OmniStrata wrote:Who da heck is he?
:p
*exasperation* What am I ever going to do with you youngin's!?
Matthew Sweet made the seminal classic videos "Girlfriend" and "I've Been Waiting" back in the early ninties.
Some of use "old folk" probably remember them...
Animerica Vol.1, Issue 2. By Trish Ledoux
Sometimes, it takes...well, divine intervention to get played on MTV these days.
Singer/songwriter Matthew Sweet released his first solo album Inside in 1986, but it wasn't until his album Girlfriend came along five years later that he'd become one of MTV's most requested artists. Featuring lengthy animation sequences from artist/creator Buichi Terasawa's Space Adventure Cobra TV series, the title-cut video caught the fancy of both mainstream viewers and anime fans alike.
They weren't the only ones to sit up and pay attention. Sweet's been written up everywhere from Pulse! magazine to New York's acclaimed (and occasionally controversial)Village Voice. A recent Voice article refers to Sweet as "the highest-profile otaku in the world," despite Sweet's insistence that he does not consider himself to be a member of America's otaku.
"I'm kind of newcomer to Japanese animation, so when fans come up to me thinking I'm like this guru fan or something, it's difficult for me," Sweet says. "I don't really know that much about it, I just like it, and there are certain things that I'm attracted to and collect. Especially in the case of Lum."
Sweet says he first became interested in Japanese animation by watching Speed Racer as a child. Like many fans, it would be a long time before he realized that the animation was Japanese and not American. He finds it amusing that so many people think it's Speed Racer he's using in his "Girlfriend" video. "I guess to some people in America, all Japanese animation looks exactly the same."
Sweet readily agrees that Japanese animation was instrumental in getting air time on MTV, although he doesn't plan to keep using it. "I don't want to be known as 'the guy with the cartoons in his videos,'" he jokes. "The animation served its purpose by drawing the attention of people switching channels, who'd see this weird animation from Mars or something. And then, maybe they'd realize there was a song going along with it."
The idea to use Japanese animation to promote his music first occurred to Sweet when he saw a page of Terasawa's Cobra, first published in English by Viz. "There's something I like about the Cobra stuff. I mean, in a way, it's sleazier than a lot of other Japanese animation. The art is really cool-looking, and the people are very beautiful to me.
"The particular drawing I wanted to use was this kind of coffin flying through space with the Jane Royal character lying inside of it. It was like a cross-shaped coffin; it had this kind of religious vibe to it. It was sort of weird and fatalistic...kind of a sex-death vibe."
Difficulties with securing rights prevented the artwork from being used as Sweet had hoped for his 45 rpm single "Holy War." It wasn't until his first promotional single, "Divine Intervention," that the Sweet-Tarasawa connection could at last be made.
Although it certainly wasn't the first animated video to be shown on MTV, Sweet's "Girlfriend" video was the only one to use Japanese animation so extensively. His next video, "I've Been Waiting," starred the green-haired, bikini-clad Lum ffrom Rumiko Takahashi's Urusei Yatsura series and became a causes celebre among anime fans around the world. Sweet says he chose Cobra for "Girlfriend" because he wanted something "a little more hard-edged, sexier, more rock 'n' roll than Lum," who to him is softer and more suited to pop music.
Sweet is so...well, sweet on Lum that during October of 1991 he tattooed her image on his left arm. According to a recent interview in Animage magazine, the tattoo has "completely become his trademark" in Japan. Everywhere he went, he tells us, he was greeted with cries of "Show me Lum!" from hordes of excited schoolgirls.
"Getting the tattoo was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing." Sweet laughs. "I mean, it's not like I was drunk or anything. I'd happened to have these Urusei Yatsura cassette covers with me. One of my guitar players and I walked into this tatto place on Sunset and I just started talking to the people. They were very nice and very normal, not at all what I'd thought they'd be like. A few days later I broke down and just did it-I got the Lum tattoo, much to the shock of everyone, the dismay of some, and the delight of others.
"I've never regretted it," Sweet says. "I just love the Lum character. She just...makes me happy. I thought of the tattoo as something that was different and neat and uniquely me. I didn't get it to show off to other people. It was something I did for my own personal enjoyment."
Does his mother know?
"It's a good thing there's laser surgery," she says.