Ring!Ring!Ring!
平井堅
The contrast with his balladic persona is immediate and almost joyful — a funk-inflected groove, brass stabs, a rhythm track that has clearly spent time with American R&B of the late 1980s and early 1990s and arrived back in Japan with something to say. Ken Hirai in upbeat mode is a different proposition entirely from Hirai the cathedral balladist: loose, rhythmically playful, his voice sliding through the pocket of the groove with an ease that suggests this might actually be where he is most comfortable even if the public narrative cast him primarily as a melodramatic romantic. The production has a nostalgia for a slightly earlier era built into it, referencing sounds that were already a decade old at release, but that retrospective quality gives it a warmth rather than a staleness. The phone-as-romantic-lifeline concept is period-specific but the underlying feeling — anxious longing, the desire for contact, the way waiting makes you hyperaware of every passing minute — translates completely. Put this on when you are cooking, when you need your kitchen to briefly become a much better party than it currently is, when you want to remember that the same voice that made you cry can also make you move.
fast
1990s
warm, funky, retro
Japanese pop with American R&B and late-1980s funk influence
J-Pop, R&B. Funk-influenced pop. playful, romantic. Opens with immediate infectious groove energy and sustains playful, anxious longing throughout without ever settling into sadness.. energy 8. fast. danceability 9. valence 8. vocals: smooth male, rhythmically playful, soulful, loose. production: funk groove, brass stabs, R&B-influenced, warm retro. texture: warm, funky, retro. acousticness 3. era: 1990s. Japanese pop with American R&B and late-1980s funk influence. Cooking dinner when you need your kitchen to briefly become a much better party than it currently is.