Music - Girl Power: Japan!

All Samuels Public Library cardholders are eligible for three free downloads a week from Freegal, a massive online database containing over 500,000 songs.  Sifting through such an enormous selection of music can be a daunting task, so we here at Samuels have decided to offer a few suggestions for the overwhelmed (or new) Freegal user.  This week we recommend three great songs by female Japanese pop/rock artists:

Takako Minekawa

"Fantastic Cat"

From Roomic Cube

Armed with a moog synthesizer and some nonsensical sing-song lyrics, Takako Minekawa crafts an absurdly fun earworm of a tune about a happy happy fantastic cat. The poppy peppiness and bloops and bleeps would feel right at home in the bright flashing colors of an anime cartoon or an old school Nintendo video game, two other awesome imports from Japan.

The 5.6.7.8’s

“Woo Hoo”

From Bomb the Twist

Garage rock girl group The 5.6.7.8’s were immortalized by Quentin Tarantino when they appeared as the house band at a Japanese go-go club during a climactic fight scene in Kill Bill: Vol. 1. “Woo Hoo,” one of the songs made famous by the movie, is a blistering two minutes of rockabilly riffs and ferocious drum fills, with the only lyrics being the “woo hoo” of the title.

Puffy Amiyumi

“Love So Pure”

From Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi

Huge stars in their native Japan, Puffy Amiyumi may be familiar to American audiences fond of the Cartoon Network—they performed the theme song to Teen Titans, and their own Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi cartoon ran for three seasons. This compilation gathers tracks in both English and Japanese, and the English-language “Love So Pure,” with its Beatle-esque buoyancy and ooh-la-las, is one of the standouts on an album filled with great tunes.