Release Date: March 1, 2023
Track Listing
- Firetruck
Review
SG5 (Sailor Guardians 5) is a Japanese girl group managed by LDH Japan, the three Six Zero global management company and WME. This five-member group is the first-ever music group produced in collaboration with Sailor Moon. Exactly how this ties into the Sailor Moon franchise is unclear to me. But whatever.
The membership of SG5 comprises four members of Happiness (Kaede, Sayaka, Ruri and Miyuu) and one member of iScream (Rui).
Their debut single is Firetruck, produced by American producers Bloodpop and Hudson Mohawke.
I don’t know what to say about Firetruck. Its style of music isn’t my cup of tea. So much of it has to do with the off-key metal clanging used as the lead for the melodic parts of the song. It sounds like random pots and pans or power tools banging on concrete.
So it isn’t easy to be objective when the music is this unpleasant. However, I can say that Firetruck is much different from the music the members of Happiness usually make. So it’s interesting to see them working with a track like this.
I don’t know anything about iScream (unless you’re talking about the SM Entertainment sub-label of the same name), but Rui has me interested in making time to check them out.
The other positives I can take away from Firetruck are that the “I’m the baddest.” lyrics fit the unpleasant music. And if you put the video on mute, you get a visual feast, making this much more tolerable. Lastly, this is at least something different from the norm for modern Japanese girl groups, so I can’t fault them for going all in on an unusual concept.
Even though I’m not too fond of this song, there is a market for it. So it will be a like-it-or-hate-it type of track for most listeners. Listen at your discretion.
