Bikkuri Project

This entry is about Morning Musume’s new single, Mikan! Now that radio rips are out, a few opinions. Let’s start with the good things, then the bad.

Good
~a much more even line distribution than ONSA. It seems that everybody gets to sing alot. There are some MM songs out there were certain girls only actually sing for 2 or 3 lines, but this isn’t one of them. Ai-chan and Reina get the most solos, but they’re the best singers, so that makes sense. Risa and Eri get a couple of solo lines each. Aika and Koharu each get one, and even Sayumi gets a couple of solo lines.

~the song is happy!! I love happy MM songs, and in my opinion, it’s been way too long since we had a genuinely happy MM single. There’s great energy to the song, and the backbeat feels like you would want to jump up and down a bunch to it

~The song also seems to have a really nice message. I love the ‘life is one time’ lines in the chorus. Positive messages seem to appeal well to the Japanese public (looking at Aruiteru), and that combined with the energy of the song should equal a winner

~They kept the ‘rock’ vibe that has been in their past songs but lost the man hating. Their last few songs were more ‘cool’, maybe, but this one is happy while still keeping the guitar instead of using a para-para type feel, which, if this makes any sense, adds more ‘fullness’ to the song. I always find the parapara techno type songs to sound kind of ‘empty’. Ambitious and Sexy Boy did to me anyway. Maybe “not rich enough” is the right way to put it

Bad
~I don’t object to Sayumi having solos. She was the only one who didn’t have a single solo line in ONSA, and that made me feel bad for her. But…. can’t they give her an easier line maybe, or something that doesn’t stick out as much? It just doesn’t sound very good at all, in my opinion.

~Not much pandas. I think they might either have one shared line or one very short solo line each, and I know they’re new, but those girls can sing. They really can, so I think they at least deserve a full line each.

~I kind of wish there were more spoken/shouted parts interspersed at the end. I mean, kind of like Ai-araba or Koko ni Iruzee has them. Those lines always add great energy and variety to the last chorus or two, when we’ve already heard the melodic line before so it doesn’t sound like the same old thing again. There are a couple in this song, but I’d like there to be more.

Overall, I really like the song. It’s not going to go down as my favorite song of all time, but I think that this kind of song is just what MM needs right now, and I’m really looking forward to seeing the PV. I have a feeling it’ll be much more interesting than the last couple.