5 essential Vaundy tracks for J-pop newcomers

Vaundy is a Japanese singer-songwriter often described as a prodigious talent — one who moves freely across pop, R&B, rock and ballad without being confined to any single genre.

His first Seoul concert, announced for this September, sold out every showing on the first day tickets went on sale.

That popularity is reflected in a phrase heard more and more often: "Vaundy is why I got into J-pop." His songs have quietly become a gateway into Japanese music for a whole new audience.

So where should a first-time listener begin?

Below are five Vaundy songs that have won over general listeners — not just devoted fans — and made the biggest impression on the widest audience.

Music video: Kaiju no Hanautai / Vaundy

This song served as the theme for the Japanese drama series "My Murderous Intent Fell in Love."

There is an old custom: when you have a crush on someone, you pluck petals one by one, alternating between "they love me" and "they love me not." It is a cliché that has appeared in countless romance dramas.

As the title suggests, the song uses that petal-plucking ritual as a metaphor for love. What makes it interesting is the reason behind the ritual — because neither the other person's feelings nor the couple's future can be known for certain, the narrator reaches for an answer even in a single small petal. The narrator asks, "What lies at the end of love's road?" and wonders about what lies ahead for the two of them. Yet what they hope to find at that end is surprisingly modest: "Let's talk about nothing in particular, just the two of us."

That contrast comes through most sharply in the lyric: "Our thousand-year love is like a flower that bends at a single nod." A "thousand-year love" usually calls to mind something unshakeable and lasting — yet Vaundy compares it to a flower that can snap at the slightest word. It is as though he dreams of everlasting love while knowing full well how fragile and precarious that feeling really is.

Near the end of the song, however, the lyric shifts. The flower that "bends at a single nod" becomes a flower that "blooms at a single nod." The same word, the same gesture, can either break a love or bring it back to life. Perhaps what Vaundy calls "trivial love" is built from exactly those small moments — listening to each other and nodding along.

In that light, the "thousand-year love" the song describes seems less about permanence than about a wish to keep spending time together, even through change and uncertainty. The desire to share unremarkable stories a thousand years from now, to pluck petals and laugh together — that longing for the other person to still be there in an unknowable future may be the love this song is really about.

Music video: Hana Uta i / Vaundy

This track began its comeback in earnest after Vaundy performed it on the 2022 NHK Kohaku Uta Gassen, and it is probably the first song most people would name as his signature. It went on to hold a top position on Japanese noraebang charts for an extended stretch, winning fans across generations. Written from the start with a live audience in mind, "Kaiju no Hanautai" carries a particularly strong energy when heard in a concert hall.

There is one intriguing detail about the song. The title is "Kaiju no Hanautai" — the monster's flower song — yet the lyrics repeatedly refer to "the monster's song," a different thing entirely. Vaundy himself has confirmed that the two are not the same. As he explained it, there is someone who once sang "the monster's song," and "Kaiju no Hanautai" is the song sung later by another person who remembers watching them.

In other words, the very track we are listening to is itself a "song of memory" — someone singing again from recollection. Fans have debated its interpretation ever since.

That context makes the lyric "The past that falls away is vivid, the future I want to show you is delicate" feel all the more weighted. We generally live facing forward, yet what pushes us ahead in hard times is often the memory of a moment already gone. Memory runs through the whole song. The line "What comes to mind is your song — clearer than any conversation" captures something true: old memories are strange. A voice, an expression, a song you heard together — things that seemed unremarkable at the time can surface with startling clarity long afterward. In this song, "your song" is what plays that role for the narrator.

None of us can return to a good moment in the past, but we can sing the songs we heard back then. That may be why listening to this track brings on an unexpected swell of feeling. The time shared with someone may end, but the memories left behind keep carrying us forward.

Music video: Tokimeki / Vaundy

What is excitement, really?

The flutter of meeting someone you like? The anticipation of heading somewhere you have never been?

The title "Tokimeki" is a Japanese word for the feeling of one's heart racing or fluttering with excitement. In this song, it takes shape as a kind of "magic" — something visible, audible, and capable of moving people.

