Sure, everyone is always celebrating the seventies, eighties or nineties for their respective style, fashion and music output. But my great love is probably for the magical period around the millennium. When people were on the brink of the digital revolution with their first flip phones, had no idea what Facebook, Twitter and Instagram were, and were both anxious and curious about the future after the big 2000. In Japan in the mid-nineties, the style of music now kno…

The self-titled debut album of the Japanese band Millennium Parade is on repeat since release on my phone. After all, there are only absolute bangers on there. Bon Dance? Great! Fly With Me? Stunning! Familia? Fabulous! Just the genre is difficult to explain, because Millennium Parade simply throw everything available, such as pop, hip hop, electro, dance, rock, funk, jazz and rap, into a pot, stir vigorously and then slap the motley mash against the wall. „The…

Founded in 2005 by Yasushi Akimoto, the Japanese band AKB48 is one of the most successful artists of the present day. With songs like Beginner, River, and Heavy Rotation, the members led by Atsuko Maeda sang, danced, and jumped their way into the hearts of East Asian residents overnight and triggered puberty in many a teenager with a revealing music video or two. Andrew Joyce and Kenneth Maxwell of the Wall Street Journal once described AKB48's works as „sugary…