Random J(unk) Mail: 31.12.24 | Re: 16 Sleighs

To the winter sunset on O Holy Night

Random J(unk) Mail is a weekly roundup of whatever the fuck. A collection of things that I was too lazy to make individual posts on. Or just small things that I didn’t think warranted a post, but I still wanted to share thoughts on. I’m gonna try to do this weekly. But those of you who have been here for a minute know my ass is lazy.

The final Random J(unk) Mail for the year y’all. I say this as though I have been consistently posting weekly these throughout the year. I am trash, I know. But here we are. And at the end of 2024. This year has somehow managed to simultaneously feel long as hell and also like it’s flown by. Time is crazy. Then again, the past 4 years have been pretty crazy. So who the hell knows what 2025 is going to have in store?! Take my hand chile. We can face it together. But before then, lemme talk about some stuff real quick.

The Blue Ivy Bowl

So, a Blue Ivy concert featuring Beyoncé took place in the middle of a couple of NFL commercials on Christmas Day, which was livestreamed on Netflix. Surprisingly, the whole service didn’t buckle until the sheer volume of Beyhive members who had no interest in football having that shit play on their televisions in the name of their saviour Beysus Christ Carter.

Rodeoncé performed a bunch of songs from Cowboy Carter for the very first time, in a show which was nothing short of a spectacle. The amount of dancers and band members involved, and that each of them was styled. The sheer number of cowboy hats and blonde bobs. The logistics involved with the different setups. The use of the entire field. The camerawork. The showmanship from everybody involved. Cowboyoncé continues to let people know that not everybody can do what she does how she does it. It was such a good show. I’ve watched it multiple times. It might actually be one of my favourite Yeehoncé performances because of how tight and how fun it was. It even made certain songs on Cowboy Carter that I didn’t like make me go ‘WAIT A GOSH DARN MINUTE’. “Riiverdance” and “Sweet ★ Honey ★ Buckiin”” hit live in a way they absolutely did not on the album. And this is the thing about Ponyoncé. She will give you a live performance of a song that you didn’t even like which will turn you around on that shit. But she will also perform songs and make changes to the arrangement which will make the album versions feel obsolete. I can’t listen to neither the album version or the Pony Up remix of “Texas Hold ‘Em” now, because they just don’t sound as hot to me without the horns, the extra fiddles and the Drunk in Texas climax.

Immediately after the Blue Ivy Bowl, Sheriffyoncé posted a teaser video, which featured her on a white horse and waving an American flag, as she does on the Cowboy Carter album cover, with the date 14th January 2025.

The two main theories are that it’s either an Act III announcement or a tour. I’m leaning towards a tour. My bank account would like it to be an Act III announcement. But it’s more than likely a Cowboy Carter World Tour announcement. Act III announcement enthusiasts are speculating that the font of the date is different to that of the fonts used for Cowboy Carter, so it must be an Act III announcement. But my rebuttal is that the font used looks very similar to the one used for the promotional visual of the ‘Beyoncé Bowl’, which means we’re still in act II and there’s gonna be a Cowboy Carter World Tour. But nobody other than Saloonyoncé and the Parkwood posse knows for sure. So we’ll see what happens come January.

If it is a tour announcement, Gallopyoncé can respectfully go to hell. I do not want to kick off 2025 broke and fighting with Ticketmaster.

Madonna’s contribution to overtourism in Japan

Madonna recently posted the still popular Instagram dump, which consisted of a bunch of photos of her in Tokyo. Yep. Another white person and a large party in Japan, much to the delight of the locals. Overtourism in Japan is real. It’s so bad, that if Japan closed them borders how they did in 2020–2022, I wouldn’t blame them one bit. Even me, as a tourist in Japan was over how many tourists there were, so I know the locals are TIRED of us.

