Special Favorite Music -- Ceremony

It's not every day that I come across a contemporary pop band in the 21st century which features a flutist and a violinist as part of the lineup but that is indeed the case with Special Favorite Music.

Getting together in the summer of 2014, the catchphrase on their website is "We are looking for something new!", but in doing so, I think Special Favorite Music has incorporated some of the old appealing groove as have a number of their musical contemporaries.

With a 7-member lineup including two vocalists, lovinyuu and Yusuke Kume, I came across the band for the first time through their video for "Ceremony". That violin and flute start things off for this cool, light and mellow (good golly, sounds like a menthol cigarette) number. As for the video, I kept thinking of it as the opening credits for the Japanese version of "Friends". With seven people, I can only imagine that the apartment that they live in would cost millions of yen more than the pad where Ross and Rachel and the rest of the guys reside in New York. Still, they must have some really great parties!

There seems to be some confusion about the status of "Ceremony". Under the YouTube video, this was supposed to have been their first single from March 2017, but according to their website, it's a track from their 3rd mini-album, "Royal Blue", which came out later that year in August. Heck, it's all good.