Worst Clichés in Eurobeat
Posted: 07 May 2018, 18:51
What common tropes bother you the most in eurobeat, in spite of your love for the genre regardless? These would be mine...
1. Fire/Desire rhymes: In 1989, F.C.F. released “Bad Desire”. This song was a huge smash at the time, a major part of that being its climactic sing-a-long chorus. Mauro Farina managed to make the words ‘fire’ and ‘desire’ pack a ton of punch, the perfect descriptions of raw lust to compliment a genre with hyperkinetic production and a specific appeal to club audiences.
Naturally, several eurobeat writers came along trying to recapture the ingenious magic of “Bad Desire”, perhaps adding their own spin to the salaciously exclamatory chorus. The thing is, though, these copycat compositions just kept coming, and coming, and coming, AND COMING. By the time eurobeat reached its apex about 10 years later, “Bad Desire” had become easily the most influential song to the entire eurobeat genre - more than “Give Me Up”, more than “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)”, more than “Space Boy”, more than “Night of Fire”, more than “Dark in the Night”, more than “Fantasy”, more than “King & Queen”. It literally seemed that every other eurobeat song being released featured some sort of fire/desire rhyme, with the only expanded variations being ‘higher’, ‘liar’, and ‘power’, despite the fact that several words more rhyme with ‘fire’ and ‘desire’. The F.C.F. classic had cast such a shadow over the industry that even its punctuated, ascendig vocal riff would be ripped off countless times and not just the rhyme scheme. David Dima and later-era Time writers have tended to milk this cliché the most, but pretty much everybody in the eurobeat world has been guilty of it at some point since “Bad Desire” came out.
Fire/desire rhymes, in my opinion, are the ultimate sin of eurobeat’s craft. They are so common that to my ears, they almost always come across as cheap corner-cutting from lyricists too inspired or rushed to put more love and care into what their performers are singing about. I actually get kind of pissed whenever I stumble across this heinously overused rhyme sequence, and in numerous cases, it ruins a entire song or at least holds it back from true greatness. Many people will tell you that eurobeat is one of the samiest music genres they’ve ever heard, and I would definitely have to blame this cliché the most for that reputation. What started off as a great idea in one particular song’s context is now the biggest obstacle for me to take eurobeat music seriously.
2. Japanese-targeted themes: This is technically not the fault of the writers themselves, but to this day, I cannot stand how ardently the eurobeat genre is marketed to the Japanese and the Japanese only. Considering the music is primarily sung in English by Italians and has its roots in more universally popular dance music from the 1980s, I find it tragic how narrow the genre’s demographic is, and the incessantly Japanese lyrical themes has only perpetuated this close-mindedness throughout the music’s run.
As an American with a natural love for upbeat dance music, I was drawn to eurobeat music purely for its sonic aesthetics and ability to tap into my emotions in ways that most 2000s pop music in the US simply couldn’t. When every other eurobeat song I listen to makes reference to Tokyo or some sort of Japanese popular culture, I can’t help but feel the marketing crew behind eurobeat turning a cold shoulder to the average, unbiased listener while heavy-handedly feeding the Japanese market alone. It would be one thing if Tokyo was just a common fad in eurobeat the way cars and sex are, but Avex’s atrocious, strictly domestic PR over the genre that they virtually monopolized causes the pain of this cliché to feel all the more real to me. I always dearly wished that eurobeat was a more globally accepted form of music – it has ‘euro’ in its title, after all – but it seems that the writers and promoters of the genre just started to exploit its popularity in Japan and then completely went from there.
Even more objectively, a lot of the Japanese references in eurobeat can be totally cringeworthy. Since eurobeat is made in Italy, the outsider perspective can get sorely obvious in far too many cases. I don’t mind Domino’s tendency to sing in Japanese because she embraces it to the point where it’s just a natural part of her musical identity, but in an otherwise excellent song like “Music Over” by Elvis, for example, I can’t help but scoff when Nando proclaims himself a “Tokyo man”. He’s not Japanese, he’s Italian, through and through, and absolutely nothing else is done to thematically justify such a specific description. Why was that line included? Because eurobeat’s audience is primarily Japanese, that’s it. It’s pure, distracting marketing, not a line meant for anybody fluent in English to identify with on a general level.