Madonna swung by teamLab, which amazingly has become a fixture in Japan trip itineraries in a relatively short space of time, and Instagram has a lot to do with it. teamLab features rooms which are so Instagrammable, that every single person with an Instagram account that goes will absolutely post a photo of themselves there. The popularity of teamLab is so widespread, that many celebs swing by there too. Beyoncé even stopped by earlier in the year. That’s when you know it’s serious, because she’s like Miss Havisham, she stays in the house.

I wonder how much it costs to book out the whole of a teamLab.

I myself even felt compelled to visit teamLab during my last visit to Tokyo — my first trip since they opened. And it was cool. But it didn’t wow me, and I think a big part of why is because I’m genuinely interested in exhibits which deal with lights, projections and images. So whenever there are any such exhibits in my city that I can go to, I’ve always gone to them. Also, I’m a fan of Perfume who also do amazing things with lights and projections, and I have been fortunate enough to see them perform live three times — each time they had done stuff with lights and projections. So I’m kinda used to it. I don’t say this to diminish the effort of the teamLab artists in any way. I think they’re creative as fuck and the exhibits are really cool. It just didn’t wow me, because I’m familiar with art form and the medium. But teamLab Borderless pissed me off because there is no map and the whole place is dark and full of corridors, so it’s easy to get disoriented and miss the shit that you wanna see. And because you aren’t moved through a set path as you are at teamLab planet, it means that as the entire place gets busier and busier, people start to congregate in areas, making the entire space harder to navigate. So the fun and wonder gets sucked out of the whole experience — or at least it did for me. But The Infinite Crystal Universe is amazing. This is more than likely the teamLab thing you’ve seen everywhere online along with the Floating Flower Garden. The Infinite Crystal Universe was one of my favourite rooms, because it’s so mesmerising. You really do feel like you’re in this whole other world and lose a sense of time. It wound up being the room I liked the most at teamLab Planets, so I was glad to see that it was also at teamLab Borderless too, except you got to keep your shoes on. If you’re planning to go to Japan, annoy the locals with your presence and you only have the chance to go to one of the teamLab’s, I’d say go to teamLab Planets. I’m also biased, because I really like Odaiba, the area it’s in. You access it via a rail and it has a giant Unicorn Gundam. What’s not to like!? Also, if you happen to be a Ayumi Hamasaki fan, teamLab Planets is where she shot the video for “Mask”.

I guess I’m part of the problem. In Tokyo, contributing to the overtourism. At teamLab, along with the countless other people who visited off the back of an Instagram photo. The only Japanese people I saw at teamLab were the people who worked there. It was White City.

Anna Sa-Y THO?

So, I recently got done watching season 2 of Pachinko. I didn’t like it. But former Faky member Anna Sawai is in it (she’s a returning character from season 1) and she has such a small role. And I bet the writers and Apple TV+ were like ‘FUCK’ after she won that Emmy, because it was too late for them to beef up her role and use her Emmy win to promote the show. Then again, this is Apple TV+. They do a horrid job of promoting the service. They’re almost as terrible as Netflix. I don’t know what it is with everybody but Paramount and Disney refusing to market their streaming services. Especially when they have better original shows than the both of them. Netflix and Apple TV+ both have so many gems that you would only know about if somebody told you or if you really went digging through each service and took risks on watching something random.

HENNYWAY.

Aside from my thoughts of ‘Wow. I bet they regret not giving Sawai more to do.’ I also thought about future roles Sawai might take, and if she may end up typecast because of her roles in Shogun and Pachinko. In both shows she plays a very demure Japanese woman, whose relationship with a guy ends up causing issues. And in both shows she is punished and ends up losing everything. With Sawai being Japanese, there is already a greater risk of her being typecast into the same types of roles the way Hiroyuki Sanada has been for DECADES. And I bet his Emmy win for Shogun will keep him locked into those types of roles, because even in that show he wasn’t playing a wholly different type of character. So I hope Sawai’s agent does the work to get her roles in things where she plays different types of characters. An Emmy win is undoubtedly going to have her funneled to more dramatic roles, but it’d be a shame for her to get locked into them. Put her ass in a musical.

