Babymetal’s Classic “Gimme Chocolate!!” Mixes Pop, Art, and Id

Babymetal’s “Gimme Chocolate!!” video, like your favorite B-movie, combines one part pop culture, one part art, and one part id as well as catharsis.

The Opening 

A ghostly white, pixelated haze emerges from the black screen, suggesting an old-fashioned TV set warming up. This image might come from a supernatural horror movie, perhaps 1998’s Ringu, which pays homage to 1982’s Poltergeist. Matched by fuzzy noise, the electronic fog clears to reveal a stage, where three obscured figures stand, slowly moving their arms. A slightly gravelly male voice whispers, “Give me… chocolate”, and a heavy-metal maelstrom kicks in. This is Babymetal.

The three figures turn out to be diminutive young Japanese women. They look alike and wear matching outfits. Their shiny black tops suggest samurai bondage wear. Their pouffy skirts suggest sooty, bloody tutus. They are now making synchronized movements in the mode of Pete Townshend‘s windmill guitar strokes.

There’s a quick cut to a male bass-guitar player wearing a skeleton costume, then a cut back to the women, who are now bathed in crimson light. The women perform synchronized dance moves, followed by drumming motions, and then pushing-forward gestures. Those gestures correspond to a musical buzzsaw sound that suggests the heavily processed scraping of an electric guitar. 

Standing in place, the women shimmy, each one raising her arms, extending her index fingers, and pointing to both sides of her head. The pointing seems like code for something. Their pouffy skirts are rustling. They’re smiling. The music charges forward relentlessly.

The Song

You like strong opinions, right? Here’s a strong opinion. So far, the three most infectious songs of the 21st century are Lana Del Ray‘s “Video Games” (2011), Rihanna‘s “Stay” (2012), and Babymetal‘s “Gimme Chocolate!!” (2014). As good as her subsequent music may be, will any other Lana Del Ray track leave you sitting, stunned, slack-jawed, the way “Video Games” did the first time you heard it? Rihanna has created many beautiful songs, but will she ever match the arresting quality of “Stay”?

Both of those songs were co-written by Justin Parker, who clearly has a knack for hooks. However, Parker didn’t co-write “Gimme Chocolate!!” Those credits go to three Japanese people: Takeshi Ueda, of the long-defunct Japanese band the Mad Capsule Markets, wrote the music. Miki Watanabe (aka Mk-Metal) and Key Kobayashi (aka Kobametal) wrote the lyrics.

That it reportedly took two people to cobble together these lyrics boggles the mind, because the words present a simple scenario. A person wants to eat chocolate but worries about gaining weight. Many of us can identify with, sympathize with, or empathize with this dilemma, but doing so isn’t a precondition for enjoying “Gimme Chocolate!!” You can blissfully disregard the syllables’ meaning and sink into their rich chocolately goodness.

As a song, “Gimme Chocolate!!” might not stand alone. “Video Games” and “Stay” work perfectly well as haunting tunes with mildly evocative lyrics that you can get lost in. “Gimme Chocolate!!” is an entirely different musical experience, probably most effective within the context of the video. There, all the quick cuts necessitate paying attention and, meanwhile, generate excitement because you might miss some detail while you’re busy deciphering signals, such as the finger-pointing. What do all these signifiers add up to? Other recordings of the song, even other live performances with choreography, don’t carry the same charge.

One way to think about this concoction is as the start of kawaii (or cute) metal, which combines Japanese pop (or J-pop) and thrash. Another way is as a hypothetical steampunk collaboration between Taylor Swift and Metallica. A third is as Josie and the Pussycats gone feral. My favorite is as a girl-group nightmare dreamed up by the long-gone, pre-Internet New York-based punk-metal band, Plasmatics.

Plasmatics

Plasmatics’ first album (1980) included a cover of “Dream Lover”, a frothy ballad written and recorded by the pop singer Bobby Darin in 1959. Their second album (1981) included an original, “Summer Nite”, which updated 1960s girl-group tragedy songs, featuring car crashes and similar themes, in a punk-metal context. It featured backing vocals by an actual girl group, the Angels, of “My Boyfriend’s Back” fame. “Dream Lover” and “Summer Nite” revealed that, beneath all the other elements, the Plasmatics had a pure pop foundation.

