AKB48 – Uza
At the Jukebox, we keep celebrating Hallowe’en all the way up to Thanksgiving…
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[5.83]
Katherine St Asaph: It’s not that you’re forbidden from using that ticking-clock intro. It’s just that I’ll be cross whenever “Hung Up” doesn’t follow.
[5]
Patrick St. Michel: AKB48 are the most popular music group in Japan right now, and that makes them inescapable. They are all over TV, on all the magazine covers at 7-11, who they have a Christmas tie-in with, and in many ads on the trains. Most importantly, their music seems to always be playing somewhere, and I used to not like this because I wasn’t a fan of their hyper-chipper, vocally overwhelming pop. Then Halloween single “Uza” dropped, and suddenly I’m excited to hear AKB on my morning commute They’ve shifted away from unrelenting pep in favor of something darker, “Uza” opening with a wall of witch-house-aping synths before blasting off into something that’s uptempo but unsettling. A few vocal samples flash by, and in the song’s best touch the singing gets glazed with a little Auto-Tune, which gives the two-dozen voices a creepy feel that’s never been present in their singles before. Even the lyrics seem self-aware for once — “uza” translates to “how annoying,” and that seems aimed at all the people here in Japan who heap hate on AKB48 like they are a terrorist organization. This is the best song AKB48 have released to date, and I am thrilled to hear it in public, which happens a lot.
[9]
Jonathan Bogart: After what seems like months of reading about its creepiness and effectiveness, I can’t help feeling let down that it just sounds like AKB48.
[4]
Will Adams: This is the first AKB48 song I’ve listened to, and I must admit that the concept behind the group has flown far over my head. My classically trained pop mind has trouble accepting a pop figure that doesn’t — or, in AKB48’s case, can’t — have a defined persona. But perhaps I need more time to discover how the megagroup structure informs a song like “Uza.” As for the song itself, it’s just trance. Really ugly and really noisy trance. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
[7]
Brad Shoup: Overwhelming, but in a different way. The giant, gloomy synth streaks beg — from where I sit, at least — for a more gauche vocal attack. I dig the baroque programming touches, the out-of-place hip-house interjections. The mood is insistent, the text is desperately single-minded; God help you if you’re in the wrong club in the wrong state.
[7]
Alfred Soto: The aural overkill is a mixing board problem: vocals pitched at the same key, with synths to match.
[3]
Will: On the surface, their “default” “personality” is that of the schoolgirl ensemble. (Epitomized by their springtime sakura songs, as Sabina noted in “Give Me Five!” Previous years’ sakura singles have explicitly tried to sound like a school choir recital) Then there’s the standard idol group persona of “youthful and in love,” a la One Direction’s upbeat songs.
But these are more personas constructed by the arrangements, and thus the producers, rather than a vocal personality. Speaking as a strong AKB fan, AKB’s vocals tend to be on the more anonymous side of things. A lot of the individual voices are pretty anonymous, while the massive vocal meld balances out various timbres from the more distinct voices into anonymity as well. So yes, in isolation, AKB’s music can’t have a defined persona.
But AKB’s music was never meant for isolation. Idol groups very rarely are meant to have music in isolation. As their fans get to know the girls away from the music, their perceptions of the girls begins to color their perception of the girls’ performances. The two girls designated as centers of the dance choreography in UZA have two of the most anonymous voices in the group, but when I hear their voices during the song, I infer the personas they have as idols into the music.
Well, at least when I bother paying any attention to the vocals. When it comes to UZA, I agree strongly with Alfred. The vocal blend is even MORE anonymous than usual thanks to the autotune, and the main synth set is extremely noisy, obscuring things even further. The verse was fun, as I actually recognized a couple voices, and the arrangement pinged around with syncopated rhythms, but initially thought the rest was just terrible.
After many replays, I find that a giant choir is still good for giving a soaring feeling, (the chorus) but then that dratted hook kills any momentum.
Patrick: Any opinion on Itano Tomomi’s solo singles? Does the autotune there also yield a bit of creepiness? (I personally thought UZA was better whenever Itano’s voice popped up, too)