Kylie Minogue is going on a world tour

Kylie unfortunately wasn’t able to tour her 2020 album Disco, because Miss Corona was having her own world tour that year. But with an album which dropped in September 2023, the lead single “Padam Padam” being such a viral hit that it made Kylie break America and people being able to attend gigs in droves like COVID is a thing of the past (it’s lingering y’all) — Kylie is going on a world tour. This will mark her first world tour in quite some time. I think the last tour Kylie did which included multiple dates in North America was her For You, For Me Tour, which was basically an American leg of her KylieX2008 Tour. So it’s huge news for her fans over in the States. And also her fans in East Asia, as the Tension tour will be hitting Thailand, Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan. AND her fans in South America, as her tour will be hitting Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay and Brazil too.

Whilst this tour is dubbed the Tension tour, it’s probably going to be more of a greatest hits tour. So I’m expecting the show to be a 3 hour walk through of her discography — which is no bad thing. It’d be smart. “Padam Padam” is the song which was a viral success and garnered interest in Kylie globally, not Tension as an album. So I wouldn’t just anchor Tension. Use the opportunity to push the older stuff, which is all better anyway. And Tension II is trash, so hopefully she won’t clog up the setlist with songs from it. “Lights Camera Action”, “Good as Gone” and “Diamonds” should be it for the Tension II cuts. Don’t nobody wanna hear the rest of that album over songs from the other albums.

Perfume have kicked off their Nebula Romance: Episode 1 Tour

⚠️ There are tour spoilers here. So if you’d rather not know anything about this tour, then now is your chance to zip past. ⚠️

Perfume kicked off their Nebula Romance: Episode 1 tour on the 28th of December. Aaaaaaand, so the setlist is out there. I had reservations about the setlist prior, because Perfume has a track record of terrible setlists for their album tours. And whilst I can’t say Nebula Romance: Episode 1’s setlist is terrible, it does do something which I’m not keen on.

So, the show is split into two parts. The first part of the show is Perfume performing the entirety of Nebula Romance: Part 1 from top to bottom. And the second part is basically like a mini Code of Perfume, where Perfume perform five or so songs from across their discography. But, the cool thing about this section of the show is that the show will change each show. This is a really cool, but huge undertaking for Perfume and their team. The lighting will always have to change. Perfume will have to remember and retain more routines. Everybody is being kept on their toes. I really like that Team Perfume are still challenging themselves. It’s truly amazing. Especially at a point where they honestly could be complacent.

HOWEVER.

I do not like the structure. Because it’s so weird to me that the tour ends with a bunch of random Perfume songs and not a song from Nebula Romance: Part 1. Team Perfume have a real problem when it comes to setlists, because there is a continual inability to be bold and just say ‘Fuck the old shit’. And this mentality is so weird to me for an album tour, especially given that Perfume do so many non album tours where they wear out the hits and fan favourites. So why not let an album tour just be about the album and the vibe of the album? But if Team Perfume had to insist on this two-part format, a better solution would have been to switch the sections around. Have the fan faves and hits play first and then have Nebula Romance: Part 1 play second. This way, the tour ends with an encore from the album (“Mobius”) and the lasting impression is of Nebula Romance: Part 1. It would be similar to what Beyoncé did on the Renaissance World Tour, where she surprised audiences by not opening the show with “I’m That Girl” (the Renaissance album intro that EVERYBODY assumed would start the show), but instead opened with an album cut from her debut album. And not some upbeat shit like “Hip Hop Star”. A damn ballad. Then she proceeded to perform a whole set of ballads, none of which were songs from Renaissance. Then we got a cool cinematic and BOOM. ‘Renaissance’. THEN we get “I’m That Girl” and the Renaissance album from top to bottom in order, with some hits and deep cuts peppered throughout. Perfume should’ve done a similar thing.

