Flashback Friday: Thelma Aoyama - Sekai no Chuushin ~We Are the World~ | Parapara Paradise

Thelma Aoyama's sound, image, everything, is all over the damn place, which is what makes it hard for me to stick with her. There's no real consistency with her. But her attitude to this led to the release of an amazing song and video for her album Highschool Gal. And that was "Sekaino Chuushin ~We Are The World~". Of all the songs that Thelma has put out, this was probabaly the one that threw people the most. It's Eurobeat. It's colourful. It's bright. It's queer as all hell. It's fucking brilliant.

I live for a good Eurobeat song, and would've liked Thelma to have just said 'Fuck it' and given me a whole album of it. But when I think of her album Highschool Gal as a concept, the style of the songs on it and it not being a whole Eurobeat album makes sense. Although I personally found it difficult to get into many of the other songs on the album when it opened with the best and most memorable song of the whole thing.

The cool thing about this music video that may get overlooked because of how ridiculous it is, is that it features gyaru and girls who work in hostess bars. Japan's hierarchal system permeates absolutely everything, and is a lot more transparent and fixed than in other places. And gyaru and women who work in hostess bars aren't well respected, by either men or women. Pretty wild considering men blow huge amounts of money on hostesses, and women in marriages with men that do will blame and judge the hostesses before their own husbands. So putting a spotlight on them in this video was cool, as the way society tends to section them off has parallels to queer folk get treated in Japan. Gyaru, queers and hostesses aren't considered, and are made to sit on the fringes of society, despite their existence, style and contributions being such huge parts of the culture of the country itself. None of this probabaly factored into why Thelma included them in her video. But it doesn't negate the fact the inclusion of gyaru's, hostesses and a gay is cool and will have somebody feel seen. Because after all, we are the world.

But on the surface, Thelma's "Sekaino Chuushin ~We Are the World~" is just a good time, with lots of colours, glitter and dem eurobeats.

I really am gonna need a J-Pop bitch to come through and kick start the return of eurobeat.