The Singles Jukebox

Presented by Tara, a VTuber with an arrangement that shoots for the stars…

[Video]
[7.00]

Micha Cavaseno: One of the more perplexing things about pop singles emerging from VTubers (in any language, company, field, whatever) is how they’re beholden to personas that should hypothetically rely on the talents and abilities of the human occupying the idol’s space, but instead they can often smother the human in favor of the role. For example, Ironmouse the human can offer touching opera performances from her home set-up, but somehow with professional production, you end up with ran-through pop that flattens her abilities to provide audio fanfiction for the lore and put-ons of a CGI shadow puppet. So, like any ideal pop single, you’d want something that sounds perfectly in line with the singer’s persona but also something that maybe transcends it far enough that the human at the core of the record’s theater shines through. “Planetarium” is good in part because it has the confidence to not line up with the perception of the performer’s penchant for committing war crimes in video games (though she’s demonstrated a fondness for doing so with a song in her heart!) nor anything to do with how you’re supposed to take for granted her friends and associates are adults assuming the mantles of dogs or demons or demon-dogs or what have you; not even in an otherkin way. So what prevents it from being too anonymous? I’d say it’s the fragility and intimacy of the song, relying on a chain-link of Suisei’s very very human voice to build and frame something that has to dwell outside of this fantasy world and instead leave you wondering about the world behind the puppet where only the person gets to dwell. It’s perfect, for it seemingly frets over what it means to be a idol in either the digital or traditional sense, providing illusion as hope’s balm in opposition to the human who has to guide it’s rudders. It’s a certain kind of mystery that doesn’t really thrive in pop anymore, and however the silly means it returns, it’s certainly feels all to fleeting to count out.
[7]

Taylor Alatorre: Though the word “planetarium” does not appear in these lyrics, the title’s connection to Suisei, who introduced herself to the world as “your shooting star” and whose fans call themselves hoshiyomi (stargazers), is obvious. She’s a “constellation of hope,” she tells us, who strives to bring solace to the lonely and struggling, yet she is painfully aware that this solace can only be accessed through a faint projection of images on an unbreachable wall — a screen. “Planetarium” is an idol comfort song about the limitations of such songs, one that declines to feed into fans’ most rhapsodic fantasies of connection, even as it seeks to establish a genuine emphatic link across the cosmic void. Suisei is still leveraging the intimacy of the VTuber medium here, as her admissions of personal frailty are laden with meaning to those who have followed her journey. But even for the uninitiated, the stately production from DECO*27 helps get the point across, as it blankets the listener’s ears with soft, Vocaloid-like iterations of Suisei’s voice, then steps back to allow for critical moments of unmediated fellow feeling. The military drums at the climax, often used to convey an unstoppable reign of stardom, are instead used here to suggest a kind of mutual empowerment from a distance, a hand-in-virtual-hand march into separate yet entwined futures. It’s a healthier model of the idol-audience dynamic than the industry has sadly become known for. 
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Nortey Dowuona: For all the hoopla about generative AI, it is a bit strange to be listening to the virtual streamer sing a solid approximation of pop with occasional low bass pulses from DECO*27, who knows not to introduce and drums until the last mark: a simple snare led arrangement using the bass drum for emphasis as the song trickles away, the voice leaning back and then taking lead as the echoes surround it, cracked by a last hit of the kick. If this is what non person sung music sounds like, it might not be so bad.
[8]

Ian Mathers: This kind of has the opposite effect that 10cc’s “I’m Not in Love” has, for me (and this isn’t just down to the difference between one singer many times verses many singers layered together). There, the massed human voices almost dissolve the song, perfect for a narrator who is trying to hide. Here, even at their most layered, the arrangement suggest a determined self sufficiency, a thing of lonely beauty created by oneself because it has to be. Not that that’s the only trick up “Planetarium”‘s sleeve; I don’t mind telling you I sat up fucking straight the first time I heard the drums come in (suddenly thinking of “Cloudbusting,” among other things).
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Brad Shoup: By the halfway point, I was holding my breath to see whether she’d complete the song a cappella. Drums almost don’t count, but the melody was full and the pace was engrossing, and I don’t think I would have missed them.
[7]

