As the cool Winter breeze of January has passed us by, that means it’s time for this months Ongaku Go! We at OTY would like our readers to know what was filling our ears for the past month. Each track is available across all digital music streaming platforms, with Apple Music featured on this site, along with our Spotify playlist here!

‘15 minutes’ by LIL LEAGUE

What?! An Exile Tribe song included on my Ongaku Go. What am I Gray? All joking aside, my time with LIL LEAGUE was very enjoyable and no more was that shown with the track “15 minutes. “Upon first listen, I had to do a double take to make sure I was listening to them as it was a complete shocker in both tone and composition. Relying more on their vocal strength, the boys show why they won the competition that brought them together in the first place. The range they show is out of this world and I hope that they will do more styles of tracks like this to break that dance image that Exile Tribe groups usually has. While I know this was an outlier for LIL LEAGUE, I do hope to come back to songs like this in the future.
Be sure to check out the music video below along with the track here!

‘2MANYTIMES’ by SIRUP, CODY JON, And Taka Perry

What is an OG for me without a reference to SIRUP. However, this time he is not alone as he has the vocalists’ CODY JON and Taka Perry with him on the front. What amazing collaboration this is as it shows how great all three artist are as a vocalist. While not the most impressive from a composition standpoint, the simplicity helps it out overall with minor tweaks from the saxophone through out; the sax made it become a song that I had to absolutely put in my rotation. While I’m not too sure that I’ll listen to Jon or Perry all too much in the future, I am happy to have such a wonderful introduction to them in this track.

Check out the lyric video for ‘2MANYTIMES’ below along with the song here!

‘Soulsoup’ by OFFICIAL HIGE DANDISM

Going a completely different way, we have OFFICIAL HIGE’s latest release of “Soulsoup” to bring that energy back to my rotation. While not the best track that I’ve enjoyed from the band they’ve done, they do a great job of bringing me in as the listener with this high energy composition, which I feel would bring anyone back jumping. While I do hope that they do have releases like these sparingly, it still go to hear that the group can still bring ‘it’ when be.

Be sure to check out the music video for ‘Soulsoup’ below along with the track here!

‘Hug’ by IRI

It’s been a while since I had an IRI track on my list and I’m happy to be able to highlight this. “Hug” had featured what I had loved about IRI in the first place, that strong vocal presence that really dictates the mood and is not over-powered by the composition. The overall slow tempo style that this release did was something that I really needed especially with everything that was going on this month. While I should be listening to more IRI this year, if is anything like “HUG”, I’ll gladly be the front of the line.

Check out the music video for ‘Hug’ below along with the track here!

‘Can You Keep A Secret’ by Hikaru Utada

I blame the Kohaku for this pick, as they did a segment about popular drama songs on our times, and it made me immediately think of Utada’s virtue in this with ‘Can You Keep A Secret’. OG Utada is something that had to be listened to by people who are just getting into Japanese music, and aside from the big hits like ‘Hikari’ and ‘Sanctuary’ the next track would be this one that I would personally introduce newbies to. While I do know Utada’s style has changed significantly from this era, it is still nice to go back and take that nice bit of old school hits.

Be sure to check out the music video for ‘Can You Keep A Secret’ below along the track here!

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