Crystal Kay stars in a commercial as the face of Kasugai’s Xyli Crystal (Kay) mints

Y’all. Let us stand around a copy of Vivid and praise mixed raced Jesus. Because Crystal Kay is actually in a TV commercial and has a product tie-in. I woke up this morning having gotten only 4 hours of sleep because of an earache. But seeing Kay get a bag and featuring in a commercial made me smile.

YES. GET MONEY, BITCH.

This product Kay is the face of here is called Xyli Crystal. Y’all don’t need me to explain why this particular partnership makes sense. Kasugai should make Kay the face of this brand for a good couple of years.

The little jingle in the commercial sounds better than the songs she’s been putting out for the past couple of years. Kay started out her career doing commercial jingles. So, to be singing one again after having just celebrated 25 years in the music business as a recording artist is a really cool full circle moment.

It’s funny. Because when I reviewed Kay’s December 2024 single “Love Myself”, I said it sounded more like a commercial jingle than a song. And “Love Myself” woulda really worked here. Or given the product and theme of the commercial, reworking Crystal’s song “Two As One” into “Three As One” and recreating that music video would’ve also been a nice throwback moment. “Two As One” isn’t a Kay single people speak much of, but it is one of Kay’s second best selling singles behind “Koi ni Ochitara” — being only one of three of her singles to have debuted at number 2 on the Oricon. But doing something with “Two As One” would require somebody from Kay’s team talking to the people at Sony, which they don’t seem to ever do. And a throwback moment with an old song would have made more sense if Kay had a Best album out, which she doesn’t. And it’s still crazy to me that she doesn’t.

Girl. Fire the whole management and marketing team.

HENNYWAY.

Kay looks great. She is paid. And hopefully this Kasugai Xyli Crystal and Kay link up will mean that locals will start seeing Kay’s face on trains, in subway stations and in Family Mart’s. I really want to believe that this is the start of something new and a phase in Kay’s career where she starts doing the things. But let’s see.

Slight side note. Japan do really great mints and have such a great and varied selection — some of which come in really useful dispensers and tins. I don’t see enough people talking about mints in Japan, but that’s a whole other post on a whole different blog.

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📀 The Best album that we shoulda gotten this year: CK25

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