Why AKB’s Ponytail sales bother me

(edits were made to this post to change my use of “senbatsu” to “voting.” note to self: “senbatsu” is the term used for the group chosen to sing in the single)

Before I start, I need to say one thing: I am not an AKB hater. I’ve liked their music (to a certain degree) over the past 3 (soon to be 4) years. If you take this as me flaming AKB48, you are sadly mistaken (especially because I’m going to assume you just read the title). I also realize this is heavily opinionated. You don’t need to agree with me.

Now. I’m sure many of you J-pop fans out there know that AKB48′s new single, Ponytail to Shushu, came out on the 26th of May and crushed every single artist on the charts in sales, with 3 times the number of sales as Xiah Junsu (of DBSK/TVXQ) on just their first day:

(anything past 4 is omitted because they don’t apply to this post/have daily sales figures)

Sales
Rank	5/25	5/26	5/27	5/28	5/29	5/30	5/31	Total
*1	AKB48 354,403	AKB48 49,477	AKB48 28,671	AKB48 27,112	AKB48 23,418	AKB48 18,560	AKB48 8,311	AKB48 513,453
*2	XIAH junsu 118,510	XIAH junsu 34,352	Lia／多田葵 21,201	Lia／多田葵 11,247	嵐 12,269	Lia／多田葵 12,606	嵐 5,235	XIAH junsu 195,336
*3	Lia／多田葵 15,621	嵐 7,953	XIAH junsu 13,372	XIAH junsu 9,792	XIAH junsu 7,347	嵐 10,916	XIAH junsu 3,673	Lia／多田葵 80,272
Source	source	source	source	source	source	source	source	source

(for those of you wondering, 嵐=Arashi and 多田葵=Tada Mamoru. also, Arashi got 4th with 67,383 copies sold)

My first thoughts were “yay they sold well!” as well as “Wow, they beat Junsu… where’d the Cassies all go?” There wasn’t any jumping off the wall stuff since my bias this week happened to be S/mileage’s debut single, not AKB48′s Ponytail to Shushu single… plus I’d vaguely expected them to sell at least 300,000 copies, especially since it was the voting single.

I knew it’d probably sell around this level, though I didn’t imagine that it’d outsell Sakura no Shiori‘s total sales.

And there lies the problem.

I don’t know about other AKB48/J-pop fans out there, but I personally believe this single just doesn’t deserve the level of sales it got. Arche over at Jiriri Kiteru agrees with me (though you’ve probably all read her opinion on this already).

If this single was River, Sakura no Shiori, or one of their older groundbreaking singles like Keibetsu Shiteita Aijou I’d be like THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER OMG AKB48 YOU’RE CHANGING THE J-POP WORLD RIGHT NOW.

But it’s not a groundbreaking single.

It’s a bland generic idol song with little to no effort put into the song itself (though that might be the fault of whoever mixed the song… PVs are another story).  The single’s strongest song was Nusumareta Kuchibiru, and even that couldn’t beat Tobenai Agehachou in my mind.

Of course, these are all my opinions, which don’t really apply to people other than me.

But let me give you some perspective:

If Morning Musume (the not-so-existent-competition for AKB48) were to sell this well with their new single (and they very most likely won’t) then I would have the same exact problem – even though I love the B-side and moderately like the A-side.

Why, you ask?

Because they’ve done the same exact style of music before, and Seishun Collection feels highly uninspired when compared to the other two songs that resemble it the most:

Shouganai Yume Oibito. Lovely song, decent PV, sold decently.

Nanchatte Renai. Sold even better, but still pretty much current Momusu level. Sounded somewhat like Naichau Kamo.

Then there’s Kimagure Princess and Onna ga Medatte Naze Ikenai. While I didn’t like them, I liked that Momusu was changing their sound. Of course (ugh), sales were worse for these two singles, so they went back to their synth/violin sound, which I don’t mind, but I was really hoping they’d try something different. At least they’re not Emomusume anymore, it’s all I have to say.

Why Love Machine continues to be a Momusu favorite – and their most memorable song for a lot of people (I know a lot of people who were introduced to Momusu through this song – either from one of the remakes or the original itself) – boils down to this one fact: it started a music revolution. Part of the reason it still is Momusu’s “best selling single” (years and years later) in terms of physical copies is because the digital age swept in and turned the music industry on its head.

So what was the point of me saying all that?

This is what I take from AKB48′s sales of Ponytail: that 1, they’re popular in Japan, and 2, Japan likes the bland, generic idol sound of Ponytail. The first point I don’t mind. It’s the second one that bothers me. I’m aware that sales were inflated by the senbatsu election. Perfectly, painfully aware. But that doesn’t mean that people who weren’t interested in voting bought the single. I can’t guess how many were for voting and how many weren’t, but I can imagine that some people bought it without the intention of voting.

I’m hoping that the voting sales just inflated the sales of the song and that this isn’t a mark of the current music trend in Japan. Because Ponytail is really nothing special. It just happened to be the voting single. And with every voting single from now on, I can almost guarantee sales will be inflated. They don’t even have to put out a good song to make it sell an insane amount. That’s the other thing that bothers me. They know it’s going to sell well, so they don’t even try.

Maybe I’m overreacting. I can’t reasonably expect AKB48 to always churn out awesome singles every time they release one. Maybe next time AKB48 will put out a great song for their voting single. And I’m sure they’ll put out other great singles.

But here’s the question: will their groundbreaking singles sell as much as their voting-inflated ones?

I sure hope so…

~ by dreamtiny on June 1, 2010.