Louis Louis Fendi Fendi Prada…

[Video][Website]
[5.88]

Iain Mew: Kyary Pamyu Pamyu is a fashion blogger turned alternative model turned pop singer and apparently Japan’s most popular Twitter user. If you haven’t already watched the video to her first single “PONPONPON”, I recommend that (it’s a unique experience), but while I fall in the LOVE rather than HATE camp for that, the evolution from its kindergarten beats in “Candy Candy” is probably a necessary one. The chorus is bluntly direct with sweetness  written large, but beneath that there’s a gorgeous dance track that moves with a languid bounce rather than the same giant steps. Intricate detailing — the tiny melancholy hints of synth strings under the verses and the way that the bass pauses a fraction in a different place from everything else to fill up the pause and set up the chorus — fits perfectly next to the more overt stunts like the metallic slides and quacks. It’s sugar rush pop, but the sugar rush is unusually peaceful and serene. My perception of Kyary’s popularity and importance has been skewed by the amount of time that I spend with people who soundtrack their fashion shows with her, but “Candy Candy” makes me feel more than ever that she does have an above average chance of some kind of Western crossover. She already gets coverage alongside 2NE1 in (minimal) Asian pop articles in newspapers here, and while this is more because she visually fits into an easy zany Harajuku stereotype than for the music, that seems to be part of the plan. I’m fascinated to see what happens next.
[8]

Erick Bieritz: It’s commendable or… maybe remarkable… or at least notable that an artist can do a video in which she fires an assault rifle at a flying, singing onion… and it’s downright restrained compared to some of her other hits. Musically this is also a step back from–for example–the kaleidoscopic headache of 2011’s “PonPonPon,” despite a pidgin English chorus that would probably be discarded as “too obvious” by the writers of the interminably obvious “J-Pop America Funtime Now” sketch on Saturday Night Live. Kyary still has time to channel her inner Nobuhiko Obayashi into a musical/visual persona that’s as focused as it is bizarre, but her extreme approach leaves her with less margin for error than her more conventional peers.
[6]

Brad Shoup: She hasn’t been in the game long, but I know what I’m getting when a Kyary single hits: a time-release melody, videos like 2C-T-7 daydreams, and endearingly atrocious vocals. The lyrics are so infantile/retrograde they’re giving off stink lines, but there’s a 70% chance she’s on some next-level shit, so.
[8]

Anthony Easton: Piano to drums, and then the manic calliope starts, and you know that something at least interesting is going to happen for the first few seconds. By the end of the first chorus, if you aren’t pogoing like a plastered six year-old, you have no soul. NO SOUL. 
[7]

Michaela Drapes: The creep barista with oversharing issues at my local coffee shop/hipster pizza joint recently turned me on to Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (specifically “Pon Pon Pon”) — I blew him off because he’s a smarmy know-it-all jazz saxophonist having a second adolescence in some ridiculous master’s program at NYU. (Who listens to those assholes?) Now that I’ve actually heard (and seen) her work, I understand why he likes what she’s up to; I, however, am not sure I need to keep abreast of what’s going in Harajuku culture anymore, especially if the vanguard sprang fully-formed from the forehead of Takashi Murakami. On toast. (I’d totally buy the fake eyelashes, though.) The one point is for the disgusting onamatopoeticness of “CHEWING CHEWING CHEWING CHEWING CHEWING,” in case you were wondering.
[1]

Alfred Soto: She sounds like she’s saying “chewy chewy,” which would have made sense: nodding towards one of the great bubblegum hits in rock history situates her in its future and ever permutating present. “Crunchy crunchy” would have made for tastier pop fare, not to mention chewier (eventually).
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: The next evolutionary step in the international arms race to be as Twee As Fuck. Japan leads.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: More like a candy necklace: snappy-seeming at first but less sweet than chalky, and never something you want to consume more than half of. 
[4]