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You might have noticed that a page on H&Y has cropped up on Wikipedia. The article has been given the unlucky tag "This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality", even though it seems to cover all the bases pretty well. A track by track look at Bacon, a brief biography, and we even get some fairly cute pieces of observational triviality:
Haruka has now got Red hair, has extended fingernails, and has grown much
more mature in Ongaku no susume from what we had previously seen her in songs
such as Tandemu.Yukari is known for wearing her red / white / black combination cap, which is usually worn to the left or center of her head, which bears the trademark clothing brand PONY, which seem to be the trend for both Haruka and Yukari.
After reading it, it struck me as odd that something like this hadn't been submitted earlier. I think it's a fair assumption to say that Halcali seem to be a hit with the general indie crowd in the west, the hippest j-pop band to say you know, if you like. This is surely unintentional on OTF's part and would probably come as a shock to the team that styled Halcali to appeal mainly to the new batch of high school girls growing up on a diet of MTV force-fed rap and hip hop. I mean, take a glance through the BBS on their homepage if you want an idea of who's listening over here.
UPDATE- H and Y's conquest of the internet continues apace. Here's another wiki page dedicated to Halcali.
UPDATE (2)- The Wikipedia site has been updated, fleshed out, and generally made much better. Gotta love those personal touches too. "[Yuakri is] very good-looking, and now dresses in mostly fashionable Western attire."
posted by jariten at 1:37 AM
4 Comments:
This post really echoes my worries about not just J-pop,but world music as a whole.I have a horrible feeling that Halcali are going to go down the generic R&B route that so many of their contemporaries have followed.And for the record,modern R&B (not to be confused with the 60's and 70's)is the most souless,corporate,bland muzak which has ever been created-when you look at Halcali's Ipod selections you have to wonder what they would choose for a musical direction.
2:10 PM
It’s hard for me to be critical of whatever H and Y might be into right now. This really struck me again after reading their Buzz FM diary but at its core, Halcali are just two kids having fun off the back of a really lucky break. Although I loathe the last Akon single (‘Mr. Lonely’), and have absolutely no time for Nelly, I’m not surprised to read Haruka talking excitedly about them both in the diary. They’re just late teens doing late teen stuff. And as hard as it sometimes is for me to think about this, it’s true that, as long as they have zero input in the songwriting process, what they like or don’t like is probably going to have minimal impact on their songs anyway.
For all their charm, Halcali are a manufactured pop band and, as much, are totally at the mercy of the shadowy powers that be. There’s supposed to be a new single this month, but their second album (unlike Harvard’s, for example) was far from being a total write off. Whatever happens though, Halcali have already taught me more about contemporary pop music then I had any right to expect. As for R&B, I sadly have zero knowledge on it, and that goes for both it's past and contemporary incarnations.
7:30 AM
Hey, i'm the one who re-formatted the HALCALI article. I just spoke to my friend, who is a huge fan, then typed it out in the good ole-wikipedia fashion.
Don't Message or email me, i don't know much of HALCALI other than what my friend, and internet-based research has told me.
Regards,
Jessica Chang
8:56 AM
I noticed you updated the page. Good stuff.
4:44 AM
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