Joji, who has had several aliases in the past, such as YouTuber Filthy Frank, and Pink Guy, was born George Kusunoki Miller in Osaka, Japan. Joji originally popped up on YouTube back in 2011 uploading sketch comedy content and gained popularity when he started uploading under Filthy Frank the “anti-vlogger” of YouTube. Then as of December 2017, Joji released a statement that he would not continue his career as Filthy Frank due to both “serious health conditions” and his lack of interest in continuing.
Before Joji released music under this name he made some music under the name Pink Guy from 2014 to 2017. During the later year, he transitioned signing under 88Rising and releasing music.
The song ‘ATTENTION’ was released in 2018 and is an R&B/soul song.
Throughout the song, Joji is pleading to a girl that he is interested in that he would like to have her attention, but she isn’t giving him attention and is instead giving it to other guys. This is a short intro to the rest of the album that has the main theme of unrequited love.
As he talks about her, he is still careful saying that if he hurts her God will teach him a lesson because he shouldn’t aim his frustrations towards an unreciprocating false partner. He then claims how if he were to abruptly end the relationship she would hate him, but through the self-evaluation seen following these claims, we can infer that he isn’t only talking about this unrequited love.
Joji takes the song into his personal life about his fear of transitioning in his career. Speaking about how he wanted to vocalize his issues with everyone but no one would listen, and how his personality made him come off as indifferent. As he progresses into the last verse, he talks about how he doesn’t want to die that young. Even though this can be a common thought among everyone, he is actually referring to the serious health issues he was diagnosed with through the dangerous endeavors of his earlier career as Filthy Frank. He ends it by saying he doesn’t smile for the camera he only smiles for “you,” speaking about how his goal throughout his career was to make his fans happy. This in itself takes a look into a man being more open with his emotions and not afraid to be looked at as soft as my previous blog post about the mask you live in its okay to have feelings and be emotional.
Through the music video, he is interviewing himself and putting himself in symbolic imagery of his life almost painting a picture to the audience of how his life has been but through an artistic nature.