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deaths, amusing scandals and a series of increasingly senile looking attempts by the music industry to cling onto its outdated business model — that was 2009.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.