I know I've mentioned this before, and most-definitely in my initial introduction many years ago-- it's all because of YouTube.

One of the nice things about YouTube is that people digitize rare records from their collections that are virtually impossible to find on CD, and they definitely aren't on any streaming services.  I had been coming across a lot of old proto-metal/punk bands from the 70's that I never knew about.  Additionally, I finally picked up some CDs of Dragonforce, which I had always heard about in my guitar magazines, but had never heard them.  I fell in love with the band immediately and went out looking for more modern power metal bands, of which there are many throughout Eastern Europe as I discovered thanks to YouTube.

Anyway, I started playing guitar in the early 80's; I'm a big metal fan; and I'm a fan of the band Loudness.  They were the only Japanese band I ever heard and bought CDs from.  I was on a big re-discovery of the music I loved growing up (my wife at the time hated when I played my metal CDs) and I thought about Japan and how they always seem to appreciate hard rock bands from the US and UK either before we do (ex. KISS, Cheap Trick), or after our masses decided the bands are no longer hip (ex. Mr. Big).  I thought, "Surely, there has to be some great metal in Japan," completely oblivious of the whole J-pop idol thing.  One afternoon while at work I went onto YouTube and went looking for the new Loudness.  

I typed in "hard rock band Japan" and one of the videos that came up had an icon of four pretty faces.  It was a shot of Scandal walking down the hallway in "Shoujo S."  My initial thought was "The models are cute, I'll check this one out."  I was blown away by what I saw and heard.  I couldn't believe they were the band, and I couldn't believe how incredibly catchy the song was.  I watched "Shunken Sentimental" after that and then "Harakuze."  I was so hooked I no longer cared about trying to find a pure metal band any longer.  I went down the rabbit hole and watched everything I could find.  It was a glorious discovery.

I remembered the opening of "Samurai X", I loved that song, it must be the first song in Japanese that I heard in my life, so I found "Judy and Mary" to whom I began to listen obsessively.
 and well in one of the searches to find her music, she came to the cover album, the version of "Daydream" by "SCANDAL"
I thought it was completely great, so I looked more about "SCANDAL"

When I saw them I fell completely in love, I was amazed that the four were women, with that rude attitude of the first years, this must have happened before having the first album, since I kept listening to their first singles for a long time in my old music mp3player, without knowing of the existence of the first album.

 Then I remember well, just before a great earthquake occurred in my country (February 27, 2010, I remember this accurately), I looked again on "SCANDAL"
I discovered that they had released the first album "Best★Scandal" (I fell in love with Haruna's voice), I found it wonderful, and I became a big fan, at that same time I started working, with my first salaries I bought their albums online, incredibly more than 10 years have passed.

sorry for my English
I hope you can understand me xD

I recently found out that Bleach is coming back to animate the final arc of the manga. This got me going back to listen to all of the openings for a nostalgia trip. I had heard Shoujo S many times back when it was the current intro for Bleach but hearing it during a nostalgia trip made it a lot more powerful to me than it had been back in the day. One thing led to another and now four months later I'm a huge Scandal fan and own the entire discography.

YouTube recommended to me Space Ranger back in 2008 when the phone wars started. The rest is history

I just heard about them being a cool girl band. I listened to a couple of songs and I didn't really like it at first. Then I told my friend about it and she was like DUUUDE, COME ON, THEY ARE GREAT!!1 and showed me a video of her performing Shoujo S at some sort of an anime expo. I didn't expect it at all! Since then I have become a more die-hard fan than she has ever been lol

Back in 2009 (iirc), my brother told me there's an all girl band called SCANDAL. That was the first time I heard a band with a girl bassist and drummer (the two instruments that I love), I decided to search on YouTube. Their first song I watched was Shoujo S.

I think its in year 2016.
Bless youtube for recomendation. I first watch scandal shoujo s mv. At first i thought they just doing parody of the music coz i swear at the time i have heard the song but cant remember where. I watch bleach anime but didnt recognize its them. After that i watch next recomendation scandal departure, and i realized they are real band and instantly got hooked thx to rina at the mv lol. I admit i got attracted to them visually first. And then i start digging more of their music and the rest is history.

I think I saw SCANDAL for the first time on Youtube, that was probably with the music video for Awanaitsumorino Genkidene, which was recommended to me there randomly.

At the time I was more fascinated by Band-Maid and saw them in Cologne at the MTC. On the way there I passed posters from the SCANDAL Show at Luxor (Yellow World Tour 2016) which had taken place just a month earlier. 
I thought nothing of it, but a few weeks later SCANDAL really grabbed me and I watched the ARENA TOUR 2015-2016 PERFECT WORLD over and over again. Then came the regret that I only missed them for a few weeks in Cologne and since them I'm waiting for them to come to germany again, unfortunately only in berlin now, which isn't quite near my location
Since then they have been one of my favorite bands for a little over 3 years now and I listen to them almost every day and absorb everything they do and have done. :D

Hi everyone.

