Music Invasion - Straizians Edition: Wonder Girls and Thelma Aoyama

In the past year or so, I've met a group of friends that I'm generalizing as the Straizians as in Straight Asians. It's a group of dozen or so people, led by a tiny female ringleader who's outgoing and loves to play, eat and drink while not having an ounce of fat on her. I fit in because our common love for Mahjong and food, plus both her and her husband are great people. Every week there's bound to be one or two gatherings of food and Mahjong and since I'm completely out of touch with the ongoings or Asian culture, I'm happy to get to know the latest TV shows, movies and trends through them... to a point.

This ringleader girl and her female friends are extremely into taking pictures of themselves all made up, with doughy eyes and puffy cheeks, in costumes and blurry foreground looking like Anime characters are crawling up my Facebook wall. It's different, and frankly this inhuman female power is scaring me a little bit. Music-wise other than the random rotating Chinese songs, the ones that are being hammered into my head is the following 3:


Wonder Girls - Nobody


Wonder Girls - 2 Different Tears

One time, we were traveling to a mall about an hour away and all they were playing was the above songs in their various remixed versions. Did you know that "Nobody" has like 7 different remixes and "2 Different Tears" were in like 5 different languages? Did you know that after hearing the same song over and over again a dozen times can overwhelm a brain and causes nausea?

Another song that's heavily in rotation is from a half Japanese, half Afro-Trinidadian called Thelma Aoyama (青山黛瑪/テルマ). Grew up in Japan and spending some years in California, Thelma is everything a J-pop fan could want. Seriously Japanese people love multiracial people, being part Japanese and part something else, she's gonna blow up harder than Mariah Carey, all she's possibly missing is having one blue eye and one green eye. Music-wise, the video below is her debut single, which is a one-time Guinness Record holder for Best Selling Digital Single in Japan with more than 2 millions full downloads. The record keeper as of now is a song name Kiseki (Miracle) by a group called Greeeen.

This song along with the above two were constantly played and they are also featured as ringtones for at least four of the girls there. There is no getting away from it.


Thelma Aoyama ft. SoulJa - Soba Ni Iru Ne (I'm By Your Side)