It’s summer. I’ve just finished another year of school, and like any teen with too much free time and broadband internet, I surf the web. I look up anime tv show openers and closers to download until YouTube recommended a video to me. The title’s “One Room Disco.” It had more than twenty million views. In the summer of 2009, that number was unheard of, especially for a Japanese music video. So I clicked it.
And in that moment, everything changed.
The lights, the choreography, the sound, the energy, even the lyrics that I do not understand. Something in that video reached out and grabbed me. Everything just clicked. When the video ended, I knew that my life had shifted in a way I could not explain.
I fell in love instantly. Who are they? A pop group called Perfume. Maybe JPop, maybe J‑electro? I don’t know, all I knew was that I liked them. I watched every music video I could find. I stumbled upon their concert performances. Everything looked like they were from the future. Everything I have ever wanted to see creatively was wrapped inside this one group.
I developed a taste for technopop and electronic music from everywhere. I learned about their producer, Yasutaka Nakata. I learned about their choreographer, MIKIKO, and their concert director, Daito Manabe. The more I learned about Perfume, the more I was exposed to the world.
What amazed me most is how global their creative ecosystem is. Their choreography carries influences from New York City. Their sound inspires rising European artists like SOPHIE, Zedd, Madeon, and more. Their fandom even stretched across the world, the Americas, Europe, Asia, Oceania and even Africa.
Perfume showed me a world that is connected, collaborative and full of possibility.
I begin to understand that loving Perfume is like loving the world.
Act II: The Creative Fuel
Over time, something in me opens. I write more. I experiment more. I build aesthetics and soundtracks for film ideas I want to make. I do all this while listening to Pefume.
Perfume becomes the fuel for my creativity. Their music and their visuals push me to try things I never would have tried before.
In 2011, I made a YouTube video about their song “Hurly Burly.” It went viral. It was the first time my face was attached to something that went viral. That moment encouraged me to keep creating. I proceeded to make sketches, parodies, podcasts and a blog series about my experience at a conservative college. All while taking a full college course load.
Perfume fans welcomed me with open arms. They drew me, animated me, remixed me and glitched me into their video edits. I felt like I was a part of a digital art house filled with brilliant artistic people. That energy gave me the courage to move to Los Angeles and pursue a career in television screenwriting. In my first year in LA, still inspired by the #prfm community, I created a webseries that landed me a Netflix deal. The deal fell thru because of the pandemic, but the style, the drive and the vision behind it all came from Perfume and the encouragement from the #prfm fandom. They are the reason why I am a working creative today.
Since the pandemic, life has become harder. The entertainment industry is unstable. The economy is rough. Many of my peers are burnt out. I am working jobs that pay the bills but do not fuel the creative spirit. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
But when things feel heavy, I return to Perfume. I revisit the artists connected to them and the artists inspired by them. I watch their videos again and again. I remind myself of that chance Perfume gave me. The chance to dream.
I still want to give that feeling to someone else. I want to make a piece of film that sparks something in an up‑and‑coming artist the way Perfume sparked something in me. I want to give someone the chance to dream.
So thank you Perfume. Thank you for everything. Enjoy your cryogenic sleep, and whenever you decide to return, I will be waiting. Ready to watch you all in awe.
baratheonpilled
jbbartram-illu
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