Beat Laments The World

A metal-infused take on Asian music & other stuff

Alright, this is Henkka writing this to you fresh off the, er, dingy bus from the first H!P-related show in Finland of all time. I’m going to type up my thoughts on the show right now later than later.

I was among the first group of people to buy the tickets to the show as soon as it was announced. Pretty much the second the word got out, I was out buying tix to the show for me and two friends I’d successfully got into H!P sometime earlier. If you want me to be honest with you though, I wasn’t completely 100% excited about the show — I mean, I love both Yossie (who is the first MM member I loved when I first got into H!P) and Rika (who’s, well, pretty much one of my most loved H!P members of all time now) but I wasn’t quite into their music that much.

However, my expectations got an odd kickstart shortly before the show. As you know, several H!P sites including Int’l Wota, JPHiP and Hello!Blog were giving out chances to ask questions from Rika and Yossie themselves during the show. I figured, “Whoa this is pretty cool! … but ah well, I’ll just let the young’uns ask away their Q’s“…

That’s when Paul of Hello!Blog tweeted he was still looking for people to ask questions from the group, less than 24 hours before the actual Helsinki show! This is when I tweeted away my question to him. Flash forward to the actual show…

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(For the previous lists, see here for the 2008 one and here for the 2007 one.)

Ho ho ho and Merry Christmas to you all! Or, if you don’t celebrate Christmas (or equivalent) then I must ask, “why the shit not?” Alright, granted, the wonderful and magical time we all felt in our childhood got old probably around the time you realized everyone had been blatantly lying to you and that the Santa Claus you thought you knew wasn’t actually Santa Claus, but your shitfaced uncle in a cheap Santa costume and fake beard.

But that’s not the only way to celebrate Christmas. This year, instead of boring yourself with the same old mindless chitchat while eating disgusting food with family members you secretly hate, just do what I do. Say “fuck you” to friends and family, stay home alone, pour yourself a strong vodka coke and watch some goddamn Berryz Koubou videos. Naked.

Now that’s what I call a fun, Tsunku-approved Christmas!

In any case. It’s the end of the year and with the end of the year comes the ranking goodness. Ladies, gentlemen and wota, I believe it’s time to have a look and see at what old Henkka thought was the best H!P had to offer us in 2009.

If I’m not mistaken, this year H!P had a grand total of 116 songs that are eligible for this ranking. That includes all the singles, b-sides, album tracks and cover songs, but not tunes that were already released as a single in 2008 and later on an album this year. That’s 116 songs to choose from. Some are shit, most are quite decent, some were ones that were awesome at first but I’ve long since grown tired of them, and some are shiny, brand new that seem incredible now but might sound like uninspired crap to my ears in a month’s time. Still, I tried to do my best and be honest with myself and with you. This is what I came up with.

Starting with the honorable mentions.

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Well, the results are in and Rottara Rottara is the clear winner here. Can’t agree with it though, my vote went to COVER YOU. And aww, that’s just too bad for Mai Satoda. Mousugu Christmas wasn’t a bad single actually but what can you do eh? Kill Me Kiss Me got a pretty considerable amount of votes too, which I personally think is kinda weird as I thought that mini-album was a complete fucking worthless steaming pile of pure overhyped, uninspired, unlistenable shit. And of course that’s the group they’re going to bring into Europe and the US. Shit that’s great. It just seems to me like the exact kind of generic MTV run-of-the-mill garbage I originally so eagerly wanted to escape from and wouldn’t even play to my goddamn pet iguana if I had one. Unless I wanted him to kill himself so I didn’t have to bother doing it for him. Perhaps that’s just me though.