Dorian Sinclair: As the Jukebox’s resident Choir Guy, you’d think this sort of vocal multitracking would be right up my alley, but I’ve actually never liked the “lead vocalist + faux-instrumental backing vox” style of a cappella writing. “Planetarium” has a very pretty melody and Suisei (and her many doppelgangers) perform it with a lot of expression, but I can’t help but wish the track had more conventional instrumentation–even as I respect the more unusual path taken. I’m just saying, if she ever records an acoustic self-cover, let’s circle back.
[6]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: It has a solemnity I appreciate, and it certainly feels more emotional because the instrumentation is all digital (the martial drumming in particular), but I’m sort of left here thinking of nothing beyond, “well, it’s pretty.”
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Michelle Myers: Even my textural aversion to Vocaloid can’t overcome the moments of genuine transcendence in the topline melody.
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: In terms of arrangement this is some real “Eternal Flame” shit — a by-the-numbers modern torch song, lushly appointed with slightly corny details (those snares!) What truly stands out in “Planetarium” is Suisei Hoshimachi’s vocal performance, richly layered and genuinely emotive and moving in a way that few songs this year have reached me. As she ascends the triplet staircases of the hook she sounds at turns uncertain — weak, even — and radiantly confident. She’s a singer in absolute control of the song. At its heart, “Planetarium” is a flawed vehicle for an incredible performance — the musical equivalent of a middling biopic saved by a star turn. Fortunately for the song, I’m a sucker for those movies.  
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Am I supposed to hear “Fix You”?
[5]

Alfred Soto: The Roches, the Bangles — many non-Asian pop bands came to mind while the harmonies bewitched me with each pass. “Planetarium” is pleasurable in itself, a track dotted with as many false endings as an Indiana Jones film.
[7]

Tara Hillegeist: So, cards on the table: this one — even with the expectation I was throwing the Jukebox either for something of a loop or something of a snooze — this one, “Planetarium”, was my pick, out of an embarrassment of options, some of which I might even be made to admit on pain of death were better songs. But Amnesty Week isn’t always about if the song you nominate was the best song nobody else on the Jukebox staff heard. It’s about if the song you nominate is the song you wish got listened to with the same intensity and affection as the inarguable hits of the year that everyone else heard enough times to gain an opinion on already. And perhaps I’d have better luck if I’d not been sidelined with COVID last year, such that I could’ve Amnesty-nominated Suisei’s near-imperial “Stellar Stellar“, a song which saw her briefly break viewership records on a “live” video recording for popular YouTube series The First Take as the first and to date still only virtual performer to grace what is otherwise a series that positions itself as close to providing the rawest, purest, flesh-and-fumbles versions of popular and classic songs in the Japanese cultural discourse (recorded in, as the title implies, one take). Prefaced as it is by an unforgettable, ingeniously performative, hesitant and “humanizing” glance towards the impassive cameras, that recording is an even better showcase for the strength and depth of her vocal performance than the original song. If she has an iconic song — and hers is a career with no small amount of attempts to provide herself with one — then “Stellar Stellar”, a tenderly swooning, emotive ballad whose romantic flourishes find themselves lanced like a boil by sharp, bitter lyrics about how she’s grown tired of being told to wait for princes to come when she’d rather become her own prince and save herself, is that song, and it will likely anchor her concerts and career retrospectives in pride of affirming place for years to come. Like Suisei herself, the song aspires to reach as many people as have ears to hear it, without ever truly desiring to close that gap between where she stands, singing alone, and where the audience finds ourselves, leaning forward to listen. And it is that melancholic comfort in her solitude that links “Planetarium” and “Stellar Stellar”, specifically, contrasted against a body of work that runs far more to jazzy, EDM-inflected pop than it does to the torch song- and scorcher-heavy era of Ringo Shiina’s solo career so often cited as one of her aesthetic inspirations — an element that “Planetarium” takes even further than the performance that nearly put Suisei’s name on everyone’s lips. “Planetarium” builds its instrumentation, harmonies, and central melodies almost entirely out of heavily-processed shards of Suisei’s own voice, with only a steady synth pulse low in the mix and a climactic, triumphant drum fill otherwise, as she broods over the regrets and slowly-crushing pileup of setbacks that she’s felt forming over the course of what starts out seeming like it might be a long-cooled romantic relationship, but slowly reveals itself to be nothing more than the fraught distance between singer and nebulously identified anyfan. Suisei has always laboriously linked herself thematically — it’s in the name, natch — with the stuff of starlight and the night sky, something distant and heavenly, and “Planetarium” finds her wondering if that celestial distance between herself and her audience means both sides are condemned to never truly feel the satisfaction of a real connection, that she can never truly be someone’s reason to get up and face another cold morning. But it’s as the song turns to swell beneath her that she realizes, as long as she’s honest, just acknowledging that her anxieties are hardly her own means her words are reaching someone – that just hearing her sing about those anxieties as if they’re her own might be solace enough for the audience she seeks. And that, she sings, in exultant realization — surrounded by little more than the murmuring of her own voice — is enough; her voice, indeed, is quite literally exactly enough. So — of course — that’s when the metaphorical mirror she’s singing it all to breaks, right on cue. Perhaps that’ll be the step too far, for some — I enjoyed trying to meet her gaze, anyway, all the same.
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