In 2019 I fell in love with these girls and the band when I bought the "Scandal double album" from 2017 (the pink one). 

But I knew them because of a cover of the song "Rouge no dengon" that I found on Youtube. This song appears in the movie Kiki´s Delivery Service from Studio Ghibli.
So, thanks to Miyazaki, I met Scandal   



Greetings from Spain.

ACG HK 2008. Not became a fan until the after live meet & greet in 2010.

I remember when babymetal brought out their very first (and very quaint) video in 2011 and thinking it was goofy/cute/funny. And then I forgot about them entirely.

A couple of years later and I was hungover and listlessly watching youtube videos when I remembered them and decided to see if they'd done anything else. Low and behold, they were doing stadium shows. Ha ha, awesome!

Anyway, I spotted the thumbnail for Scandal's Doll video and immediately clicked on it, hoping the song/video would live up to whatever vision that single thumbnail had created in my mind. And it exceeded it. There was no going back.

At the time I had a mate that would come around mid-week to watch a movie and have a few beers. There was usually a bit of aftershow entertainment in the form of whatever I'd downloaded off youtube that week. So I showed him babymetal and Scandal and just about blew his mind. He couldn't believe that stuff actually existed.

From then on he kept requesting them both and I was of course making new discoveries each week. I remember that we were both obsessed with the Pin Heel Surfer video very early into our journey, perhaps from the very first night.

This ballooned into drunken sessions in front of the projector with multiple people and the volume absolutely cranked (there was thankfully some distance between us and my neighbours at the time). Their music videos, live shows, whatever. More than once I woke up on the couch in the morning with the projector humming, my head thumping and a Scandal video song list on the screen thinking "Again?!".

Anyway, fast forward 8 years and I'm posting my story on a Scandal forum like some sorta soul-seeking addict. I still catch up with old mate every-so-often and, if we get stuck into the beers - which we usually do - a rowdy Scandal marathon is sure to happen.

Everyone that knows me and hangs out at my place know about Scandal. Some get it, some don't. Most just accept it as part of my eccentric taste in... well, just about everything.

@Haruna's Ears

Wow, that is almost the same as my story !
My daughter used to have Anime News and there was a tiny advert for SCANDAL and "Doll" and at first I thought they were a live action version of K-On

My son was not impressed though, he said Tomomi's voice made him want to tear his ears off

Even after all these years though I still urge people on Social Media to give them a listen.

Mentioned it a bit in the hello thread I made a couple weeks back, but something I realised after I posted that thread was that I had forgotten to mention another part of how I got into Scandal, which was Rinas YouTube channel!

As I mentioned in the hello thread I got a video recommendation on YouTube of them performing Standard while watching Band-Maid. Not long after this I had a video in the recommended feed which was one of Rinas videos! 
At the time I did not know this, but I got curious who this was and clicked the video, and when I scrolled into the comments I saw people talking about drumming. This got me curious which band she played for, and when I saw she played for Scandal, this made me remember recently watching the Standard performance. After this I watched her videos with YTs auto subtitles, as I had not yet found out about SH and did not know there were subs available.

So it's fair to say that Rinas videos for sure played a part in me not only giving Scandal more of a shot, but also helped me really get into the band and the members!

Haruna's Ears wrote:This ballooned into drunken sessions in front of the projector with multiple people and the volume absolutely cranked (there was thankfully some distance between us and my neighbours at the time). Their music videos, live shows, whatever. More than once I woke up on the couch in the morning with the projector humming, my head thumping and a Scandal video song list on the screen thinking "Again?!".

This is an amazing story! I'm very envious of you because I have very few friends who even know Scandal, let alone would marathon them with me.

Steadystate wrote:This is an amazing story! I'm very envious of you because I have very few friends who even know Scandal, let alone would marathon them with me.

Ha. Well, I guess one thing I was good at doing was curating precisely what clips I showed my guests; hand picking songs, music videos and performances. I quickly piqued their curiosity, had them entertained and eventually asking for more.

Probably also helped that we always had the party vibe going and that I've got an A/V set up that is a little more extravagant than most (and I'm not afraid to abuse it).

Funnily enough, we had a bit of a blow out Friday night and my overnight guests and I kicked off the next morning by hair of the dogging it and pounding a few hours of Scandal videos...

So I was aware of Scandal for a little bit but never really paid them much attention.

Then I roomed with fellow Band-Maid fan in 2019 during their US tour. He is a huge Scandal fan and really pushed me to give them another chance.

Well... during all our downtime last year I really started to listen to the band as they were coming to Atlanta for a show. Fell in love with Masterpiece and have fallen into the Scandal rabbit hole since then.

So glad I gave them a second chance. Love this band now.

