https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1KtM0r6aI8

Of the vaporwave I’ve heard so far, no individual song has struck me more than “Airglider”, the opening track on フライトを楽しむ (Enjoy Your Flight!) by 日本航空株式会社 ✈ Japan Airlines. Expanding on the sort of feathery easy listening you might hear while boarding an airplane, the song lifts you up into the sunlit skies above an Asian metropolis in a way that the original sampled tunes could never realistically accomplish. The guitar is totally contrived–the sort of thing that a washed-up rock star might produce under contract from a commercial director–but 日本航空株式会社 ✈ Japan Airlines manages to twist it into this dreamy ride. The hyper-generic solo becomes stimulating–a vision of soaring through the clouds aboard a wonder of no-longer-so-modern technology. You feel like you are experiencing a commercial flight in the 70s or 80s, when it was not such a common affair. The very brief, unintelligible vocal line carries a sense of style. You are in the very least a first class customer. You might be taking off on your own private jet after a long day of insider trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Well, no, that’s just what the airline wants you to believe. You’re sitting in coach. Everything about this presentation is over the top in a clumsy, reckless sort of way. The song cuts in a moment too late, missing a split second of the opening note. The artist’s name is outrageous, going so far as to visually remind you that you are on a plane. (It has since been reduced to simply AIR Japan.) The song is bombastic, slamming its product down your throat. The video shows an attendant passionately spoon-feeding you information dumbed down to a child’s level in that uniquely artificial, condescending Japanese way. It’s pseudo-class for the middling mass consumer. It is everything vaporwave was initially intended to reflect, made all the more poignant through a careful, precise effort to capture the aesthetic. A lot of vaporwave has its go at cheap marketing by being intentionally careless. This one crafts the carelessness with a keen awareness, and the result is a lot more revealing. It feels more authentic than the real deal. It creates in the listener the sort of sales-minded artificial experience that real commercial music is usually too shallow to achieve. You will fly Japan Airlines again.