(MENAFN- Arab Times) The queen of Japan's sugar-coated pop scene, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu has unveiled bold plans to conquer the world - just as soon as she's done her English homework. Still only 22, Kyary's rise to superstardom has been meteoric, a coquettish charm and off-kilter pop appeal spawning a string of number ones and viral videos and thrusting her firmly to the forefront of Japanese "kawaii" (cute) culture. Despite extraordinary fame in her home country and frequent comparisons to American divas Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, the popette wants to capture hearts and minds further afield.
"I'm happy for people to liken me to Katy Perry or Lady Gaga so I'm working hard to emulate them and become a global star," Kyary told AFP in a backstage interview before performing at the Summer Sonic music festival outside Tokyo this weekend. "I admire Katy Perry and always looked up to her," added the singer and fashion model, perched on a sofa backstage in a fluffy pink skirt with a giant yellow bow crowning her strawberry blonde locks. "I don't have Katy's sexy style so I'm focusing on introducing Japan's unique cuteness and quirky music to the world."
Sparked
Kyary's bubblegum fashion carefully mirrors the kawaii craze sparked in the colourful boutiques of Tokyo's trendy Shibuya and Harajuku districts. Popular all over Asia, the almost cartoon-like trend reflecting the quality of looking and acting cute has also been flirted with by some Western stars - including Gaga and Perry. "We are similar in having a clearly defined concept or theme for our videos or live shows," Kyary said, referring to Perry.
"But I know I've got to improve my English. My new song's about Halloween and has an English chorus, but my pronunciation isn't very good. "I just hope people think it's cute." Another English song, 'Ring a Bell,' features the helium-voiced singer demanding over and over, and over: "ring, ring, ring a bell, ring a bell, ring-a-ring a bell," while the smash hit 'PonPonPon' contains lyrics just as capable of turning the listener cross-eyed. "Everyday 'pon,' everytime is 'pon,' I want to ride a merry-goround!" she reports, and in the video - viewed more than 83 million times on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y zC4hFK5P3g - Kyary flutters her eyelashes and pats herself on the backside as she slips into a dizzying array of wacky costumes. "Ring A Bell is really Japanese- English,' confided the pop phenomenon, wrinkling up her nose. "I've definitely got to study English this year." Kyary, who released her debut album in 2011, describes her sound as a mish-mash of styles. "It's hard to pigeon-hole it," she said.
"I suppose it would come under the genre of J-pop but also 'Harajuku girl' or Harajuku style. Perhaps it might also be a bit of electro pop but I haven't especially thought of myself as belonging to a genre." Her techno-pop went down well with a sun-baked Summer Sonic crowd waiting for headliners the Chemical Brothers as her backing dancers - pint-sized Kyary clones - supplied more saccharine sweetness to the kawaii overload. Kyary has triggered controversy, notably when her music video for the 2013 single "Furisodation" sparked protests from anti-alcohol abuse campaigners for showing her swigging from a bottle to celebrate coming of age. But she remains fiercely determined to conquer the North American and European markets, with two world tours - including sold-out shows in Los Angeles and New York - under her belt already. "Japanese people are usually shy so they sort of just clap along," she said. "But fans abroad scream 'Kyary, Kyary!' They really get into it. It's a bit like Summer Sonic. Most people have come to see foreign bands." Getting up from the sofa, she added: "I'm first on stage in the morning, so the crowd will be half-asleep. I'll have to open their eyes!"
Also:
ATLANTA: Granville Automatic, a band with roots in Atlanta, is releasing its collection of songs inspired by Civil War battles, part of a related project to film videos of the songs on battlefields in the US. The album released this weekend, "An Army Without Music," includes songs about soldiers, horses and ghosts in several southern states. The band has filmed videos of the songs in the places that inspired them, and has plans to shoot more videos in Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia. Every second of battle in the American Civil War was filled with stories, many of which have gone untold, band member Elizabeth Elkins said. The band's goal is to capture the immense emotional and human imprints the war left not only on soldiers, but their loved ones, she said. "Lanterns at Horseshoe Ridge," for instance, recounts the night when mothers and daughters of soldiers used lanterns to search for their dead or dying loved ones near Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1863.
Many of the songs were inspired years ago, when Elkins and Granville Automatic vocalist Vanessa Olivarez lived in metro Atlanta. Elkins recalls driving down Atlanta's Moreland Avenue, across battlefields now covered by streets and stores, and hoping the stories of the Civil War were not lost to history. "We're paving over a tragedy and we're not remembering it," Elkins said in a recent phone interview. Music, she said, is one way the stories of the war can be told and re-told, even if many of the battlefields in Atlanta, Nashville and other cities are now buried by neighborhoods and business districts. "Their whole principle is about writing music about things that are disappearing," said Robert Harrison of Smyrna, Georgia, whose ancestor Grancer Harrison is the subject of one of the songs on the new album. "The landscape changes, other connections to the past disappear with development," Harrison said. The band's song "Grancer Harrison" is set in southern Alabama, the final resting place for Harrison, one of the "13 ghosts of Alabama." Harrison, who lost several sons in the Civil War, was known for throwing huge parties every full moon.
He asked to be buried with the dancing shoes he wore and the fiddle he played during those parties. "They did so much research on the story, and they were so detailed about it," Robert Harrison said. "They found out a lot of details that even our family didn't know." In 2013, the band filmed a video to go with the song at Grancer Harrison's grave in Coffee County, Alabama. Other battlefields that set scenes for their songs include Perryville in Kentucky, Franklin in Tennessee; Gettysburg in Pennsylvania; Antietam in Maryland, Mansfield in Louisiana; Glorieta Pass in New Mexico; and several sites in Virginia.
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.