Kyary Pamyu Pamyu; Best Buy Theater, NYC, March 3, 2014

だれかの　ルールに　しばれたくはないの

わがまま　ドキドキ　このままでいたい

I don’t want to be tied up in somebody else’s rules.

Selfish and excited, I wanna stay the way I am

-Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, “Fashion Monster,” translation by me.

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu is not a novelty act. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu has something to say and if the media and PR flacks and lookie-loos are too dumb to figure that out, her audience isn’t. The view from inside the crowd is very different than that of the critic jotting notes in the stands above. While female performers will always have creepy adult male super fans, Kyary’s not singing to them and they aren’t the majority of her fanbase.

I was at the Best Buy Theater in New York on Saturday for Kyary’s second world tour. Standing towards the back of the scrum of people in front of the stage, I happened to make eye contact with of one of those girls in wearing the big pink Kyary-style bows in her hair. She was also by herself and looked to be all of 17 years old. Having been an awkward, weird, solo-concert going 17 year old myself, I feel a strong empathy for my younger sisters-in-music fanaticism and I started chatting with her to pass the time until the show started. We talked about Japan and music and learning new languages and she told me everything she had done in New York that day (her first visit) and then we started talking about our favorite Kyary Pamyu Pamyu songs. We both agreed that “Invader Invader” was seriously boss but then my young friend turned to me, conspiratorially, pink bow bobbing, and says this: “The best part is that seifuku means the school girl uniform but it means conquering, too.”

And, you know, she was right. That is the best part.

(The line in question is “おっしゃ Let’s 世界征服” (Ossha-Let’s sekaiseifuku) where “Ossha-le” (stylish) bleeds into the English “Let’s” and then the final word means conquer the world but the kanji for “school uniform” is substituted in place of “conquering.”)

While the dummies are dazzled by her psychedelic fashion taste, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and her teenaged girl fans are plotting a style invasion. They’re going to conquer the world.

And I, for one, welcome our new teenage girl overlords. (Especially if it means I can wear that cupcake dress.)

While Kyary’s videos have been visually interesting from the very beginning, she seemed very uncomfortable on stage when she first debuted as a singer and performer. It took some time for Kyary and her music producer Nakata Yasutaka to figure out a style that was pure Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. Some of her earliest songs have a sleek, dancey sound very reminiscent of Perfume, the other famous Nakata Yasutaka act. But Perfume’s main appeal is are their gorgeously intricate three-part dance routines. That wasn’t Kyary. Perfume’s music is meant for the clubs; Kyary’s music is meant for bopping up and down in your bedroom.

Kyary and Nakata seem to have settled on a boxy, straight ahead groove to underpin her work; it’s a groove that works with the boxy, toy soldier-like dance moves she’s been using. And though Nakata writes the material, he is clearly taking some lyrical direction from Kyary with songs like “Furisodenshon”--about the bittersweetness of growing up--and her most recent single “Yume no Hajima-ring ring”--about the bittersweetness of graduating. These are themes that are close to the heart of any teenage girl, especially ones with big pink bows in their hair.

As a Kyary-watcher since the very beginning, I’ve been so proud to see the now 21-year old woman really come alive on stage. She’s grown more confident in her lip-syncing and dancing and has been slowly learning how to work a crowd up into a frenzy. While I’ve seen better live acts than Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, I’ve never been to another concert where I could jump up and down excitedly with a 17-year old girl and sing at the top of my lungs about being a Fashion Monster.

Scuttlebutt around the Best Buy Center was that Kyary had been signed to Warner Bros.’s American wing. If that’s true, I both fear and hope she’ll become another PSY, crying all the way to the bank thanks the dummies who couldn’t see past the catchy hooks to the social critique underneath. But ideally Kyary should be taken seriously both as a pop artist and as a woman making smart, rebellious, empathetic music for teenage girls. And if the young lady I met at the Best Buy Theater is any guide, the teenage girls of America are ready and waiting.

(Originally posted March 10, 2014)

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Just a note from the future, it was odd re-reading this write up knowing how Kyary’s career turns out but I thought it was worth re-posting anyway as something of a time capsule. I wonder what did happen to that seventeen-year old girl I met that day. She would be in her mid-20s now I think.

One of the very first books I read front to back in Japanese by myself was Kyary’s memoir and the stories of her and her friend taking wacky pictures in costume as young teens were really endearing. I do think it’s a shame her career kind of tapered off the way it did with Kyary unable to pivot to a more grown-up image and style and the gloss wearing off the fashion monster pop art. Still, we’ll always have “Furisodenson”.