Perfume – Spending All My Time
The return of Mallory, flinging darts in pop’s eyes.
[Video][Website]
[5.89]
Patrick St. Michel: This is kind of the J-Pop equivalent to Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” in the sense that many fans (in this case, mostly English-speaking ones) reacted to a stylistic change with shock. This is Perfume’s first single shaped by global ambitions, which explains why producer/mastermind Yasutaka Nakata embraced Euroclub synths that sound more “Welcome To St. Tropez” than Shibuya-kei and the whole thing is nearly in English. The repetitive keyboard is a sonic shift for the group, but the rest of the song isn’t the major departure message-board dwellers think it is. The majority of Perfume’s singles feature English in the chorus, and this song is basically one giant chorus repeated with a few variations. Repetitive, yes, but also deceptively catchy because, like all good Perfume songs, every sound works together to form a song full of great sounds. Some have compared “Spending All My Time” to LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” or Nicki Minaj’s “Starships,” but those songs dilute the pop hooks with abrasive electro freak outs. This song finds something irresistible and runs with it.
[8]
Mallory O’Donnell: If this wasn’t J-Pop many critics would be backhanding it for its indebtedness to (unjustly) hated west coast Hi-NRG and (justly) despised italo-house, but simply because it is, they will praise it for the same reasons. As for me, I could care where something comes from : as songs go, this is forgettable tosh. See, I’ve already forgotten it.
[3]
Brad Shoup: So Perfume’s gone full Harris. The in-the-round approach to verses and blithe harmonies still work for them, and I suppose Nakata’s baroque sequencing would get old at some point. But it’s still stale synths and about eight words.
[5]
Alfred Soto: For J-pop to absorb Western pop trends isn’t quite enough. The mystical devotion to saccharine sentiments welded to hard beats both beats Max Martin and RedOne at their own games but honors their achievements too. Calvin Harris as source material — a good fit, no? Perfume inhabit the track like Rihanna never does on hers but the hook doesn’t sink in deep enough.
[5]
Iain Forrester: I’ve compared the productions of Calvin Harris and Yasutaka Nakata before, but this marks the first time that the latter is consciously aiming for the same territory as the former. It pares down Perfume’s sound to the bare minimum as if the Japanese words and intricate verse constructions were inseparably linked and both had to go in the chase for wider acceptance. It’s not that much of a shock, since they still sound completely like Perfume, and while it’s not vintage stuff it’s not all bad either. The bubbly synth riff and the two lines of song are both enjoyable and take their sheer concentration well, an addition to being impossible to shift from memory. Also anything that might help steer Perfume to get to their website’s promise that they’ll appear in Europe (and North America) to fulfil their goal ‘to become the next global artist’ is fine by me.
[6]
Anthony Easton: A Valley remake of “Care Bears” or “My Little Pony,” with less Sondheim and more Hasbro.
[6]
Jonathan Bogart: Yeah, that synth hook sounds a lot like Calvin Harris, specifically “We Found Love.” But there’s no obnoxious build-and-supposed-release-which-is-actually-just-a-restatement; Perfume are too invested in subverting audience expectations for that.
[7]
Will Adams: Unless the joke is that they spend all of their time singing “spending all of my time,” this is disappointingly one-note. That this still scores high for me is a testament to Yasutaka Nakata’s strength as a producer. He injects a sweetness that is often absent in dancepop via sugarcoated keyboard lines and squelchy rhythm track. Best of all, it never ceases to amaze me how house tropes like heavy Autotune and syncopated synth stabs could be so enjoyable. Even the Calvin Harris-isms sound awesome.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: That this sounds like RedOne playing a bucket of plastic pickup sticks is no surprise. Global smash attempts tend to sound this anonymous, despite this year’s actual global smash (Gotye, fun; Carly Rae Jepsen has extenuating Scooter Braun) tending weirder, and dance-pop for years has been reverse-alchemizing itself for years into the musical equivalent of a Ring Pop. It’s also unsurprising how this comes off vaguely morose or creepy; so much pop sinks rather than soars, and Perfume sing every possible gloss of “spending” like a collector’s ritual. They also sing like Perfume: vocal lines weightless enough to wind around each other like threads, processed just a touch too much. They can’t sound anonymous. That’ll likely kill the crossover, but it saves the song.
