A year of tragic deaths, amusing scandals and a series of increasingly senile looking attempts by the music industry to cling onto its outdated business model ¡ª that was 2009.
The year was characterized by a fragile facade of continuity, while changes in the music world, both trivial and monumental, rumbled on regardless.
In the world of idol pop, Tsunku¡¯s Hello Project and the latest interchangeable incarnation of Morning Musume were further crushed under the steel-tipped jackboot of Yasushi Akimoto¡¯s clone army AKB48, who raked in three gold records and tormented unsuspecting audiences in France and the United States. In contrast, Hello Project¡¯s previously all-conquering cyborg idol Aya Matsuura was ¡°graduated¡± by the organization this March, in a process that sounds alarmingly similar to the ¡°retirement¡± of replicants in ¡°Blade Runner.¡± If that wasn¡¯t enough, Akimoto¡¯s Nagoya-based sister project, SKE48, also debuted this year, in one stroke doubling the forces at his disposal.
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