Nebulossa released an album in 2026, but they’re already turning the page with “La Geisha,” a new single that follows a somewhat flashy, party-leaning trajectory in their latest releases, at the expense of the elegance with which they first introduced themselves. Using a catchy melody and an electropop production, the track incorporates sounds of the koto and bamboo flute to build a kind of Japanese-inspired imagery, yet it remains Westernized in its rendering.
As if they were seeking the opposite of “Zorra,” Nebulossa reaffirm the idea of women’s independence from male expectations. The problem is that, where that previous song found a more effective way to articulate its message—grabbing a historically pejorative term and turning it into an emancipation anthem—“La Geisha” leans on cultural clichés that feel external to the culture it claims to reference.
Of course, Nebulossa have every right to use Japanese instruments, but here their usage comes across as stereotyped and superficial, almost caricatured. The koto and bamboo flute function as shortcuts to evoke a generic notion of Japan, while the geisha is reduced to a synonym for a woman subservient to a man. This association, to put it plainly, asks little of the listener and reproduces a very poor cultural image.
The feminist assertion lands, even though the lyrics read like a manifesto from another era, with its insistence on listing everything a woman is not willing to be: “Neither goddess, nor whore, nor girlfriend, nor thing: woman.” What’s strange is that, in their attempt to eschew labels, they end up reducing the geisha figure to a trope about female submission that reveals more about Western imaginations of Japan than about the Japanese culture itself.
