Special Favorite Music -- Royal Memories

 

Well, we're basically at the halfway point of 2026, and things here at least are looking very summery. In fact, Toronto is going into a heat wave for the next few days. It certainly was quite the sweaty trek from the store and back this morning. Before folks start complaining though, let's remember that it wasn't too long ago when we were all griping when winter would end.

Then, let's start today's edition of KKP with something nice and rosy and happy. The band Special Favorite Music had a track from their August 2017 2nd full album "Royal Blue" called "Royal Memories". No special genre inflection was attached to this one; it's just a happy-happy-joy-joy pop tune with some Motown horns (though "Royal Memories" doesn't sound particularly Motown) accompanying it. Have a listen to it with the air conditioner on full.

Special Favorite Music -- Hashire, Romance Ichi-go（走れ、ロマンス1号）

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For the longest time, I'd wondered why these special Odakyu trains coming and leaving Shinjuku Station were called Romance Cars. I figured that they were popular with the young couples taking trips to the countryside, and as it turns out, I wasn't far off the mark. The Romance Cars contain what are basically love seats with no hand rest dividing the pair. Well, isn't that special? 

I think that's what the band Special Favorite Music was referring to as well with their March 2025 single "Hashire, Romance Ichi-go" (Run, Romance No. 1). In my last article on the band which I wrote up a couple of months ago, it was for their 2015 single "Gold", and in there, I'd thought about what the band would sound like now after about a decade and with all of the lineup changes they went through,

Well, as it turns out, listening to "Hashire, Romance Ichi-go", there doesn't seem to be too much change and that's not a bad thing. This particular song is quite the breezy pop number with the SFM strings coming in as usual. Plus with the marimba-sounding synth (or maybe that's a real marimba being played here) and the strings, there is a certain feeling of posh life. In fact, I don't know whether they'd intended to or not, but there's something with "Hashire, Romance Ichi-go" that feels like 1970s New Music.

Special Favorite Music -- Gold

 

Back in 2018, I introduced a band onto the blog called Special Favorite Music via their 2017 single "Ceremony" which had quite a bit of groove with the interesting inclusion of a violinist and a flutist among their band members.

I'm now going a bit further back in their discography to 2015 when they released their EP "Romantics" with the track of choice today being "Gold". Written and composed by Naohiro Okuda, the brass and violin are more in the foreground here and the whole arrangement sounds like an upbeat indies pop number straight from Shimo-Kitazawa, Tokyo. The music video is pretty fantastical although the slightly out-of-focus shots of people in animal masks were pretty creepy.

According to their Biography page, Special Favorite Music went from a 7-piece band down to a trio from 2019 but from 2024 which was their 10th anniversary, they apparently recruited new members. So, it'll be interesting how the folks sound now.

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.