What makes the song interesting is that this magic does not arrive only in happy moments. Phrases like "the sound of someone's tears falling" and "unending sorrow" sit oddly against the bright melody. Yet the song says, "Let the tears fall and then smile" and "Even a future you can't see isn't so bad." The suggestion seems to be that happiness does not require sorrow to disappear first — sometimes the excitement of life is found in laughing through tears and moving toward an uncertain future anyway.

The lyric that stands out in particular is: "It feels like unending sorrow becomes dots that draw a line." The scattered moments of sadness connect into a single line, and that line is what ultimately moves you forward. Looking back, the moments of crying and wavering gather into the person you are now and push you toward what comes next.

The music video gives visual form to that sense of magic. Director Ninomiya Ken said that while working out how to portray the journey toward the excitement Vaundy had drawn, he found himself thinking of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" — an adventure setting out toward a new world, which aligns naturally with the song's message of embracing an unknown future rather than fearing it. For anyone who wants to feel the "magic of excitement" the song conjures, watching the video alongside it is well worth the time.

Does excitement necessarily come from certainty that something good is about to happen?

It might be better described as the thrill of the unknown — a feeling possible precisely because you do not know what comes next. The song calls out, "There's no time to be yawning," urging the listener to enjoy this very moment. The fact that it makes even an uncertain tomorrow feel worth looking forward to is what makes "Tokimeki" a small piece of magic that moves the listener — exactly as its title promises.

Music video: Odoriko / Vaundy (performed at the 75th NHK Kohaku Uta Gassen)

This is probably Vaundy's most widely known song. It has been used in more than 240,000 Instagram Reels and has gone viral multiple times. In South Korea, it reached an even broader audience after NewJeans member Minji posted a cover video that drew widespread attention.

The title "Odoriko" refers to a woman whose livelihood is dance. True to that title, the music video features Japanese actor Komatsu Nana as a dancer — drifting freely from place to place with no fixed destination, her movement blending naturally with the song's dreamy, floating atmosphere.

The lyric "If the future spinning between you and me could stop somewhere and start again" captures the song's identity and message most clearly. It is the feeling of wanting to go back to the beginning, even while knowing that a relationship has already ended or is moving in a direction that cannot be reversed. That lingering regret runs quietly through the entire song.

What makes the song special is that it expresses that feeling not with raw grief but as though recounting a dream. Unlike most breakup songs, it leaves the listener with something strangely wistful and warm. The lyric "What remains after we scatter is a song of unchanging love" hints at a wish to preserve even a finished love as a beautiful memory. Ultimately, the song speaks of love's ending while insisting that the warmth love left behind stays on in the song and never quite disappears.

Music video: Koikaze ni Nosete / Vaundy

By Vaundy's own account, this song began as an attempt to reinterpret the distinctive sound of 1990s J-pop in a contemporary way. That origin gives it a texture noticeably different from his other work. The song also gained wide attention as the theme for the popular Japanese dating reality show "Okami ni wa Damasarenai" ("I Won't Be Fooled by a Wolf").

What stands out most is the wordplay embedded in the Japanese title. "Koikaze ni Nosete" — roughly, "carried on the wind of love" — draws on the fact that the Japanese word "kaze" carries three meanings at once: "koi" combined with "kaze" forms "koikaze" (the wind of love), while "kaze" on its own also means a cold or flu. Vaundy uses that overlap to capture the moment when love seeps in like a breeze and, before you know it, has spread as deep as a cold.

When you think about it, a cold and falling in love are not so different. A cold often takes hold without your noticing — it starts as a vague sense that something feels off, and by the time you register it, you already have a fever and are fully in its grip. Love works the same way. You become aware of someone, unsure whether what you feel is really love, until one moment you realize you have already fallen deeply.

That gradual shift is traced carefully in the lyrics through three glances: "averting eyes," "staring wide-eyed," and "meeting eyes directly" — a sequence that maps the arc from first awareness of a feeling, to recognizing it, to the moment two hearts finally connect.

What follows is the small, unremarkable love of sharing ordinary things — and then, in the line "The days that come to mind are the ones that make us sad," a private sadness at the parting that must come someday. That may be why, long after the song ends, we find ourselves thinking back to the moment we first fell for someone.

Vaundy has built a sound entirely his own — crossing genre lines freely and delivering powerful live performances.

His Seoul concert is now just around the corner. As summer fades, why not let these five songs be your introduction to his music?

By Kim Ju-yeon, content operator

Editing by Min Sang-sik