Perfume’s song “The Light” has no music video. Although given how dusty Perfume’s music videos have been as of late, it’s probably for the best and just as well they uploaded a live performance of the song over bothering to shoot a music video.

When Perfume first debuted a performance of “The Light” for their Code of Perfume gig in Hong Kong, it featured some nasty AI generated visuals—something fans would NEVER have expected from Perfume and their creative team. But they clearly realised that it was raggedy, because this live performance doesn’t feature them. The theme of the visuals is still exactly the same, but it looks like they were re-made and feature additional touches like light pulsating and flashing to the beat of the music.

The change of visuals makes a huge difference. They’re far less distracting than that AI mess. I’ve watched that live performance video multiple times, and every single time I am just drawn to the shitty visuals. So it was nice to watch a performance of the song where I could actually focus on the performance and the choreography. Hopefully when their Nebula Romance – Episode 1 tour kicks off, we’ll see “The Light” realised a little differently. Because some car and some train in some city with pink lights is pretty boring as a concept for this song. I know Perfume’s team can deliver something which looks cooler. I’m going to chalk it up to a lack of time. Because Perfume have been non-stop all year. And throwing “The Light” into their Code of Perfume Asia Tour setlist and making it a single feels like a last minute thing. And I’m going to give their creative team the benefit of the doubt and guess that’s why the performance debuted with AI generated visuals.

It really is a shame that “The Light” wasn’t pushed as a proper single. I barely listen to the song, but I do like it. The shift in sound for Perfume is something that could garner interest. It puts Perfume at a really cool intersection of girl groups and all girl bands, because girl groups generally don’t put out songs like this, but girl bands do. And it throws back to Perfume’s earlier days, where there was a clash of their image and their sound—something I think played a big part in Perfume’s early appeal.