When Japanese popstars get their hands on Kelly Clarkson demos...

Keep watching for the Janet Jackson-style dance breakdown at 2:10!

How to be big in Japan...

We've written about Koda Kumi (or Kumi Koda) once before and now we're writing about her again. Basically, and we're not going to pretend we actually know anything about J-Pop here, she's a pretty huge deal in Japan. A huge enough deal that she has a whole 'fashion style' ("ero-kawaii") inspired by her clothing choices. A big enough deal that, even with recent controversy over a radio comment and an apparent decline in sales, her last 4 singles all went to number 1. A big enough deal that she released every single song from an album as a single and they pretty much all went top 10.

Anyway, because she's hot shit in Japan, she's clearly prime real estate when it comes to foreign acts trying to break big over there. We're not trying to present this as something new and contrived, because obviously it's been going on forever, but there it is. There was the duet she did with Fergie (yes! Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas!) and now we present to you a magazine spread she's done with Lady GaGa. It's a shame that Ms. Koda will never get the recognition abroad that she deserves, and also a shame that Ms. GaGa probably has no idea who she is, but that's just the way the world works, unfortunately.

Stuck In Our Head: "Love Goes Like..." - Koda Kumi

This is going to be a new feature, we thinks. It's different from your bog standard 'Song of the Day' in that it's not necessarily our favourite new song of the day. Or even a new song of the day. Or even a song we like. It's simply ONE song that's stuck in the head of ONE member of Shiny & New and an accompanying visualette and blurb.

Today it's actually a rather good little slice of J-Pop courtesy of Koda Kumi. Ms. Kumi is basically a big crazy Japanese slut, who, much like Beyoncé, has a habit of making music videos for every single song on her albums.

This particular song and video is to accompany her second Greatest Hits compilation. The song was a brand new one in the vein of My Prerogative or Something Kinda Ooooh! or It's In Our Hands and is therefore rather poppily good, without having to mean anything or be attached to any particular album.

In fact almost every single other song on her second Greatest Hits was a single released within one week of the last one. She did this crazy thing were she released 12 singles in a row, week after week and they all went top 10.

Anyway... this here video is rather big budget etc. It involves Koda becoming a big angel of death and smashing a chandelier. It also starts at about 2:00 minutes in because there's a very long (but rather good) introduction made up of a sort of remix of We Will Rock You (NOOO! Come BACK!!!).

We'll leave the judgements up to you, but it's exactly the kind of camp mess we love.