Shiho Fujita, better known by the pseudonym Sifow, has had a brief but interesting career as a musician. As a teenager Sifow fell in love with the _ganguro_ fashion style—you know, [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganguro). In 2004, at the age of eighteen, Sifow began to appear in ganguro fashion magazines and related advertisements. This quickly brought her a lot of attention, both positive and negative. On the one hand, Sifow proved to be an immediate success in the fashion world, glamorizing the ganguro style she loved. However, on the other hand, she also began to receive a lot of negative feedback from people who feel the entire ganguro look is representative of a problem with young Japanese girls, and with Sifow’s popularity they called her out as effectively championing that ‘poisonous’ movement. _”RobbyLob, you’re rambling again. What does this have to do with her music or anything?”_ Good question. The negative reactions Sifow received for her choices in modeling coincided with her decision to become a singer. In 2005 this culminated in her releasing the single _I Uta._ She produced the single herself and printed only two-thousand copies under the realistic assumption that she would not be an overnight sensation. Well she was wrong; half of those two-thousand CDs sold in less than twenty-four hours. What made this more impressive was the fact that Sifow had promoted the single entirely over the Internet; she created a promotional video for the single, but again, it was only released online and did not initially play on television music networks. Sifow released a total of four singles that year, all of them selling out rapidly, and that caught the attention of Avex Trax. They offered to sign her and she accepted. Sifow decided to use her new-found popularity in music to combat the negative stereotypes surrounding ganguro culture. She addressed the subject in the lyrics for her songs—which she always wrote her own lyrics—and continued to rather flagrantly flaunt the ganguro style on the covers and promotional material for her singles and albums. Sifow is not the first J-Pop musician to begin as a model, and she certainly will not be the last. But few have made the subject of fashion itself the focal topic of their music. On the subject of _Love Spell_ itself, her second album, it is what I would consider typical J-Pop in most respects. It perhaps borrows more from the euro-beat genre than most. The album reminds me of the mid-to-late 90’s music of Kimura Yuki. There is nothing about the composition of Sifow’s music that is revolutionary or ground-breaking. But that doesn’t imply an absence of quality. _Love Spell_ is an entertaining pop album in my opinion, and while Sifow is not a stunning vocalist she still gives a solid performance. The contrarian nature of her lyricism and overall presentation provides an interesting texture to her music that helps it stand out—in my opinion anyways. Sifow has been on indefinite hiatus since the release of _Love Spell._ Technically she still has a working relationship with Avex Trax. But it remains to be seen whether or not Sifow will return to Japanese music. If she does not, then at least in two years she created two entertaining an interesting J-Pop albums with a borderline activist agenda behind them. Sorry for rambling on and on again. Enjoy the album!