Solo Flight of the Sayubee

Sayuki – “Diamond”

Former Juice=Juice utahime Sayuki Takagi has returned from her 14-month exile from the music industry with a new stage name and a new mission. Her stated mission is to provide a company where former idols can continue their careers unburdened by the rigid rules of the Japanese idol industry, rules which ended her membership in the Hello! Project and her association with Up Front Promotion when she ran afoul of them. It’s a daunting mission, almost certainly guaranteed to fail, but one with which I’m rooting for her to succeed.

Her first order of business was to open a YouTube channel under her new stage name, “Sayuki.” Dropping the surname is a bold diva’s move, one that she is vocally equipped to take, so it’s a bit disappointing that Sayuki’s solo debut comes with such an ordinary recording. It’s not a bad song — it’s quite nice, actually, especially the chorus — but it’s very much unobtrusively conventional. The only thing special about “Diamond” is Sayuki’s emotional performance, which is terrific and elevates it about as much as it can be elevated. Other than that, it’s a competent off-the-rack mid-tempo ballad that is musically diatonic, with no real surprises or interesting development. The arrangement seems to have been crafted with the expressed intent not to get in the way of the boss’s vocals, which might seem reasonable, but in reality only serves to make the final product less memorable.

And that leads to a larger question: I wonder if former H!P idols who leave the Up Front nest for their solo careers understand just how good the music UF provides is, or that their remaining fan bases exist in large part because of that music? Obviously, Sayuki had no choice to stay with UF, but she does have the final say in the music she records now. “Diamond” is the sort of track that an established pop artist can get away with, but Sayuki is only established within the H!P bubble, and the audience inside that bubble is accustomed to a bit more sophisticated songwriting. It’s a tricky game trying to please a small but loyal fan base while at the same time appealing to a wider audience, and “Diamond” probably reaches a bit too hard for the later at the expense of the former, and ultimately moves neither.

I’m ecstatic to have Sayuki back in the game, but I wish she’d have released something that was a touch more “H!P” sounding for her debut, if only to comfort her current fans and excite them for the future, because based on what I’ve seen online, I’m not the only haro-wota who is underwhelmed with “Diamond.”