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Haven’t heard of Perfume, the all-girl J-Pop band that’s sold more albums (at least in their homeland) than McDonald’s has made hamburgers? (Okay, an exaggeration, but they’re big.) Like other J-Pop groups, Perfume’s been used as the soundtrack for anime like Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier, as well as been the subject of countless anime/manga interpretations.
But there’s a couple reasons this trio is markedly different from their competitors.
For one, they are widely regarded as the most successful all-girl band ever to come out of Japan (behind fellow countrygirls Speed), and their influence has reached far beyond their imitators and contemporaries — Marty Friedman of the metal band Megadeth claims the band to have had more of an influence on Japanese music more than any band in the last 4 years, even covering their hit single ‘Polyrhythm.’ The list goes on.
Their new hit single, “Spending All My Time” is the girls’ first, and one of the country’s few, J-Pop songs to be sung completely in English (a couple others, like Alice Nine and Blue Planet, have tried it before, albeit with somewhat limited success).
Additionally, according to Crunchyroll, Perfume has dropped go-to J-Pop producer Yasutaka Nakata and his auto-tuning tendencies, and have recently been signed to Universal music group in a move to market the group to a more international crowd.
Taking chances seems to have helped, as one of their 2011 singles earned them a spot on the Cars 2 soundtrack. Some consider them right up there with virtual pop sensation Hatsune Miku and the aforementioned Speed as the Lady Gaga(s) of the J-Pop world, and some of the most honest of pop music critics feel obliged to admit they’re pretty good.
Their video for “Spending All My Time”, having just been released, may help you decide. We’ve placed it alongside chief competitors’ Speed’s “S.P.D.” for a comparison. Obviously, Speed’s sound is much more westernized, and for lack of a better term, ‘Britney’-sounding – but Perfume tends towards a more technopop vibe. Visually, though, the videos are pretty different.
Perhaps Perfume will have the breakout success among mainly English-speaking audiences and international crowds their label’s hoping for, maybe not. This should prove an interesting experiment nonetheless. And just because we’re slightly biased, check out their animated commercial for Hewlitt-Packard below.
SPEED- “A.P.V.”
PERFUME- “Spending All My Time”
PERFUME- “Desktop Disco”
Jeff Nau – who has written 1264 posts on The Jace Hall Show.
Jeff Nau is a main contributor to the Jace Hall Show covering pop culture and music trends in the nerd community. He has contributed to San Diego City Beat, 944, and Ill Literature, amongst others, and spends his spare time working as an artist and photographer.

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