Maia Hirasawa – Though, I’m Just Me
While sifting through my 2007 library of albums for my aunt’s Christmas present mixes, I came across Maia’s wonderful album Though, I’m Just Me, which I’d listened to obsessively over the summer and then kind of forgot about until now. Music is strange like that, but I’m right back into my pop-filled Maia obsession again and I couldn’t be happier. She’s hard to fit into a genre, but most songs are like little orchestral, epic pop songs sounding like Regina Spektor mixed with Bjork. Her singing style is quirky like Regina’s, and she has a heavy accent like Bjork. One song sounds identical to Tegan & Sara (”My New Friend”).
If you’re down at all and need cheering up, or are even in a good mood and feel like happy music, well you can’t get much better than Maia for that. She’s a Japanese girl from Sweden, however that works, but everywhere I look, I find that she’s huge in Sweden. To the extent that she’s pretty much overtaken her original band Hello Saferide after opening with her solo stuff for one of their shows. I can’t get enough of her and plan on checking out Hello Saferide, but if you’re in the mood for some genuinely good pop music, check out her music. While I say it’s happy and all, there’s still plenty of truly beautiful gems in there like “You, Me and Everyone We Know”, “Parking Lot”, and “Gothenburg”. But I’d have to give a tie for pop song of the year to “Mattis and Maia” and “And I Found This Boy”.
Videos:
Gothenburg
[youtube KG64DmsSQH4]
woot, hadn’t realised you’d heard of her before!
Hello Saferide is definitely worth checking out, Saturday Nights is a great song. And if you like that, the lead singer of Saferide started solo stuff and sings in Swedish, under the name Säkert.