Earphones Official is a Japanese Idol Group formed in 2015, featuring talents Marika Kouno, Rie Takahashi,and Yuki Nagaku. For the vigilant few who are particularly well versed in a variety of anime, you might recognize these names, as all three talents had done substantial voice work from Animes of both great and lesser stature, which I will talk about later on.
Let’s set this clear for the record - I am in no way particularly interested in JP Idol-Esque music. Obviously, this isn’t to undermine the choreography, composition work and love that is placed behind the production of each track. But repetition is the bane of many artists including me, however. Taking a greater look into the group’s music and you might find yourself in a weird place.
The group’s music isn’t always just happy youthful idol dreams all the time, which is the common assumption you can immediately give to conventional idol music that you can hear all the time. Earphone Official had often tried to innovate their music by creating interesting premises for their music in the first place. From singing about how to live, to singing with the melodies of famous orchestra pieces from various musicians, amongst the library of music, the group is evidently always looking to create music that can really say something about themselves, and that is something that I felt is really admirable.
Sure, it’s just cute Japanese girls with costumes singing on top of stage or studio in a really lively tone, but perhaps, it’s well worth taking the time to appreciate the music they bring to the world, and open your horizons just a little bit more.
Well, I’m sure of now if you watched anime you would know of Takahashi Rie, but what I didn’t expect is that she is in a band, so yeah, imagine the shock I got when I was playing Helter Skelter and suddenly hear a familiar voice singing the OP and voicing one of the characters. Anyways, with the uploads on their channel, there's stuff that hits and stuff that kinda flops, welp, listener’s opinion as I’ll call it. Anyways, to removeイヤホンズ「はじめまして」from my memories for the sake of my sanity, I really don’t want to remember how bad HongKong and Malaysia Tv Shows are, and that music video is constantly reminding me of design and directing styles seen in those shows, It’s really horrible and I wish to unsee everything. That aside, let’s talk about fun stuff, for a band that is formed by three seiyuus, it is expected that they have exceptional vocals, and that they did deliver wonderfully so if you were to ask me.
One fun thing about Earphone is that not one of their songs sound anything remotely similar to one another, from one moment you would be listening to a run of the mill anime song such as “Arakajime ushinawareta bokura no ballad”, next thing you know, your listening to classical stuff but with a Japanese take, “Yorokobi no Uta” (although this is just a cover), then boom, all the sudden your listening to experimental stuff “Kioku”, some might instantly disregard the channel because it is a group consisting of only seiyuus, but damn, does some of the stuff they release hits the mark, almost all of their song releases are a hit besides the one mentioned in the paragraph above, and I bloody love it.
Before I end this charade, let’s talk about“Yorokobi no Uta”, a bloody J-pop-ish song using parts of classical music, Chopin, Beethoven, Pachebel, Rossini, Bach, Bizet and Petzold’s composition are all included in the music. Godbless Kat-Kun for making this god-tier mashup with lyrics that fits every note. Just feeling putting this here so the origin of Yorokobi no Uta will be clear out as well. ( There’s a kamen rider ver of Yorokobi no Uta as well, give it a listen, Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger for you purists )
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