Fake and faker — Japanese bubblegum Messengers
FAKE version of “That’s The Way A Woman Is”
FAKER version of “That’s The Way A Woman Is”
ORIGINAL bubblegum version of “That’s The Way A Woman Is” by Michael and Messengers, 1971 by clicking on the song player below and/or follow the song player’s link to download the MP3.
Rest-of-the-story: In 1971, the Messengers reached number 62 in the US national charts with “That’s the Way a Woman is.” Due to inanely simple lyrics, this single was an even bigger hit in Japan (under the title “Ki ni naru onna no ko” 気になる女の子). This song also had a small revival in 2005 in Japan due to its being used in an Otsuka Pharmaceutical’s “Amino Supli” sports drink commercial as shown below.
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June 21st, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Until today I’ve never seen Otsuka Pharmaceutical’s 2005 commercial for their “Amino Supli” sports drink that they dusted this song off for, but I imagined it like this:
Quick cuts of athletes or business people or chubby cats chugging various flavors of the drink during the “ah, ah ah, ahhh ah ah ah” part of the song, looking re-energized and refreshed.
Then, when the song gets to “you wanna be mine”, roving bands of robot centuries appear, scanning for human survivors to either enslave or harvest (depending on their blood type – they’re obsessed with that over there), who’ve been surviving since The Great Overthrow on surplus Pocari Sweat, CalorieMate, and Abilify. It’s tough times everywhere, you’ve got to plug all your products. Seriously, those are all made by the same people.
By the last verse of the re-edited-for-the-30-second-spot song, I imagined seeing Tokyo’s last remaining free humans riding a conveyor belt into a tunnel with something written in Japanese above it. They are then injected with either orange, grapefruit, green tea or shrimp flavoring; liquefied, bottled, and consumed by Tokyo’s robot overlords [shown doing "human" activities like grocery shopping, working at desk jobs, smoking cigarettes, and drinking Amino Supli then mugging to the camera and stating "re-fresh-ing" in a Vocoder-drenched voice]—which, by my account, is a happy ending. The human race parishes, but I’m always relieved to see something produced in Japan where someone ISN’T raped by a cartoon octopus.
BTW I love your blog!