BJDs in Music (art and covers)

I was thinking the same thing when I saw this cover

 

Same here. It was the first thought that came to my head when I first saw the single's art cover. That caught my attention was the dolls hand position (thumb). I've never seen a hand like this. Maybe this could be a clue? It could also be an artist doll.

 

If you search for Amazarashi's "Deserving of Life" music video, you'll find a lot of dolls (including BJDs) in there. Exercise discretion when watching though, because it's meant to tie-in with a story of NieR: Automata that involved destroying dolls.

 

I remember that the doll in the Kerli video for “Walking on Air” is a DIM Flora. That doll was actually painted by Pepstar! Kerli had another video for her song “Tea Party” which featured Goodreau dolls. I had noticed the Mylène Farmer cover too!
A BJD also featured randomly in Satyricon’s video for their song “K.I.N.G”. Trying to think if there are any others now!

 

The hand reminds me of those Ringdoll hands? I don't know their sculpts well enough to guess if it actually is a Ringdoll or not, though.


I remember Kerli's doll videos well, I had just found out about bjds and probably thought that *whoa a sign!!!*

Last summer, I saw a Japanese puppet performance where the musician had a bunch of dolls on the stage with them (including a custom Blythe) - while they do make noise instruments out of toys and own at least one BJD, I don't think they use the latter for music purposes... Still cool to stumble upon another doll person in the wild!

 

@SPhosphate To add a little bit of trivia: I believe the doll was supplied via The JunkySpot and I think that they were in a sort of time crunch to get the doll painted by Pepstar and delivered to Kerli’s team in time for the video filming! I think there were two dolls the painted one and a blank one for the CGI part. I was a huge fan of Kerli and similar artists way back when so I always remembered a few of these little facts… there might be some more info out there on DOA or dA if you want to have a dig.

Thanks for finding some info about the Mylène Farmer doll as I had wondered about that

 

It might be "creator I like" bias, but the doll on the Dir En Gray cover reminds me of Shinydoll! They are also from Japan and their hands are posed similarly.

 

What a time capsule! If only they'd taken better close-ups of the dolls!! Oh well, I guess you can't have everything...

 

Holy nostalgia! I remember watching this when getting into steampunk stuff. For some reason I didn't remember the dolls. Great find!

 

I believe Grimes has an album cover with a Popovy! I think they even did a special custom design for her cover art.

 

Yes, and their discontinued sculpt Quetzal was a homage to a fav musician of mine: FKA twigs.
They also gave two OOAK to J.P. Gaultier.

 

Nice find!
They should show more dolls in music videos.
Katy Perry owns a Pasha Pasha doll and I would love to see her in videos.

 

You can see it on the websites "about" section. Even Demi Moore owns one.

 

The band Deuxvolt used my photography of my (long since rehomed), Fairyland boys for the cover of their album Union of Opposites years and years ago. If you google it, you can still find it, I think.

 

Of course!
It feels like a lifetime ago

 

the regular edition of Malice Mizer's Gardenia single uses a photo of a doll, credited to koitsukihime

and arai tasuku's Alice album has a Mari Shimizu dull on the cover! although I'm not familiar with these types of dolls, since they're more of the art doll side of things than in the BJD hobby (although they are ball jointed)

in the visual kei world I can also think of D's yami no kuni no alice single, but I have no idea what sculpt she is.

(I always wondered why japan has this obsession with alice in wonderland.)

 

there is a lot of doll history I don't know so all of this is super interesting!

Anyway, I took a look in my copy of 19990102. (sometimes I wonder how macabre the art looks to people outside of this hobby, what with the floating head in its lap and all.) the doll artist is credited to Masaiko Kusaka (MANBOW) but I couldn't find much info on him.

hoping not to go too off topic since it's more an art doll than a BJD, but speaking of Dir en grey, the only other cover art I can think of is from Kyo's other band, Sukekiyo. their album Erosio features a doll by an artist named haruhi (commissioned by Kyo himself, apparently. their instagram account is here) but it's definitely more a sculpture than a bjd, though the neck seems jointed? (hidden under a spoiler just in case)

Spoiler

very macabre and dreamy. and potentially off topic, sorry

 

@Radimore interestingly the font that Malice Mizer used on the cover of that album is actually the same one that Mylene Farmer used on her album covers which I thought was a fun little bit of trivia!

I have a couple books with images by Mari Shimizu and Koitsukihime in them I’ve always loved how ethereal they look… recently I’ve also been noticing a few more contemporary artists who have been using BJD imagery in their work!

 

Awesome!

 

Dir en Grey music video Obscure has a tree of doll heads in it, 2:58 onwards:

Spoiler: Video

 

Speaking of diru again, I completely focused on cover art and forgot about their music videos, but there is a lot of doll imagery in their older music videos from 2000 and earlier, like this one from the -ZAN- pv.

they are usually very short, brief clips used over and over in the same video or across several videos, used for shock imagery that doubles as filler content. I rarely see them on screen for more than a few frames at a time, and since it's so fast paced, those old videos are usually a bit seizure inducing to watch as well. gotta love that old school visual kei charm

 

@SPhosphate wow I never knew that about the demo tape! I am a huge fan of Mylene Farmer (even have a tattoo inspired by one of her songs) so I definitely had wondered if she was an influence to some of the early vkei stuff as I was so heavily into all this stuff in my teens :’) (so long ago now rip) I will definitely have to do some more research into this as I find it so fascinating especially learning all the musical artist who influenced them^^

On the topic of BJDs I definitely remember there being quite a lot of references to BJDs in my early Gothic and Lolita Bibles that I had back then which was where I discovered them. Koitsukihime did a collaboration with Baby, The Stars Shine Bright and there are some dresses some of her dolls wear that have the same fabric used on the dresses BTSSB made in collab with her which I thought was quite cool. Another artist although a painter who used BJD imagery in her work is Minami Shiori (hope I spelt her name right) so there is quite a lot of interesting stuff to look into