Well for starters, I can think of situations where they have acted courageously and put our some edgy lyrics.
Koisuru Universe did have a “controversial” MV, but the vid did fit with lyrics like “even God/s can’t keep back” people who are drawn together. Sure some fans were pissed but I bet more were happy with the idea of boundless love.
A couple of years earlier, Kill the Virgin was also controversial! Some fans thought the band must have been instructed to do this song because singing about this female experience was too “risqué” to fit their image of SCANDAL. I think the band was cool with it though.
Their 2017 single Freedom Fighters was about challenging the status quo, demonstrating in the streets, “the revolution,” etc. Nothing specific but kinda radical for sure.
Soon after the 3/11 tsunami and Fukushima meltdown, some girls who met in evacuation centers formed bands, and invited various rock groups to come to meet and perform with them. SCANDAL came, I think they were the only ones who did.
In 2015 SCANDAL was picked to represent Japan in the annual all-Asia broadcasters music event in Istanbul. They performed their current single Sisters. It was gutsy of them to take the opportunity to make a clearly feminist statement to a broad audience like that.
A little more than a week after they were in Turkey, a deadly bomb exploded in the same marketplace they had visited. That same year they played Le Bataclan in Paris a few months before the massacre there. Neither of these terrorist events had any direct connection with SCANDAL but it shows how close to tragedy cultural workers like them can come in today’s world.
On another note, there are dangers that come from being unaware of history, especially when touring other countries. For example I saw a pic of Rina wearing a leather jacket with a map of pre-World War II Germany framed by the US and German flags—message: “The US will help us Germans take back all that Polish territory that used to be part of the German Empire.” I hope she didn’t wear that when they performed in Wroclau, right in that very ex-German part of Poland!
Another example is when they did their first concert in Korea, fans were commenting how “now SCANDAL will conquer another country”—totally unaware of what that would sound like to Koreans, who were colonized by Japan and had to furnish “comfort women” to the Japanese army.
Some people, especially Americans, may be uncomfortable with the concerts SCANDAL did in China (PRC). But from what I hear, no matter how much the governments of China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan argue and threaten each other, the people everywhere seem to keep on loving each other’s culture, including pop music. I’m sure SCANDAL, like most culture workers, want peace to win out.
Last edited by etwee on Sat Mar 13, 2021 9:17 pm; edited 2 times in total (Reason for editing : lettering)
