Silent Reading List #9

WDT (2021-09-08) - Music Theory Special

Nothing to do with anything, except that it's one of my favorite episodes. This is a compilation of a bunch of musical theories, apparently inspired by a thing TBS does.

The first theory is It's possible to create feel-good lyrics just by using the names of comedians. Names of groups like "Panther"  "Gorgeous" "High Heels" and of course "Downtown" are all sung together to make some kind narrative, and then it's all sung and illustrated (with images of the groups popping up). It's silly and it's good fun and it's amazing how many of the groups you can recognize just from watching the stuff in the Library.

Next, there's a very popular Utada Hikaru song called First Love, and one of the lines 「誰を思ってるんだろう」 (that's da-ro-u at the end) is actually sung in the song as 「誰を思ってるんだはー」 (da-ha- at the end instead). This means that everyone singing karaoke will ape the original singer, and use what appears to be a semi-nonsense line.

And then holy shit it's my favorite song. 俺ら東京さ行ぐだ (Ora Tokyo sa Iguda), or "I'm goin' to Tokyo" is a 1984 song by Yoshi Ikuzo, sung in a Tsugaru dialect about how his little town has no radios or tv or pianos, bars, magazines, electricity, whatever, and he's gonna leave ita nd go to Tokyo. The theory is that the lyrics of this song are exactly the same as an actual existing village, so they find a few different small towns and re-do the song for each one, depending on which things they have and which they don't. Super entertaining with a great surprise ending.

Then it's the theory that Yaguchi Mari (of Morning Musume) won't be able to sing her "sexy beam" line during karaoke if she's just been scolded.

Another favorite of mine comes up then, which is no one will notice different lyrics to a famous song played as BGM, which is tested by calling various personalities into a restaurant and playing versions of popualr songs with tweaked lyrics over the speakers (Chris-chan is involved and I'm so here for that).

Then it's the your singing sucks if you don't have teeth theory, where people with very low numbers of teeth are brought in and compete for a high karaoke score (the score is modified by the number of teeth you have remaining).

The final theory is no one can understand the chorus of SADS' "Forgetting the Air" the first time they hear it". I mean I can't understand it since it's Japanese, but the panel sure struggle, which is fun to see.

A great episode, possibly the only musical theory that I wish it had is the one where they get the guy to re-record Road just singing the first line over and over. Happy watching ヽ(´ー｀)ノ

WDT (2021-09-08) - Music Theory Special