Tweet Dream / Sparkle

Is Fairies losing sight of their goal with this 4th single?

There’s exactly one month away until avex young pop dance group releases their 4th double A-side single Tweet Dream / Sparkle. After 3 ultra-catchy releases and winning the Best New Artist award at last year’s Japan Record Awards, they’ve build up fans expectations quite a bit. Will Tweet Dream / Sparkle live up to the standard?

Pencil board image (see below).

The leading song Tweet Dream is currently being used for the Waseda Academy TV commercial starring none other than Fairies’ Ito Momoka. Avex has a knack for releasing terribly search engine un-friendly song titles and the new single is no exception. Tweet Dream has no relation to the 1959 Tweety Bird film, but rather draws inspiration from the popular social network.

At least this time, they’ve uploaded the promo video for Tweet Dream (almost) in full online.

Tweet Dream is quite a departure from the Fairies norm. Until now, Fairies have followed a pretty standard formula of throwing out an edgy dance number as the more prominent A-side. Tweet Dream sounds more like their usual accompanying sound, or a B-side at best.

The video production is still top notch and there’s ample fan service (in a Fairies context) with plenty of closeups of the members in the video. But that’s only because, there is next to no dance element in Tweet Dream for the stylish dance choreography that we’ve come to expect from Fairies. Whatever little dancing left in Tweet Dream is ridiculous.

I can understand how Fairies is trying to connect with their young teenage audience by singing about a topic relevant to them but that doesn’t make singing about “Tweets” and “Followers” any less silly. One can only hope that the other A-side, Sparkle is something more familiar.

CD + DVD. 1,050 yen.

CD Only. 1,050 yen.

Fairies have also seem to have forgotten their supposed mainstream concept by throwing out not one, not two, but 5 barely different versions of Tweet Dream / Sparkle. Granted 3 of them are only available through avex’s mu-mo shop and at live events but with all these red lights, you can’t help but question if avex trax has decided to diminish them to yet another idol group.

It even looks like each copy of the event versions will feature a random member printed on the CD itself. Though they’re being nice by offering a special version that guarantees you all 7 for a whopping 7,000 yen. Well, at least the covers are nice.

The CD + Note & Pencil Board version while strange, I can sort of understand, granted that a large portion of the group’s fans happen to be teen and pre-teen girls. This version comes with a notebook and a pencil board (shitajiki), which is simply one of those plastic boards with characters printed on them. They’re often sold  at Japanese stationery shops and are supposed to make writing easier. I’m guessing just like clear plastic folders, only a very select audience will be excited over this.

CD + Note & Pencil Board Cover (mu-mo shop and event only). 1,000 yen.

Handshake Version Cover (mu-mo shop and event only). 1,000 yen.

All 7 CD Label and Handshake Version Cover (mu-mo shop and event only). 7,000 yen.

Tweet Dream / Sparkle is slated for release on 27th July 2012. Maybe we’ll get a preview of Sparkle soon and it will totally blow us away but at this point of time, I’m not too hopeful of this new single but will keep my fingers crossed anyways. If it’s your cup of tea though, let us know what you think below.

Update: Here’s the preview for Sparkle.