[MUSIC] Kahimi Karie, "Good Morning World"

[rfmcdonald]

Some weeks ago, the indispensable pop culture blog Dangerous Minds featured a post on Kahimi Karie, J-Pop chanteuse who was relatively big in the 1990s but never quite managed to cross over.

Influenced by the French yé-yé singers of the 1960s and finding her own Serge Gainsbourg(s) in the persons of then boyfriend Keigo Oyamada (aka the brilliant Cornelius) and quirky Scottish performer Momus, Karie’s whispery, half-spoken Claudine Longet-esque vocals were the perfect gloss on a pop confection that looked backwards and forwards equally.

Her best-known single “Good Morning World” was commissioned for use in a Japanese cosmetics company’s TV commercial. The song’s playful, nearly nonsensical dada lyrics named-checked a Fall song (“How I Wrote ‘Elastic Man’”) and it utilized a particularly effective sample lifted from the Soft Machine’s “Why Am I So Short?” Talk about two insanely cool dog whistles to smuggle into a corporate advertising jingle. Bravo!

There was much to like in the Kahimi Karie package, but for whatever reason, other than the small hipster J-Pop audience, few outside of Japan took notice.

"Good Morning World" happens to be on YouTube.

"GOOD MORNING WORLD(M.V.) / カヒミ・カリィ" (Watch on YouTube)

I like it. I can imagine picking this song, and its album, at a CD shop. It would be an import, but I could see it gaining some traction in the crowd of people fond of the shiny Britpop of the 1990s. I can imagine Jarvis Cocker covering this song, or Elastica giving it a harder sheen, or Karie herself crossing over.

She didn't. It strikes me that Karie's story is that of Japanese pop culture internationally generally, or at least in the West. In the 1990s, it was poised for a crossover that never happened. Or was it? What happened?