My Mad Music Corner: To Be Continued

Thursday, April 16, 2015

To Be Continued - Bitter Sweet Love

So sorry about all this time away from blogging! While I can't guarantee that my posting will be consistent, I'll try to be more frequent.

Today's post is about Bitter Sweet Love, the third album from J-pop group To Be Continued. The only albums I currently have from them are this one and Beyond The Light..., although come summertime, I'll be able to access my copies of Day Break, Creston Drive and Core Pop that I had shipped elsewhere. Both albums are solidly crafted pop music, all killer and no filler, pretty much, although whereas a bunch of the singles from Beyond The Light... charted on Oricon, none of the singles from this album reached those heights. It's a shame, because they are well done. (The fourth track, "Holiday", has become my go-to track for sending a taste of J-pop to my friends.)

The packaging for this album is pretty normal, for Japanese CD standards, at least. The front of the obi is longer than most tend to be, about as long as the obi for Mad's album Mix-Ism. I haven't had any real luck getting the obi to line up with the front cover, though, and it strangely lists this music as "Rock" at the top. Certain copies of this album, as well as copies of their first two albums, seem to have tabs at the end that have the Japanese song titles written in either English or romaji, as the cover I put to my YouTube videos indicates, but my copy doesn't have those. It kinda sucks, because it would've made writing articles about those songs a wee bit easier.