[6]
I have got a bit fed up with generalised complaints about people liking J-Pop/K-Pop when they don’t like identical Western music and written a bit about it on my tumblr. Since Mallory’s blurb here was the thing that set it off it seems bad manners not to post that fact here.
I say in that post, apologies if I am seeming to target you, especially as I actually have a bit less of a problem with this post.
(unjustly) hated well-liked west coast Hi-NRG and (justly) despised beloved italo-house, which from a Japanese perspective are a bucket genre, thanks to the whole Avex “Eurobeat” craze of the 90s and early 00s
Not picking on Mallory either, but it didn’t even occur to me that Nakata might have been copying Calvin Harris, except in a “huh this stuff seems to be charting in America” sort of way. The tune is Avex Eurobeat brought down by 20bpm, and the vocals couldn’t be anything but J-Pop, i.e. it doesn’t actually sound like any Calvin Harris tune, at all.
There were supposed to be strikeouts in that, but that’s probably obvious from context.
It sounds like “Starships” more than anything. Which is really bizarre, because when “Starships” came out my first thought was it was too derivative to have any distinctive sound. Pop is eating itself, etc.
I guess my point is that Japan has a 15-year history of this kind of one-hook synth-stabby dance pop (where do you think the Italo producers disappeared off to?). To me this sounds like a classy Nakata-esque iteration of a J-pop sound that’s been around for ages, popular but too trashy to chart — there’s a bit of an association with teen hooligans and tarty club girls, in Asia.
I think it’s kinda brilliant how they pound on the door in time to the beat at the end of the video.
Perfume is a visual group, right? I mean the visuals are linked to the music. For me they’re what makes this song, because they take something familiar (to a Japanese audience) – the three high school BFFs who are always together and who dabble in the Occult – and make it into something weird and a bit disturbing. And then they link that to the repetitive, cliched refrain (“Loving You Forever”) which makes the refrain also seem weird and a bit disturbing. Kind of bringing out weirdness of pop music.
Chasten’d.
Expanding: I should have said RedOne (Katherine’s right; I hear “Starships” too). I don’t have that background on the migration of Italo-house or the possible implications of this sound, so thanks! I still think it’s pretty boring tho.
And I don’t like talking about videos in song blurbs (personal limitation, I may have to fix that), but this one was astoundingly great.
subdee – Visuals are important for almost all J-Pop groups that regularly chart in the top ten with regular frequency (Perfume fits in that category for sure), but at the the same time, they aren’t as dependent on them as many other Japanese groups charting at the moment. AKB48, Momoiro Clover Z and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu…and arguably groups like Arashi and Kis-My-Ft2…rely on videos and public appearances way more than Perfume, who have a very distinct sound in the domestic music market.
Everyone else – I get where people here “Starships,” but to me it’s just Eurobeat. A friend of mine compared this song to Venga Boys, and I think that made more sense than Minaj because “Spending All My Time” is pop all the way through…there is no bleating electro passage where the voices just vanish. The chorus just keeps going, which is something “Starships” and “Party Rock Anthem” don’t do.
I instantly thought of Venga Boys when I heard the (totally amazing) B-side “Hurly Burly”!
Thanks to everyone who has been filling in the gaps and correcting my ignorance on where the sound is likely to have come from.
Really, the only time I heard Harris or RedOne was during the synth chord solo at the beginning. The rest I found to be signature… well, Perfume. The percussion here is much more detailed than either producers’, and as Patrick said, “SAMT” is missing those drops.
I also think it should be noted that “Hurly Burly” and “Point”, the other two songs on the EP, are notably less “Harris-y” or what have you. They’re also better, which probably says something…
Iain, I think what you (and I) are hearing is the chorus melody’s rhythmic similarity to “the Vengabus is coming”!
Ha, yeah, I think that’s it actually.
I wrote a little something about the globalist symbolism found in the PV for “spending all my time”
I hope you find it interesting… it’s a little sinister!
http://blog.caitlin-burns.com/symbolism-in-spending-all-my-time-by-perfume/
Wait, so if we keep talking about the video the illuminati will get us?
I mean, I spent this week revisiting alternate readings of The Shining, and “Spending All My Time” was a fairly terrifying video, so.
Consider this comment my official consent for the Illuminati to get me.
Brad: Links plz I need to check your work