Lost and Found

Youplus – “In your Dreams”

A lot has happened in the Hello! Project since I last posted: three graduation announcements — including two group leaders! — and several new releases, so obviously the thing that kicked me in the ass hard enough to write about it is a recent song from Youplus. If you don’t know who Youplus is, they’re a YouTube super-group of former idols from H!P (Kana Nakanishi and Haruna Ogata), Nogizaka46 (Hina Kawago) and Fairies (Mahiro Hayashida). I suppose “super-group” is overselling it since none of these girls were front-liners in their former groups, but 46/48 and H!P have dominated the J-idol world for nearly 2 decades now, and Fairies managed to grab a legitimate foothold in the idol arena without the help of either of those juggernauts. So, strong idol bloodlines all around.

As with investing, though, past performance is not indicative of future results, and despite their impressive lineage, there was little interesting or unique in Youplus’s catalog of five singles (one physical, four digital) and one EP. I’d completely written the group off following last year’s snoozer single “Delight,” and had forgotten the group existed until the videos for “In your Dreams” and “Mujaki” landed in my YouTube suggestions.

“Mujaki” is a solo for group leader and former Angerme member Kana Nakanishi, and the song and video are both very much adult-cute. It’s fine and I dig it, but the real breakthrough here is “In your Dreams,” a lazy and dreamy — and a little bit indie — pop track that channels Perfume just enough for Youplus to stand out in the girl-pop crowd without jocking Yasutaka Nakata’s sound. “Lo-fi Perfume” sums up this song and video nicely, though. The juxtaposition of the indie-ish guitar and synth motifs with the modern trap beat is tasty, and it helps that the chord progression and melodies are interesting.

The best part about “In your Dreams,” though, is that it finally offers Youplus a style which sets them up for success, because unlike their previous songs, it’s so forgiving of the group’s generally weaker vocals. (Yes, Nakanishi is decent, but there is no ace in Youplus.) Former Angerme leader Ayaka Wada proved that not having a strong singing voice doesn’t mean not having a voice, and did so by leveraging a style similar to “In your Dreams,” and that style seems to have worked the same magic for Youplus.

Exhibit A: Haruna Ogata. No harowota was harder on Ogata during her tenure in Morning Musume than I was, and even I can’t deny that she absolutely shines on this. This is the first time that Ogata has looked like she belongs in an idol group to me, and not merely as back-bench filler, but as an integral member. She gets the entire first verse to herself, and sets the perfect tone for the rest of the song. Honestly, Ogata is kind of the star of this for me, although that might just be her exceeding my extraordinarily low expectations for her, but she pulls off this bored aloofness a million times better than she ever pulled of genki-as-fuck.

Here’s the conundrum: this sound works so much better for Youplus than the conventional pop/idol songs they’ve done previously that it would be tempting to go all-in with it to the point of driving it into the ground (see Musume, Morning). As the aforementioned Wada has shown, though, there is more than enough room for former idols to stretch out in this modern-indie space, so I hope Youplus embraces it fully. Fair or unfair, adult girl groups are held to a higher standard than younger J-idol groups, who can get away with lesser vocals (and for whom such vocals are often seen as a feature as opposed to a bug.) Youplus’s limited vocals and unremarkable catalog left them lost in the dense fog of conventional girl groups, but the fresh breeze of “In your Dreams” might have cleared the air enough for them to have finally found their voice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeeP2OBOQYY