Apartment Covers
I’ve fallen down this thing with a group called Goose house—Japanese musicians who record covers in a Tokyo apartment. The setup is what it sounds like: friends, instruments, a camera, and they go through whatever pop songs they feel like. Perfume, AKB48, Utada Hikaru. Living room recordings, nothing precious about it.
And somehow it became actual. Built an audience, they tour now, which is genuinely funny when you remember it started as people filming in a living room.
The covers work because they’re not trying to nail the originals. Arrangements shift, parts get swapped around, there’s real experimentation happening. You’re watching musicians actually engage with songs they like, not just execute some definitive version. It’s loose enough to feel honest.
I know how niche this is. Japanese pop cover videos from someone’s apartment? I’m probably one of five people in the world actively seeking this out. But there’s something about it I keep coming back to. No self-importance, no pretense. Kei, Migiwa, the whole group—everyone dresses significantly better than I do, which is the extent of any vanity, and they’re clearly just making this because they like it.