(Credits: Far Out / Album Cover)
Thu 18 September 2025 23:00, UK
Over in Japan, the scourge of AI-generated pop has found something of a minor pop-cultural explosion among the overlapping realms of music and memes.
One listen to ‘YAJU&U’ by the elusive mochimochi doesn’t offer any clues to its viral success. From the first moment its artificial mush of clunking piano thud and disorienting fiddle strings churn with insipid bludgeon against the high-pitched vocals, little doubt is left as to what’s behind the patience-thinning endurance test.
AI slop seeps out of every one of ‘YAJU&U’s pores. The cold shiver of an aural uncanny valley disquiet radiates aggressively. It’s brain-smoothing exposure of content lacking a scintilla of creativity or human endeavour, the cheap amalgamation of music’s giblets and factory meats smushed together without thought or flair. Even the accompanying image of dancing cats possesses the unmistakable artlessness that’s screamingly obvious from lazy, generated imagery beloved by boomer bands and right-wing propaganda clowns on X.
Everything about it is fucking hideous. But, ‘YAJU&U’ has racked up over 41million views on YouTube and spent several weeks at the top of Spotify’s Viral 50 Japan chart in April. Popularity was accelerated by the many choreographed dance routines devised for the song, spreading like wildfire on the Niconico video sharing site, and even namechecked by massive J-Pop stars like Kohmi Hirose and Ano. Why has such an unremarkable slice of sloppop seized Japanese online attention?
Well, as ever, such viral reach often springs from a joke. Occupying the face of one of ‘YAJU&U’s cover’s cats is the imposed photograph of an unknown gay porn actor dubbed Yaju Senpai, or ‘The Beastly Senpai’. Starring in 2001’s A Midsummer Night’s Lewd Dream by Coat Corporation, Yaju Senpai enters the plot in the fourth episode, playing the uncomfortable role of a villainous deviant who plans to drug and sexually assault a younger straight male. Standing in infamy for its shoddy story and poor acting, A Midsummer Night’s Lewd Dream came to further attention when the star NPB baseball player Kazuhito Tadano had starred in the Babylon Stage series prior to stardom.
The software behind ‘YAJU&U’ is Udio. Able to generate music almost immediately from text prompts, the AI music tool also pushed the schlager-pop lampoon ‘Verknallt in einen Talahon’ by Austrian producer Butterbro high up in the German charts. Seemingly innocent, the lyrical play of immigrant men cavorting with white girls against the backdrop of Germany’s musical conservatism of yesteryear struck an uneasy tone with a public anxious about the hard-right alternative for Germany’s electoral presence.
It’s this queasy mulch that looks set to spark a depressing trend. AI has begun to swamp digital streaming services with little in the way of serious regulation, drowning out the voices of real artists already wading through dismal revenue earnings, and much of the ruthless Silicon Valley tech class seems to actively delight in AI’s upending threat to creative industries and livelihoods.
‘YAJU&U’ and its phenomenal success may seem like an oddity, but such easy AI creations will point the way toward further polluting of the social, artistic, and even political sphere, when accuracy is losing currency by the day and supplanted by an attention economy that leaves human expression in its wake. It’s a dismal future that will only encourage those who benefit from the miasma of media noise and flooded narratives, and we must all do our part to resist it.
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AloJapan.com