Don’t knock it till you shout it.

Karaoke remains a popular pastime for many Japanese people young and old, and when in major cities, you’re never too far from a chain of parlors offering private rooms or a bar with a machine installed. Independent of these establishments are the karaoke system providers, one of the largest of which is Joysound.

Everyday, hundreds of people take advantage of Joysound’s catalog of over 440,000 songs, including timeless classics and the latest hits. And every week, the company releases a ranking of the most sung tracks across the country.

For the week of 1 to 7 June, the number one song was “Suki Sugite Metsu!” by M!LK, followed by Vaundy’s “Kaiju no Hanauta”, and the perennial karaoke hit “Cruel Angel’s Thesis” by Yoko Takahashi in third. This brings us to the surprise hit of early June, in fourth place, “Hakata no Shio” by table salt manufacturer Hakato no Shio (Hakata Salt). Let’s take a listen!

As you can tell by its three-second duration, this isn’t so much a song as it is a sound logo. Japan loves these devices in commercials where the name of the company or its slogan is sung or spoken in a sing-songy way, usually to punctuate the end of an ad. More often than not, it’s delivered in a cutesy female voice, and a fun fact about Hakata no Shio is that they initially got complaints that the gruff male voice shouting it was too jarring.

It looks like they got the last laugh, however, now that the jingle beat out nearly half a million other songs in karaoke selections.

▼ Interestingly, the second-place sound logo for the same week was “Sehhhhh-gahhhhh…” which is probably more recognizable around the world.

There are said to be two reasons for this unlikely hit. First, a trend among Japan’s Gen Z is called “taipa,” which is short for “time performance” but would translate better to “timemaxxing.” This involves making the absolute most efficient use of one’s time, whether it’s eating fortified food to shorten chewing, using all-in-one skincare products, or skipping guitar solos in songs. Likewise, when singing karaoke, the best way to cram in as many songs as possible is to find ones that are satisfying to sing in the shortest time, and “Hakata no Shio” has some serious oomf-per-second.

The other reason is the gamification of karaoke. Although most machines have long been able to rate singers on how well they matched the timing and pitch of the original song, this feature has become extremely popular recently, thanks to TV shows where professionals and amateurs try to get high scores for prizes.

▼ A clip from The Karaoke Battle showing 10-year-old Kito Uchiyama winning the U-18 division by singing Misia’s “Everything”.

Getting perfect requires practice and practice requires repetition, and no matter how much you might love “Kurenai,” having to wade through the over-six-minute runtime again and again to perfect each part will begin to wear you out. But in the same time as one performance of “Kurenai,” you can probably belt out “Hakata no Shio” 100 times and have a good chance of mastering it. Even many of the TV shows mentioned earlier only have contestants sing a few bars of a song to keep things moving along.

Joysound has caught onto these trends and is also offering Sabikara (Chorus Karaoke) where you can just sing the hooks of popular songs and skip everything else. For example, the top Sabikara song for the same week was “Kabutomushi” by Aiko with a runtime of one minute and 24 seconds, down from the five minutes that it takes to sing the full version.

This year, they’ve also begun the Sound Logo Karaoke Awards, from which Hakata no Shio walked away with the People’s Choice award. The Grand Prize, however, went to the jingle for Toppan.

▼ Sorry, I couldn’t find an isolated version of this one, so you’ll have to sit through the commercial first.

Regardless of the reasons, it’s clear that short songs are in vogue in Japanese karaoke, and it’s worth bearing in mind if hanging out there with younger co-workers. As luck would have it, we were way ahead of the curve and published some ultra-short song recommendations a decade ago, such as the one-second “You Suffer” by Napalm Death.

Personally, I’m left feeling conflicted because I heard “MacArthur Park” was making a comeback with young people and was all ready to dust off that gem next time I go to karaoke. But now, I’m left wondering if the youth of today would even appreciate the extended disco interludes where I do the Mashed Potato for three minutes.

Source: MyNavi News, My Game News Flash
Top image: ©SoraNews24
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