SCANDAL! the most powerful Japanese Girl Band...

That's what their website says. Well, I don't know if they are the most powerful Japanese girl band, but I do know that they are a lot of fun to listen to.

If you went to SAKURA.CON in the US, you might have heard them before. They toured here recently. This group out of Osaka, Japan is hot and rising fast!

I admit it. I like Japanese J-POP. And I am always amused by the personas that J-POP bands will take on. SCANDAL is a girl rock/pop band. The four of them appear complete in Japanese school girl outfits -- the kind in male fantasies, rather than the reality. They all do their makeup so that they tend to look like clones of each other too! The male fantasy continues!

But beyond the hype, the music is fun and bouncy and the vocals are good.

Even beyond that, they really are part ROCK! You can definitely hear rock vibes and strong guitar musings threaded among the bouncy, girlish J-POP tunes.

That might actually qualify them for the most 'powerful Japanese girl band'...these J-POP fantasy dolls really can hit a rock beat and make it stick.

So give them a look and a listen...you might find yourself getting addicted to J-POP.

Their Myspace music site is at:
www.myspace.com/scandal4

Have fun!
CG Anderson

JPOP singer RayRi (RayLi) aka 玲里

Sorry it's been so long a wait but time for a music review. Between work, studying and new music players (MySpace) that didn't work well as well as buggy MySpace itself, it took a while!! I almost gave up on doing MySpace music reviews...I mean MySpace has gotten really really buggy and the new music player is even slower than the last one!

Time for a little JPOP again. Nothing outrageous. Just a great voice and some standard POP tunes. RayLi out of Japan fits the bill. Lovely to look at, in an almost androgynous way, and with a great voice, great range of voice and wonderful emotional delivery.

The only thing that really bothered me was the choice of tunes. RayLi has a great voice and knows how to deliver a compelling song. But, the tunes themselves were rather ordinary. Nothing really grabbed me.

I want the songs and melodies to match the power of this singer and this great clear voice with its clear, bright vocal range. I hope RayLi is put together with a really good songwriter and a great producer.

If that happens, I think another great JPOP star will be born. Not that 200,000+ listeners are wrong. I just think that that number could go way way way way way up!

Judge for yourself, RayRi (RayLi/ 玲里) is at:

http://www.myspace.com/rayri

Cheers!
CG