3. Fading out during the sabi: I’ve already complained about this one a fair amount in the Eurobeat Kudos thread, but a eurobeat synth hook is the worst possible place to fade a song out. I don’t want to hear a bunch of loud, hyperkinetic synthesizers being gradually phased out into silence without a clean conclusion. It sounds awful and incomplete, like a premature ending. Some labels did it far more than others, but unless the song was aishu and had a gentle, sparse synth hook, this cliché would always irritate me.
4. Anonymous vocalists: In far too many cases, we have no idea who in the world is performing our classic eurobeat songs. In some cases, they’ll be deceptively marketed using models, Milli Vanilli style, but in most instances, we jusf never have the privilege of getting to know our favourite voices, even on the most basic level. It’s now 2018, and yet we still don’t know the full names of the classic vocalists for Judy Crystal or Bazooka Girl, for example.
In my opinion, the frequent anonymity of eurobeat vocalists suggests that the performers are likely ashamed to even be associated with the genre, perhaps only recording it in order to find work as professional singers. Do they not even include their experience on their resumé? This is absolutely tragic, especially considering eurobeat is not a huge enough genre that its known performers are even particularly famous, so there’s not exactly much of a risk to being known, except apparently for being associated with a music too humiliating to take ownership of. I do respect artist’s rights to privacy, but the eurobeat industry feels like something people see as degrading, like being known as a eurobeat star will ruin their reputation everywhere else. Not to say anonymous vocalists aren’t a thing in other dance genres, but this trope is by far the most rampant with eurobeat.
Personally, I wish more eurobeat singers would embrace their stage names, reprsenting either a concrete alter ego like Bamboo Bimbo is for Christian Codenotti or just a separate side to their personality like Ennio Zanini used to do with Fastway versus Dusty. It can be fun solving the mystery behind eurobeat vocalists, but regardless, music is so much easier to personally adore if the performers and producers are proud and confident enough in their creations that a concrete identity, imaginative or not, is an integral part of the package.
1. Fire/Desire rhymes: In 1989, F.C.F. released “Bad Desire”. This song was a huge smash at the time, a major part of that being its climactic sing-a-long chorus. Mauro Farina managed to make the words ‘fire’ and ‘desire’ pack a ton of punch, the perfect descriptions of raw lust to compliment a genre with hyperkinetic production and a specific appeal to club audiences.
Naturally, several eurobeat writers came along trying to recapture the ingenious magic of “Bad Desire”, perhaps adding their own spin to the salaciously exclamatory chorus. The thing is, though, these copycat compositions just kept coming, and coming, and coming, AND COMING. By the time eurobeat reached its apex about 10 years later, “Bad Desire” had become easily the most influential song to the entire eurobeat genre - more than “Give Me Up”, more than “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)”, more than “Space Boy”, more than “Night of Fire”, more than “Dark in the Night”, more than “Fantasy”, more than “King & Queen”. It literally seemed that every other eurobeat song being released featured some sort of fire/desire rhyme, with the only expanded variations being ‘higher’, ‘liar’, and ‘power’, despite the fact that several words more rhyme with ‘fire’ and ‘desire’. The F.C.F. classic had cast such a shadow over the industry that even its punctuated, ascendig vocal riff would be ripped off countless times and not just the rhyme scheme. David Dima and later-era Time writers have tended to milk this cliché the most, but pretty much everybody in the eurobeat world has been guilty of it at some point since “Bad Desire” came out.
Fire/desire rhymes, in my opinion, are the ultimate sin of eurobeat’s craft. They are so common that to my ears, they almost always come across as cheap corner-cutting from lyricists too inspired or rushed to put more love and care into what their performers are singing about. I actually get kind of pissed whenever I stumble across this heinously overused rhyme sequence, and in numerous cases, it ruins a entire song or at least holds it back from true greatness. Many people will tell you that eurobeat is one of the samiest music genres they’ve ever heard, and I would definitely have to blame this cliché the most for that reputation. What started off as a great idea in one particular song’s context is now the biggest obstacle for me to take eurobeat music seriously.
