Music video: Perfume - Pick me up

Music video: Perfume - Pick me up | Random J Pop

Perfume's double A-side features one song which is pimping beer and another which is pimping a clothing store. Whenever Perfume's producer Nakata Yasutaka creates songs which are to be used in conjunction with product tie-ins, the lyrics are never subtle. This man gave Kyary Pussy Pamyu a song called "My Room", which was used in adverts for apartment renting. This same man gave Perfume "Glitter", which was used in adverts for beer and featured a lyrics which alluded to grabbing a beverage from a fridge. However, "Glitter" was pop perfection and is a song that's written in my will to be played at my funeral when my open casket is wheeled into the church amidst a laser show, so I'mma let that 'grab a sparky thing from a white box' line slide.


The video for "Pick me up" was directed by Kodama Yuichi, who also directed Perfume's videos for "Secret, Secret", "Natural ni koishite", and "Nee" - all of which were produced as product tie-ins, and you can see elements of all three videos here. The girls are not being restricted to looking like Mystic Force Power Rangers, and there being elements of the real world intermixed with surrealism.

I do not understand Japanese, so I can't speak for what the song is about or what the girls are singing aside from ♪ I WANNA MAKE MY LIFE, BRIGHT MY LIFE! ♪ But "Pick me up" is almost certainly in reference to the clothes calling out to the girls, as per the video, because Nakata is deep and meaningful like that.

Perfume are not what you would call the most fashionable group in Japan. They started out looking like shit, then got a bit fashionable and then began the decent into looking like Mystic Force Power Rangers. If it wasn't for the legs on constant display and Kashiyuka serving with the hair, they would look like utter top-to-bottom shit. So it was cool to see the girls rock practical outfits that were on trend. Their looks at the start and end of the video were particularly noteworthy because they were reflective of their own personal styles and they bucked the Perfume trend of Kashiyuka in a mini-skirt and Nocchi in a pair of shorts. A-chan looks how she always looks boring. But Kashiyuka and Nocchi looked drastically different, showing midriff and serving Olivia Pope / Pimp royalty realness between them. Then there's the girls wearing contact lenses, with Kashiyuka giving me Namie Amuro feels.

As a song, "Pick me up" is pretty much Nocchi and A-chan featuring Kashiyuka. Nocchi and A-chan took all the vocals, meanwhile Kashiyuka was looking for her vocals and solo lines like...

Perfume - Pick me up | Random J Pop

Nocchi was spectacularly black-balled on LEVEL3 and I don't know what she did for Yasutaka to give her so many prominent lines and moments on this song, but YOU GO GURL! It was refreshing to hear her to sing in a higher key after sounding like an auto-tuned kazoo on songs for the past two years.

"Pick me up" is the uptempo club track that Perfume needed to release about now following the disappointing release of "Cling Cling", which only had "Display" to help salvage things somewhat. The track has big Euro hit potential, and is the strongest single Perfume have released since "Spending all my time". I would like to make a call for an album mix though. The structure and the variation from section to section was nice, but it felt as though it was missing something. A strong middle-8 or a strong build / beat drop would have gone down nicely, as the song feels as though it ends prematurely and there are too many sections where the chorus melody plays and it feels overly repetitive.

Just watch how "Pick me up" becomes a club classic somewhere like Turkey, with the girls achieving cult status in a place where they would never ever take their World tour.

Perfume - Pick me up | Random J Pop

Comments

  1. Chris Redfield3 April 2015 at 21:29

    i really really lost faith after cling cling. faith restored.
    i cringed at the vocals, could be lower, but contacts + new clothes saved the day. literally! they are almost 30, they needed to dress smth different than "power ranges" indeed!
    the video could be about one's loss of personality and finding it again or smth deep like that,
    but no... i ll interpret it as i want tho, art is subjective :P
    (btw i ve been waiting for that review 3 days!!! :P:P

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  2. Perfume. Welcome back. This is the only thing you have put out since Hurly Burly that has been worth anybody's time. Not the Single, but the song Hurly Burly. SPENDING ALL MY TIME AIN'T $H#T!

    And yes, J, Nocchi did take over this time finally. She went from the Michelle of the group to the Kelly of the group, because A-Chan refuses to stop holding a betch down from Beyoncé status.

