Babymetal Stereotypes

All the way back to the first existence of music, there has always been bands that were liked or disliked and Babymetal is no different. Babymetal is an all-girls Japanese heavy metal band formed in 2010. Not only are they unique for their willingness to play heavy metal in Japan, but also around the globe because of their gender. As women, their musical style, focus and dance, both fall outside of the normal boundaries of Japanese music for women.
Stereotypically, when thinking of Japanese music, one thinks of the oriental riff, as seen in “Kung Fu Fighting” by Carl Douglas in 1974. While it is the stereotypical way to represent the idea of the East Asian music style, it is also a Western invention. Western civilizations have created this concept of what Asian music should sound like, or resemble, and turn away from anything that doesn’t seem to fit into the normal stereotype. In addition to the oriental riff, stereotypical Japanese music consists mostly of percussion, strings and wind instruments. Not

electric guitars, electronic synthesizers and large drums and cymbals sets.
While the intention is not to persuade the reader that Babymetal is a good or bad artist, hopefully by the end of the research, the reader will have realized that the music that originates from Japan, whether influenced through Western culture or not, is not the stereotypical styles Western cultures have created for them. Babymetal, through Western cultural influence and Japanese dance styles, has broken the barrier of what Western cultures expect Japanese music to be. Whether their intentions or not, Babymetal has formed to be an all-girls, authentic Japanese heavy metal band.
Babymetal is not the first band to incorporate Western stylization into their music. Musical westernization hit Japan in 1914 with the appearance of the western pop song “Kachūsha no Uta,” sung by Sumako Matsul. This song was one of Japan’s first best-selling records. However, westernized heavy metal did not become popular until the 1990s. Babymetal is different for not just what and how they sing and play, but also because of their Japanese ethnicity and gender. Babymetal has potentially changed the way Japanese music becomes popular outside of the Japanese country lines because of their unique design as a band.
In an interview with Time Out London, Su-metal, Yuimetal and Moametal spoke about the band. For starters, the girls are fifteen to seventeen years old. Su-metal told Time Out that Babymetal was formed through a dream that each girl had. In this dream, a god, the Fox God, appeared and told them that they should form the band. Before forming the band, none of the girls had any idea what metal was. Su-metal and Kobametal talk about how they like John Lewis music, specifically his Christmas ad soundtracks, but also Gabrielle Aplin, a British singer. The last two points they made are the structure of this paper. Not only do they not have any influences, but their fan base is also not made up of just one group (Horton).
The band told Time Out that they had no one to look up to. They don’t want to be the protégé of someone else’s music, they strive to be something that’s never been done before. Since the band feels it very important to be the only one, and be like no other, it is hard not to see the band as authentic. Not only does the band play music for their personal interest, but also they play the music because it represents a form of culture within them.
The music they play is something they enjoy doing, and they don’t want to strive for any other form of music. They don’t play because they have to or because they were coaxed into playing something unfamiliar. The band is authentic because of their love for metal music and how that is portrayed in each song they do. More importantly, the band is authentic to different groups of people, but mostly adolescents.
When building an audience, three distinct perspectives are accounted for: mass culture, individual choice and taste culture views (Wells 41).

Mass culture assumptions appear to shape much of the behavior of record companies and some radio stations… They tend to rely on “hot hits” aimed at the adolescent mass. They use the [Billboard.com] charts to gauge audience preferences [to discover the current culture waves surfacing]… The individual choice perspective is supported by some of the observable behavior of the music audience. Adolescents purchase their own music collections and select their favorite radio stations. This view, however, ignores what is known of predictable differences in musical taste based on such variables as age, gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (Wells 41).

The above quote from the scholarly article “The Genre Preferences of
Western Popular Music by Japanese Adolescents,“ by Alan Wells and Hiroshi Tokinoya explains the different ways that Japanese youth choose their interest in music. A large majority of adolescents tend to usually set the current cultural trends for a nation or specific set of people. And of course, in order to set a cultural trend, the individual choice perspective is often viewed as a determining factor. As the quote states though, this method of judgment lacks major variables when determining individual choice perspective from a website such as Billboard.com. These variables include age, gender, and socioeconomic status.
Herbert Gans is an American Sociologist who taught at Columbia University between 1971 and 2007. Gans developed the third perspective: taste cultures. He believed that audiences are not one deciding factor, but instead are multiple different perspective groups. “Although social Class is an important determinant of choice, individual preferences are possible” (Wells 42). The concept that there can be multiple forms of active culture and different individual preferences make up this idea that Babymetal could easily be a hit in Japan, or outside depending on the amount of adolescents, or other age groups, that find Babymetal culturally appealing.
Alan Wells and Hiroshi Tokinoya conducted a study of about 1700 Japanese students to discover their favorite types of music. After reviewing the research, it is astonishing to see the small percentages of people that enjoyed Heavy Metal. While twenty three percent of people really liked Rock, only five percent really liked Heavy Metal. On the opposite side of the spectrum, only fifteen percent of students didn’t like Rock, while forty-eight percent disliked Heavy Metal.
Another poll, taken by Reddit.com focused only on those listeners of Babymetal. The poll had 456 responses and covered a large variety of topics: age, ethnicity, language, location, gender, and more. The results discovered that Babymetal has fans that range from thirteen to forty-four. Also, the majority of the people who took the poll, ninety-four percent, were male. While the language, ethnicity, and country answers of the poll were quite a mess, the top four nations that had the most listeners to Babymetal was the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan.
Most people who listen to Babymetal actually have only been listening for the last year and were introduced most likely through “Megitsune” or “Gimme Choco.” “Megitsune” appears to be the most popular song. The majority of people polled also claim that they really like Babymetal because of their “vocals, instruments, and energy” (Edible).
“Megitsune,” one of the bands top songs was released on June 19, 2013.

This song really brought the band to the front lines for a lot of their audience. In the music video recorded for the song, the visual appearance that goes with the music does not seem like the typical music one would expect from a Japanese pop and heavy metal band, but seems expected from these three young women in Babymetal. The way their music transitions from head-banging music to idealistic pop style music is intriguing at the least. They have an ability to draw in multiple audiences. The biggest question that seems to arise from all of the work that Babymetal does, is why they play the music they do. Throughout the research, there seemed to be a lack of criticism, but a large array of people who voiced opinions about why they did like the band, and most people claimed it was because of the way they sung, the music they played, and the amount of energy they put into every

performance.
Babymetal is a very unique band. The way they perform is almost mesmerizing and relaxing, which is something that normally cannot be said for typical heavy metal music. Whether the Fox God spoke to each girl or not, they found a calling that appears to work for each one of them. They are loved by many different audiences. Some love them for their musical ability, some for their style of dance, and some for the energy they exert in each performance. The concept that none of them knew what metal was prior to the formation of Babymetal is also a very intriguing concept because they perform with such natural ability on stage.
Babymetal reached out to perform something like never before, and while there are people who will always question the authenticity of their style of music to their ethnic and cultural background, Babymetal has achieved a goal that so many people only dream of achieving. The goal was not to persuade you that Babymetal was the ideal band to listen to, but instead to inform you of who Babymetal was, why they were authentic, and the influence that Babymetal has played on the world in just four years of existence.