Cliché
Taeko Ohnuki
Taeko Ohnuki's "Cliché" arrives with the poised chill of mid-eighties Japanese sophisti-pop, when city pop was shedding its warm AOR fat for something sleeker and more European. The production — synth pads laid like sheets of frosted glass, gated drums with a lot of air around them, bass that walks rather than funks — favors negative space over groove. Ohnuki sings the way a person speaks when they've decided not to cry: her voice is breathy, precise, almost withholding, with that signature flattened affect that makes her sound less like a torch singer than a woman reading her own diary aloud in a cold room. The title is the thesis. It's a song about recognizing that your heartbreak is unoriginal, that the words available to you have been used by everyone, and finding a strange dignity in saying them anyway. Culturally this sits with her Mignonne-to-Copine arc, when she was working with arrangers who'd absorbed Ryuichi Sakamoto's harmonic sophistication and Brazilian phrasing. It belongs to late evening in a small apartment, the good lamp on, one glass poured, nobody coming over — music that keeps you company without pretending to console you.
slow
1980s
cool, sparse, polished
Japanese
J-Pop, City Pop. Sophisti-pop. Melancholic, Reflective. Opens with poised cool and holds that withheld temperature throughout, finding dignity in the unoriginality of heartbreak. energy 3. slow. danceability 3. valence 4. vocals: breathy, precise, withholding, flat affect, diary-reading. production: frosted-glass synth pads, gated drums with air, walking bass, negative space. texture: cool, sparse, polished. acousticness 3. era: 1980s. Japanese. Late evening in a small apartment with one good lamp on, one glass poured, nobody coming over.