2. Japanese-targeted themes: This is technically not the fault of the writers themselves, but to this day, I cannot stand how ardently the eurobeat genre is marketed to the Japanese and the Japanese only. Considering the music is primarily sung in English by Italians and has its roots in more universally popular dance music from the 1980s, I find it tragic how narrow the genre’s demographic is, and the incessantly Japanese lyrical themes has only perpetuated this close-mindedness throughout the music’s run.
As an American with a natural love for upbeat dance music, I was drawn to eurobeat music purely for its sonic aesthetics and ability to tap into my emotions in ways that most 2000s pop music in the US simply couldn’t. When every other eurobeat song I listen to makes reference to Tokyo or some sort of Japanese popular culture, I can’t help but feel the marketing crew behind eurobeat turning a cold shoulder to the average, unbiased listener while heavy-handedly feeding the Japanese market alone. It would be one thing if Tokyo was just a common fad in eurobeat the way cars and sex are, but Avex’s atrocious, strictly domestic PR over the genre that they virtually monopolized causes the pain of this cliché to feel all the more real to me. I always dearly wished that eurobeat was a more globally accepted form of music – it has ‘euro’ in its title, after all – but it seems that the writers and promoters of the genre just started to exploit its popularity in Japan and then completely went from there.
Even more objectively, a lot of the Japanese references in eurobeat can be totally cringeworthy. Since eurobeat is made in Italy, the outsider perspective can get sorely obvious in far too many cases. I don’t mind Domino’s tendency to sing in Japanese because she embraces it to the point where it’s just a natural part of her musical identity, but in an otherwise excellent song like “Music Over” by Elvis, for example, I can’t help but scoff when Nando proclaims himself a “Tokyo man”. He’s not Japanese, he’s Italian, through and through, and absolutely nothing else is done to thematically justify such a specific description. Why was that line included? Because eurobeat’s audience is primarily Japanese, that’s it. It’s pure, distracting marketing, not a line meant for anybody fluent in English to identify with on a general level.
3. Fading out during the sabi: I’ve already complained about this one a fair amount in the Eurobeat Kudos thread, but a eurobeat synth hook is the worst possible place to fade a song out. I don’t want to hear a bunch of loud, hyperkinetic synthesizers being gradually phased out into silence without a clean conclusion. It sounds awful and incomplete, like a premature ending. Some labels did it far more than others, but unless the song was aishu and had a gentle, sparse synth hook, this cliché would always irritate me.
4. Anonymous vocalists: In far too many cases, we have no idea who in the world is performing our classic eurobeat songs. In some cases, they’ll be deceptively marketed using models, Milli Vanilli style, but in most instances, we jusf never have the privilege of getting to know our favourite voices, even on the most basic level. It’s now 2018, and yet we still don’t know the full names of the classic vocalists for Judy Crystal or Bazooka Girl, for example.
In my opinion, the frequent anonymity of eurobeat vocalists suggests that the performers are likely ashamed to even be associated with the genre, perhaps only recording it in order to find work as professional singers. Do they not even include their experience on their resumé? This is absolutely tragic, especially considering eurobeat is not a huge enough genre that its known performers are even particularly famous, so there’s not exactly much of a risk to being known, except apparently for being associated with a music too humiliating to take ownership of. I do respect artist’s rights to privacy, but the eurobeat industry feels like something people see as degrading, like being known as a eurobeat star will ruin their reputation everywhere else. Not to say anonymous vocalists aren’t a thing in other dance genres, but this trope is by far the most rampant with eurobeat.
Personally, I wish more eurobeat singers would embrace their stage names, reprsenting either a concrete alter ego like Bamboo Bimbo is for Christian Codenotti or just a separate side to their personality like Ennio Zanini used to do with Fastway versus Dusty. It can be fun solving the mystery behind eurobeat vocalists, but regardless, music is so much easier to personally adore if the performers and producers are proud and confident enough in their creations that a concrete identity, imaginative or not, is an integral part of the package.
