AKB48 -- Manatsu no Sounds good! (真夏のSounds good!)

Summer is a big thing in the J-Pop world, and probably even bigger for the AKB48 enterprise. Even so, instead of talking about their newest summer song, the 60s French-pop inspired “Labrador Retriever” (ラブラドール・レトリバー), I’m going to give some love to “Manatsu no Sounds good!”, AKB48’s 2012 summer single.

Released in May 2012, “Manatsu no Sounds good!” is surprising enjoyable. Of course it’s another aidoru pop song, but things are very well balanced in this song if compared to other generic aidoru outputs. If I had to list some interesting moments of “Manatsu no Sounds good!”, I’d end up raving about the whole synth arrangement trying to sound like typical horns and the undeniably catchy choruses comprised of silly sentences like “manatsu no sounds good” and “nagisa no good job”. Also, the melody gives proper life to the excitement of the season very well. Although it’s winter time here in Brazil, I can’t help thinking about summer while listening to “Manatsu no Sounds good!” and the whole “fake horns” extravaganza combined with high pitched aidoru vocals. Well, to be honest, it’s not that cold in the city where I live, but it's still winter.

Last but not least, “Manatsu no Sounds good!” is a very symbolic song to the whole AKB48 fandom, because Atsuko Maeda (前田敦子), the well known face of the group since its beginning, graduated from AKB48 after this single.

“Manatsu no Sounds good!” reached #1 on the Oricon charts and also ended 2012 as the best selling single of the year. Until now, it sold 1,822,220 copies. Lyrics were written by Yasushi Akimoto  (秋元康) while music and arrangement were done by Yoshimasa Inoue (井上ヨシマサ).