As culture fractures into a thousand algorithmic niches and madeup genres, it feels like there’s barely anything that hijacks everyone’s brains at once. In the 2020s, we’ve only gotten a few feeble shreds of musical monoculture in the US, like the Kendrick/Drake war and the near-universal outcry against The Idol. And these were often focused more on circumstances surrounding the music (see: moral panic about Lil Nas X giving Satan a lap dance) than singular musical “events” like in the days before trends hit warpspeed, when the idea of a global music hit felt fresh.
Overseas, though, something’s bubbling. People are betting that the next song capable of uniting the world isn’t a future-shocking radio anthem or a crossover K-pop smash—it’s actually “YAK.” On first listen, there’s nothing immediately hooky. There are standard-fare drums, strings, and piano, played like a cheesy showtune for a Disneyland cafe that serves misshapen chicken nuggets. A robotic voice chirps in, singing about a romantic scenario with occasional grunts.
This song has totally taken over in Japan, racking up 34 million views on YouTube alone and soaring to the top of Spotify’s Viral 50 Japan chart in Aprilstaying at #1 for multiple weeks. The track was made with Udio, an AI platform that generates music based on text prompts, per tags on the clip. But the real reason it has spread like an untreatable rash is because the lyrics (“Come on my chest… sorry to keep you waiting, I only had iced tea…”) are almost entirely themed after an infamous gay porn video from the 2000s. The song’s cover features the face of a man nicknamed Yaju Senpai, also “The Beastly Senior,” who plays the villain in the porno, plotting a sexual assault of a heterosexual swimmer from his high school. He acts in episode four of a series called A Midsummer Night’s Lewd Dreamwhich has been immortalized in Japanese digital culture on sites like Nico Nico Douga. It circulated widely partly because one of the film’s actors, Kazuhito Tadano, was a professional baseball player, and it became a scandal.
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