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  3. This is what the song means:

    "Shopaholism you could say is what the parts with Kashiyuka and Nocchi running away with themselves represents. And it doesn't end well for them. Kashiyuka ends up surrounded by the faceless mannequins with no clothes on possible representating all of the mannequins she's stripped naked to buy their clothes and they want them back and you see even then she grips her other self in the clothes still not wanting to let go. And they are faceless because they represent all of the stolen identities Kashiyuka stole and used their credit cards to buy all the clothes. They want their stuff back. Kashiyuka is about to die. They slaughter her in the name of a good credit score.Meanwhile Nocchi runs and runs until she reaches a dead end, I guess she ran out of money and everything else, lost her family, her job, her car, bankruptcy and all she has is her other self in that last outfit she bought and instead of turning back and facing consequences she jumps and commits suicide and gives up everything for that one last outfit. Even her life.As for A-Chan.......I'm guessing she didn't even make it out the store. Looks like she sat right in the store snatching up clothes stealing, holding onto everything not given a fuq who sees and probably got caught and went to jail. She was the most wreckless. She was probably drunk. Hugging mannequins and sh¡t. I

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  4. I can't even deal with Inner...the absolute most. I have my own little deep interpretation about the video, but I'll keep it to myself. lol
    The vocals are indeed particularly high, but nothing i won't get accustomed to. I've never really had a big problem with Perfume's fashion game, as I've always like their complimentary styles and color schemes (I can be basic like that), but what stands them apart from others is their movement. I may be a bit biased, but their movement geometry and choreography subdivision is the stuff of dance gods! I have to watch the video multiple times to catch all the craziness they have going on. If these bitches were in the ballroom scene, they'd be some LEGENDARY kids!

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  5. When I am checking your Koda Kumi's reviews you seem to like one of the most forgettable songs by her... Milk Tea, Everyday, Your love, SUPERSTAR, Tsuki to taiyou etc seriously? most of them are considered by the majority of her fans as fillers. I especially just can not at how Your love is lackluster, not polished enough, with a super cheesy chorus, something-already-done-before (same goes for Everyday) at the same time you are bashing one of her best songs... so "different" taste, seriously. Yume no uta is utterly overproduced. It tries very hard to sound like you, but fails miserably (I dislike the last chorus in particular)
    So her overly cute and nasal voice in Milk Tea is fine with you? the song was her first composition and it can be heard, it is extremely weak, I still do not remember how it sounds like. Black Cherry is a weak album I do agree, but imo it is all thanks to some of those songs you listed. Too many pop/mid-tempo tracks which do not make it sound like a Koda Kumi's album. Also, it definitely sounds different in comparision with affection which is more cohesive and even mature.

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  6. The dancing consists of recycled moves from everything else they've done. It's getting old and if not for immaculate video editing, their dancing would look even more basic.

    Legendary? Ballroom?

    Go watch dancing with the stars because you the most right now lol.

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  7. lmao! chile boo! :) whomp whomp - DWTS wish they could! Though the dancing is nothing revolutionary as it pertains to their regular movement vocabulary, Perfume are nothing if not consistent. They ALWAYS know their lines and placement and hit them EVERY time. Better than some of these other groups out here in these streets with wobbly ankles and multiple performance tapings because they miss steps and phrases. I'd rather see them do this forever than that crazy comeback stuff every 6 months and go from disco to retro to edm to trap music...

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  8. After seeing Girl's Generation's teaser for their upcoming Japanese Single today, I can't even oppose anything you said right here.

    Some of them still look like they practicing dance moves in the legit music video. Can't.

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  9. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genic

    In other FAR more wonderful and important news, Queen Namiserable's 12th studio album is hitting Japanese shorelines this July 10 JUST 2 years after "FEEL"; AND ITS COMPLETELY UNHEARD MATERIAL, 13 new tracks of which 5 will get videos. So that's fantastic for everybody who wasn't digging "Brighter Day" or its coupling tracks; "TSUKI" was the jam but it would probably be redundant to include it here ala' the-than ancient "COLORS" to Hikki's "ULTRA BLUE" since it already made the best-selling BALLADA compilation and probably would be out of place with this 1980's dance/90's R'N'B sound she's aiming to create here (wouldn't that describe every original album with Namie's name since Style with an occassional over-emphasis on electro? Just my opinion!)

    I wonder how well the music videos will do alongside their accompanying songs since they presumably won't get a pre-album release like BEYONCE's self-titled opus. I'm really excited to see what she does here with the tour, music, and other promo more than anything I've seen from her since "Concentration 20" era given the producers and how well though out she has it set up to launch so far! She will certainly snatch and GENIC-ally absorb all wigs and weaves of relevance from any Ayu or Koda music-like product out this year in 1st week sales alone. Namie is making even Madonna look REAL basic with all this upcoming hot s***!!!:D

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  10. I only love last minute, the most songs sound familiar no future is like call

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  11. ha, ha, ha love you

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  12. Its a flop on arrival! #4 debut on Oricon with 10K fewer copies sold than COLORS last year despite more new material and presumably more (back to) basic soundscape? Ayu needs to sit down somewhere...

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