So much else consisted of layers of trash. Band members performed in costume, prominently the original lead guitarist, the mohawk-bearing, tutu-wearing Richie Stotts. The musicians sometimes recorded instrumental interludes without hearing or seeing each other, producing pure racket. Plasmatics’ lyrics celebrated sex, violence, and iconoclasm.

The group’s lead troublemaker, Wendy Orleans Williams (aka WOW), grunted her way through the minimal melodies. Wearing either a schoolgirl skirt or black-leather pants and either sticky tape or shaving cream on her nipples, she took chainsaws to guitars, blew up automobiles. Eye-popping spectacle, with cues taken from porn and horror, was the Plasmatics’ raison d’être. Sometimes on late-night television, they celebrated more trash than Oscar the Grouch.

The Video

The Plasmatics would have reached an apotheosis in a glitzy, ghastly setting like the “Gimme Chocolate!!” video. Would Babymetal, formed in 2010, have existed without the trashy template set by the Plasmatics?

It may be purely coincidental that each of these bands was assembled by a producer and promoter: Babymetal by the aforementioned Kobametal, the Plasmatics by Rod Swenson. It may be purely coincidental that the Plasmatics’ first EP (1979) included titles and credits in both Japanese and English, presumably catering to fan bases in Japan and the US. It may also be coincidental that the Plasmatics’ original bassist, Chosei Funahara, was born in Japan and counted off the songs in Japanese.

Still, put Chosei Funahara in a skeleton costume, and he could have been the bassist in the “Gimme Chocolate!!” video. (Babymetal’s musicians are, in fact, session players.) Plasmatics’ worthy imagery runs through the seemingly non-narrative assemblage. Directed by Ryosuke Machida, the footage encapsulates the song’s December 2013 live premiere. To get the full-on furnace effect, you have to watch.

You don’t have to be any particular type of person to savor this puerile audiovisual madness. As of this writing, the video has been watched over 208 million times, reflecting a multicultural phenomenon. Babymetal supported Lady Gaga on her 2014 ArtRave tour, making clear that their appeal extends in directions the Plasmatics would never have dreamed about. The Internet connects disparate interest groups, and we should never underestimate the communicative power of a video. This video has empowered imitators, such as young women performing the dance routines. See, for example, this dance cover, this other one, and the Sakurametal Live cover. 

The Impulses

Part of the appeal of the “Gimme Chocolate!!” video is a frisson of fetishism, inspired by the singers’ appearances. The creative team has clearly drawn on cartoonish celebrations, or maybe reductive exploitations, of “Asian dolls”. You don’t have to be particularly interested in Japanese women—I’m not particularly, I swear—to recognize that these front women are adorable. They are badass metal-babes made for manga or a live-action series like The Monkees. That’s “babes”, by the way, not “babies”. The “baby” part of Babymetal reportedly refers to the creation of a new musical genre.

These “babes” turn out to be Suzuka Nakamoto (also known as Su-Metal), Yui Mizuno (also known as Yuimetal), and Moa Kikuchi (also known as Moametal). Yuimetal has since been replaced by Momoko Okazaki (aka Momometal).

That these women share the “metal” moniker connects Babymetal with the Ramones. Those boys from New York City were real-life Plasmatics compatriots and also cartoonish icons who, early on, adopted juvenile delinquent garb and the surname Ramone. “Gimme” in Babymetal’s song title also evokes the Ramones’ “Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment”. Tacitly referencing the Ramones is like employing a secret handshake that’s an open secret. For those in the know, it means you’re cool. 

Babymetal’s garb is cool, juvenile but provocative, edgy: warrior on top, goth-schoolgirl-ballerina below. Their moves have been choreographed to combine aesthetics, athleticism, eroticism, cuteness, and goofy humor. Every element of the presentation conveys impurity with a wink.

That the impulses being triggered in viewers may not be wholesome is part of the point. Su-Metal, Yuimetal, and Moametal were teenagers in 2014, as the creative team behind this spectacle clearly knew. Teenage energy has always been the essence of rock ‘n’ roll, its raison d’être as an art form. One reason art exists is to provide safe spaces in which unsafe aspects of life can be explored. Thus, the “Gimme Chocolate!!” video, like your favorite B-movie, combines one part pop culture, one part art, and one part id. There may be many other parts, such as catharsis, for devotees to determine.