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Sunday, March 19, 2006

B-Pass



After the initial flurry of pre and post-Twinkle Star action from their HQ, things seemed to have come to something of a stop with Halcali. Looking back, what impact did Twinkle Star have? An absurdly catchy pop song with their old, famous production behind the wheels wasn't enough to propel the song into the top twenty even following it's immediate release. Am I being hopelessly naive here? Is there something I'm missing? What on earth would it have taken for people to have gone out and bought this record? It's hard to imagine them working any harder. What do they have to do? More Music Stations? More magazine interviews? More gigs?

Here's yet another Twinkle Star interview, this time from the April issue of B-Pass. I skipped over it at first, it's another bland, by the numbers interview with nothing much to recommend it. Yesterday though I caved in and bought the magazine since there's been nothing else H and Y related to write about recently. Right near the end, the subject of the third album came up. Nothing we haven't heard before, but isn't it always good to hear it again?

So, are you working on the new album?

Yukari: Yes, songs are being written for us now. We've got some great songs lined up for singles. Of course we just want to keep improving and releasing stuff that's better than what we've done before. We're going to keep on writing our own lyrics too.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Twinkle Star not only didn't make it into the top 20, it didn't make it past #104 during its one and only week on the Oricon charts. What a shame.

Well it's good to hear that they are working on the next album.
How many more singles do you think they'll drop before the album?
I'm thinking maybe just one more.

Here's something stupid I though of the other day:
Both of their latest singles start with the letter 'T'. Maybe Their next single will too...maybe all of the songs on their nest album will start with the letter 'T'. Then they can call it something stupidly fun like "Tea Time" or they could even go all Sesame Street on us....

*ahem*

5:14 AM

 
Blogger Jordi said...

Twinkle sold about a tenth of Tip Taps Tip - it didn't even reach 2000 copies. It's greatly depressing but I think there is something to do with the marketing. Avex artists have to be plastered on billboards and played on loop on radio stations. I think there is a certain failure in the marketing. I'm not saying that the girls need the marketing badly but I think it's very easy to forget these girls exist with the way it's going.

Nonetheless a new album sounds nice. Maybe more promotion will be put into this one.

5:40 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

wow i didn't think sales would be that bad, especially since they got onto music station :\

selling less than 2000 copies is about as much as various idol groups in Avex's Girl's Box Union sell. HALCALI aren't "idols" in the purest sense, but perhaps the public views them that way and thus they are lumped into that fan market. marketing away from the idol image would get them more fans and sales i think.

9:03 AM

 
Blogger Jordi said...

The problem is how would they market them? They have no solid fanbase directly. I mean fans have said they like the return of OTF but the less than 2000 sales is basically the boiling down of how many "loyal" fans they have. Marketing is a huge deal in a sense - especially in a society that relies on fast consumerism and falling behind the pack may destroy all your chances of reviving the career.

They can't play on a completely "real" image, they've only recently started writing lyrics for some songs and they're getting old enough to no longer play teens. And if they still do that it'll end up being a whole gimmick. They have no variety show appearances and don't completely cater to an otaku crowd or anything like that. It's funny how these girls probably will relate more to teenage girls but they're too busy aspiring to be Koda Kumi or Ayumi.

However the music station appearance is mainly because of the connection card. Halcali's agency (Tanabe) manages Tamori (the annoying sunglasses dude). Plus Music Station's ratings are always easily beaten by bigger Music shows like Hey Hey Hey, Utaban & Utawara. They get about a tenth of the ratings maybe 13% on good nights.

11:57 AM

 
Blogger jariten said...

I'm stunned by those figures to say the least. I knew it didn't sell well, but...

Good points everyone. I'm putting together another post about it.

7:50 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Aww man... I didn't know that Twinkle Star did THAT bad... That's so sad. I thought that it was so much better than TTT, but I guess that doesn't amount to much. Plus the packaging was nice (I can't stop staring at my copy). You'd think someone walking by in a store would pick it up out of curiousity. It's just so sad...

5:16 AM

 

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