Flashback Friday: Perfume - Spring of Life | Dancing for joy in the Amuse HQ basement

Today marks the 13th anniversary of Perfume’s 4th studio album, LEVEL3. So of course, I had to flashback to a song from the album. Without even a second thought, I said ‘This post obviously has to be “1mm”’. Which is not only the hero song of LEVEL3, but a standout song on the album. But after thinking about it for a bit longer, I decided that “1mm” is such an obvious choice of song. Not that there’s anything wrong with obvious. But it made me think about how the LEVEL3 singles wound up getting overshadowed by album cuts. And how one song in particular got the short end of the stick for whatever reason — “Spring of Life”.

“Spring of Life” got the shit performed out of it when it first released. It also had a big-ass tie-in with Suntory’s boozy Lemon drink. I will never forget the time I bought a Hyōketsu Lemon thinking it was lemonade and threw that shit back, just to immediately be surprised at the taste of alcohol and then be double surprised upon looking at the can that I missed the big ass ‘Alc. 6%’.

HENNYWAY.

“Spring of Life” got a huge push and it peaked at number 2 on the Oricon. And because of when it first released, it even ended up on some of the later shows of the JPN tour. And yet, to me it felt like once the song was over and done with, that THAT was it.

It’s crazy that the song from LEVEL3 which became a regular in tour setlists was “Party Maker” and none of the singles. “Party Maker” was the one song I assumed would never get performed after the LEVEL3 tour, because of how absolutely bonkers the staging was and that Perfume would never perform the song would it. And yet. [Gestures]. And it’s even crazier that “Spring of Life” wasn’t the one single which did get airtime on tours afters LEVEL3. Because not only is it a great song, but sonically it threads through all of Perfume’s albums, even the ones which came after LEVEL3. It’s such a quintessentially sounding Perfume song which is so easy to work into a Perfume tour setlist. But despite this, it got locked in the Amuse basement with the Perfume clones from the “Spending All My Time” video.

“Spring of Life” isn’t a go to Perfume song for me. But every time I listen to it, I’m like ‘Wait, this is great. Why do I not play it more often?’. And I do not know the answer to that. But maybe this was a similar sort of situation with Perfume and their team. It’s not so much they don’t like the song or go out of their way to leave it out of setlists for tours and televised performances. They just sorta…forgot about it.

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💿 Album reviews: Game | Complete Best | Triangle | LEVEL3 | JPN | Cosmic Explorer | The Best “P Cubed” | Future Pop | Plasma | Nebula Romance: Part 1 | Nebula Romance: Part 2

🎛️ ?J Mixes: LEVEL3 Megamix | Mawaru Kagami (ALternate Mix) | Moon (Extended Mix) | Cosmic Treat (Extended Mix) | Nebula Romance (Extended Mix)