YES!
[Video][Website]
[6.00]
Edward Okulicz: AKB48 songs are less a listening experience and more an audio-video assault you either submit to or run away screaming from. “Ue Kara Mariko” sounds like Very-era Pet Shop Boys with power-pop guitars underneath it. It also sounds almost like Christmas. It sounds like a lot of things actually because AKB48’s producers are terrified of subtlety. I know fans of these girls basically have trading cards on them, but damned if I can ever tell one chorus sung by completely different girls from another. The results are too polished for me to care.
[8]
Iain Mew: The numbers for AKB48 are insane. I don’t mean the 150+ members so much as the fact that their last single sold a million copies in one day. While most outside of Japan will never have heard “Ue Kara Mariko”, there’s a decent chance that it will be the best selling single in the world in its week of release. I have a few ideas as to how they’ve managed it. With public votes to decide who will appear in each single, they have used the power of getting people to feel ownership over them in the same way as X Factor in the West. Except that their model is better, as it maintains a consistent musical brand to build from single to single, rather than having to dump a Joe McElderry or a Matt Cardle and start over again each year. Their franchise model and excess of members also allows them to further connect by performing daily small shows in the geeks’ paradise of Akihabara, the region in Tokyo from which they take their name. There isn’t really a satisfactory equivalent outside of Asia to compare it to, I guess because there aren’t subcultures of equivalent force to gather together. There’s no equivalent of Gothic Lolita, the fashion several members wear in the single’s amazing artwork, for instance. Finally, AKB48 further appeal to the Akihabara demographics through music videos full of young, attractive girls dancing in revealing outfits, although this new one with its focus on rock/paper/scissors does so less than most. You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned the music, and that’s because it’s the one part which is the hardest to see as anything but incidental. “Ue Kara Mariko” is marginally less paper-thin than normal, but it’s still nothing which hasn’t been done better by others. It’s gratingly cloying and free of any kind of subtlety, craft or emotional dynamics — just a kind of constant forced grin for four minutes. The music remains the least interesting thing about AKB48.
[3]
Zach Lyon: I’m having trouble finding a working video for “Ue Kara Mariko”, and I don’t have the Beanie Baby catalogue of AKB48’s 48,000 members, so I feel I’m missing the majority of the experience. The song itself struggles to suggest otherwise.
[3]
Brad Shoup: I’m so thrilled we’re checking in on my favorite 59-member group that is probably not also a religious cult! AKB48, the act with more questionable side projects than Wu-Tang Clan, finally released their own “M.E.T.H.O.D. Man”. If you can accept this translation and the feverish work of their English-language fans, it’s about a younger boy gobsmacked by the capricious Mariko. I’m into the intro stating the chorus as a theme (which was my standing J-pop stereotype prior to this year), the Bruce Hornsby-style piano breakdown, and the why-the-hell-not guitar solo. As befitting a group that requires an organizational chart straight out of the Tea Party’s worst nightmares, Yasushi Akimoto bludgeons us with constant maximalism, and I for one concede.
[8]
Jonathan Bradley: From my limited exposure to this massive group, I’m going with the theory that their appeal lies in the way they marry girl group enthusiasm with punk-pop ebullience. This is certainly the case with “Ue Kara Mariko,” which, though not as gloriously appealing as “Heavy Rotation” or as Ramones-gone-Nintendo as “Aitakatta,” feels far closer to, say, Blink-182 than the respective groups’ ages, genders, geography, or staffing arrangements might suggest. The punk comparisons don’t endure forever though; “Mariko” has a terrific chorus ushered in with a sugary synth fanfare that’s (what my untrained ear recognizes as) classically J-pop, and is all the better for it. The numbers count; when fun has this much force behind it, it’s tough to say no.
[8]
Jonathan Bogart: When I was a kid I would sometimes listen to these gospel tapes which were a bunch of kids shouting worship songs together to the backing of some wheezy synthesizer music. I haven’t heard much since that reminded me of them.
[6]