mah uh uh uh mah uh uh mah ay di ah.” W.A.P., indeed.
The MV is absolutely gorgeous, flitting between aesthetic set pieces from deep inside a sci-fi mind prison to some kind of futuristic saloon and eventually taking us up to heaven as Taemin in his sky blue suit dances flanked on either side by backdancers in with white feathered wings. Nobody is doing it like Taemin. Nobody.
* Mino 도망가 (RUN AWAY)
“Run away” is not my favorite track from Mino’s excellent album Take (which you should all listen to) but it’s a nice song and worth highlighting for the MV alone which is an ambitious exercise in magical realism. Something I’ve talked about in the past on my podcast is the idea of turning mundane space into sacred space and Mino here turns ordinary settings like… a subway car, into something special. I haven’t ridden the subway in Seoul since 2019 but I can imagine so vividly listening to this song on headphones and just being transported to a different world. One that’s more magical. “Run away” doesn’t have the frenetic energy of Mino’s huge 2019 hit “Fiance” where you want to hit repeat as soon as it’s finished but I think it’s a good song for a pandemic year when we could all use a little bit of magical realism to break through our dull days.
* Crush Ohio
I’m sneaking this one in here just because I was so charmed by the MV. Crush isn’t an idol but he is a pop singer and there’s something just so raw and real about both the song and MV. I just wrote about Mino’s magical realism turning the mundane into the sacred and Crush does the same thing here, only with a theater. He turns this ordinary, empty building into a cathedral through his performance. It’s an amazing piece of work.
I’m sure I’ve overlooked a million great songs (VVS SOTY) but looking back right now this is what I see. Here’s hoping 2021 brings more great things!