At the very least, it’s cool to know Perfume perform the entire album. Although I do think sprinkling some of their existing songs into Nebula Romance: Part 1 would have helped some of the songs work better, because Nebula Romance: Part 1 feels a bit lacking. But perhaps the production of a show will help fill some of the gaps. I’m looking forward to watching the tour regardless and seeing how they realise the album visually. It sounds like they’ve taken a different approach to it compared to a regular Perfume show, which I do like.

The Beyoncé whiskey spotted in Japan

So, when I first listened to Beyoncé’s “Bodyguard” and heard the line ‘Davis in my bones’, I just assumed it was an existing whiskey brand. Thought nothing of it. But it turns out it wasn’t an established whiskey brand. It was Liquoryoncé teasing her own, Sir Davis. And it turns out that Davis is the name of the moonshine man that Beyoncé mentions in the Cowboy Carter opener “Ameriican Requiem”. But the real surprise to me was being in Tokyo and seeing the Beyoncé whiskey at a Bic Camera store — sat in a plexiglass case on an entertainment cabinet, as part of a display which was promoting a television, which was playing Dragon Quest. A lot to take in, I know. I stood staring at this entire display for a minute trying to process it all, along with EVERYTHING else around it. Because anybody who has been to a Bic Camera knows how chaotic them stores can be. It’s just everything everywhere. I still don’t know if Bic Camera was actually selling the whiskey. I’m guessing that there were. Why else would it have been there?

Crystal Kay’s 25th anniversary gig

Crystal Kay held her 25th anniversary show at ZEPP on the 21st of December and it looked really fun from the videos I’ve seen. BoA and Verbal of M-Flo pulled up to show love and perform with her, and it actually looks like Kay was given a budget. It really is a shame that Kay didn’t get to do a nationwide tour, because she clearly enjoys performing and she is great at doing it. And she continually keeps getting better — even with the limited amount of performances that she gets to do. Those Broadway stints are definitely working wonders. It really would be great to see Kay get to do a tour and for her to have a creative team who will help fold a bit of Broadway to her gigs and really create an identity for her shows.

Kay’s 25th anniversary gig was actually shot (yeah, I’m shocked too) and will air on WOWOW in March 2025. The CK fandom isn’t quite the Hikaru Utada or Perfume fandom. So Lord knows if a link to the whole show will hit the web for those of us outside of Japan, but we can pray.

Mariah Carey and her 16 sleighs

It’s that time of year y’all. When Mariah Carey celebrates Christmas day, shares moments from the day and then prepares to frost until the next Christmas. And here she is, looking like she’s ready to put on a cowboy hat and ride her 16 sleighs back into caves of Mount Gagazet.

I’m a big Carey fan. But I’d be lying if I said I am not becoming a little tired of this Christmas thing every single year with no switch ups. How many more versions of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is she gonna release? Every year I am begging for Carey to push a different original Christmas song. “Miss You Most at Christmas Time” and “Christmas Time is in the Air Again” are both RIGHT THERE waiting for their moments. Both amazing songs which are as good as “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and would also require a whole different approach to marketing, which would help with some variation beyond the same red sparkly gowns and Santa jumpsuit we keep getting. Like, girl. TAKE A RISK. You are already the crowned Queen of Christmas. Everybody is gonna stream “All I Want for Christmas Is You” regardless. So just try to do something a LITTLE different.

I have long accepted that this is just Carey’s career now. And that there will never be a particularly strong reception to any original song she releases now, because people just want Christmas songs or “We Belong Together”. I mean, shit. Can we not even get a Christmas version of “We Belong Together”!? Throw some jingle bells on that bitch and watch Black Twitter run with it.

I am not expecting a new song or album from Mariah any time soon. But if either drop in 2025? Great.

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So. What’s the lesson in this week’s Random J(unk) Mail?

Glue your cowboy hats down

Have a great last day of 2024 / first day of 2025,
?J