Ebisu Muscats -- TOKYO Sexy Night (TOKYOセクシーナイト)

Last month I finished watching a Japanese reality show on Netflix (produced in partnership with Fuji TV) called Terrace House (テラスハウス). Initially, I grew interested because it was different from the reality shows aired in Brazil, like Big Brother, since it didn’t have a big money prize at the end of the show, and, basically, the participants could maintain their ordinary lives while living in the house (including jobs, dates, college and everything else). Also, if someone felt tired of the whole thing, he/she could simply leave the house and a new participant would arrive to take their place (or bed, to be more specific), which was something that happened a lot, since the show aired for 45 weeks. In the end, they were just a bunch (always six, three guys and three girls) of strangers sharing a house and living their normal lives while being filmed (well, not very normal life, since they knew they were being filmed, and could also watch already aired episodes of the show while still in the house).

About the show’s soundtrack, I confess it was pretty generic and boring stuff derivative of what American pop music has to offer nowadays. So, one could expect cheesy R&B-like songs, or even some atrocious anonymous hip-hop tunes during some scenes. The thing is, since the show was broadcasted worldwide, I think our always rigid Japanese talent agencies and record companies didn’t give permission to proper J-Pop songs being used. With that in mind, why am I talking about this show? I’ll get there in a minute.

At one point, an aspiring artist called Misaki Tamori (田森美咲) arrived at Terrace House as a new participant and she quickly became my favorite person in the show, thanks to a bubbly personality and the tough rejection she had to overcome after declaring her love to a fellow participant (coincidentally, a Brazilian guy, but with Japanese heritage). And just like happened with each participant, after a while, the show made clear what Misaki did to earn some money while living in Tokyo (she was born in Hokkaido): she was a member of infamous aidoru group Ebisu Muscats (恵比寿★マスカッツ), which originally debuted in 2011 and was, mostly, if not all, comprised of AV and Gravure aidoru.

Misaki Tamori

Personally, I remember being positively surprised with the idea of a sexy aidoru group around 2012~2013, but Ebisu Muscats’ songs were very similar to what other aidoru groups were doing at the time, much like following the boring “AKB48 quality pattern”. Time passed by, the group disbanded in 2013 and was revived again in 2015 with a new line-up, but I didn’t give them a new chance at all. It was only after I discovered Misaki was a member of the new Ebisu Muscats that I decided to listen to some of their newest songs.

“TOKYO Sexy Night”, my selected song for the article, is, by any means, a revolutionary song or something like that, but a good slice of terribly sexy disco tune that could have originated from an underground cabaret or even a foggy late 70s erotic b-movie. It tries to sound luxurious, and that’s where the joke starts… in reality, it’s a cheap sound backed by some awkward singing by the girls, which is always hilarious. If that wasn’t enough, the chorus is very catchy and , which makes the song a winner in my book.

In the end, I wasn’t even able to find Misaki in the music video, and can’t really tell if she was there at all, but I like the song a lot and that’s enough. Now, I may have finished watching Terrace House, but “TOKYO Sexy Night” is an indirect heritage I owned from the show.

“TOKYO Sexy Night” was released in November 2015 and reached #29 on the Oricon chart. Lyrics were written by Maccoi, while music was composed by Face 2 fAKE.

Source: Amazon.jp