Great band

I was volunteering at SakuraCon in Seattle back in 2008. For a few years running, we'd made efforts to bring in Japanese bands and singers as part of the Saturday night main floor program, and that year we booked Scandal.

They were... not very good. It took them 3-4 songs to get over their initial nerves... by my recollection, "Playboy" was their first song that they even started to sound good, and it wasn't until "Kagerou" that I could really say that I enjoyed the song on its own merits. It didn't help that our audio equipment was just... terrible. I don't know if we just didn't have anyone that could adequately mix a live performance, or if the equipment was just that bad. Probably a bit of both. Regardless, their nerves and inexperience were not helped at all by our setup.

However, one thing that was really obvious, especially as they got further into their setlist, was how much joy they had in playing and performing, even in front of a crowd that couldn't even speak the same language (for the most part), and even as they had to fight with our equipment to even be heard.

Anyhow, by the end of the concert they'd hit their groove, and they impressed me enough that I went out and bought their only three tracks on iTunes at the time - Space Ranger, Kagerou and I think Koi Moyo. Time went on, and I never was able to find more songs on iTunes, so I figured they had broken up and went on my way. 

Two years ago, I finally got around to watching FMA: Brotherhood, and when I got to the 4th opening, I thought the singers sounded familiar... so I looked them up, discovered that Scandal had not in fact broken up, and introduced myself to all the rest of their music.

@Biokabe

That's a great story.  

Few of us can say they got to witness a bunch of nobodies from another country when they started out at one of their first American shows; forgot about them, and then became a fan over a decade later not realizing that band has had a considerable amount of success.

The best I can think of in my own concert experience over the years was the Dave Mathews Band used to open up for Phish long before they ever had an album out; but once he did release those first two records, it was hard not to know who he was.

cool thread. interesting read all the different ways people discovered and became fans. its only been about a year since i became a fan, but my memory is a bit fuzzy exactly how i became as big a fan as i am now. lets see if the details become more vivid as i reminisce. 

So I had like 4 large paragraphs written out. and yes it helped. then i reviewed it. decided this was a better approach...

TLDR version: Ended guitar hiatus > Youtube > Anime> Youtube > Stereopony > Youtube Rabbit Hole > Band Maid > Scandal >Bleach OPs > Scandal > Band Maid > Scandal > Scandal > Scandal

yep. im sure that made perfect sense to all of you.

Just like Bino-san wrote, interesting thread to read!
I hope it doesn't sound too pretentious, but I'm starting to feel like I'm a part of the big family now :-)
If anyone is interested, here's my (not so) short story.

After watching the same Band-Maid clip on YT for 102nd time (I only know them since the beginning of this year) I saw a thumbnail with some gal with a killer haircut(*) and a title beneath it- "Scandal, Kiss from the Darkness". To this point, I have only read few things about them- they're one of the longest active girl bands in Japan or like they have paved the road for other similar groups over the years. So I thougt that I should at least give them a chance.
After "Fuzzy", "Freedom Fighters", "Scandal Baby" and especially "Neon Town Escape" I knew that I have stepped into the whole new musical world! Even though they were performing without the audience, there was a ton of charisma at the stage. Not to mention that all four ladies looked so unique- charming, joyful and refined at the same time.
After that I thought: they're good now, how about their 1st album? So I randomly chose one of their early MV: "Shoujo S". Nothing more to add :-)
It's been only 6-7 weeks since then, but I think I have found my ultimate idol band (not like I was even purposely searching for one)! It's sad, that it took me whole 15 years to discover them, but I'm also grateful that it has finally happened!

I'm also positively surprised about the overall level of this forum- so many people with so many opinions (sometimes completely different), but respecting each other. Moreover, call me a naive idealist, but I hope that someday we will all meet live during Scandal's concert (Europe '22?) :-)

* that was, of course, Haruna and her captivating fringe from the KftD concert

I got to know Scandal as well as the Japanese pop/rock music scene during late-2018. At that time, i was really enjoying idol group Idoling!!!, and they were doing some comedic covers of B'z's hits. So i looked up B'z on youtube and naturally, bunch of Japanese bands appeared in my recommendation, including, ofc, Scandal, whom i have never heard of. 

Tbh, they are the only all-female band i'm into at the time, and i'm very thankful that i discovered them and got to know the greatness of Japanese music.

I discovered SCANDAL with songs like HARUKAZE and Shoujo S when i saw BLEACH episodes but Shunkan Sentimental is the song that I got really interested in SCANDAL when i watched Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood episodes. 
When i saw the Billboard’s live and I heard SCANDAL BABY,  that was the start,  i said to my self : "Let’s go to discover all SCANDAL’S songs.". Since this point, i bought albums and singles and my first live of my life was the MIRROR tour in 2022 when they came in Paris. It was one of my best day of my life.