Music Banter - ジェイポップ!! It's J-Pop Week!

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ジェイポップ!! It's J-Pop Week!

J-Pop or Poppusu is...Japanese Pop! This term started to be widely used somewhere in the 90s and it refers to Japanese mainstream pop music. In essence it's a name for modern Japanese popular music, influenced by western genres, that is different from traditional styles.

Quote:

J-pop, an abbreviation for Japanese pop, is a loosely-defined musical genre that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1990s. Modern J-pop has its roots in 1960s music such as The Beatles, and replaced kayōkyoku ("Lyric Singing Music", a term for Japanese pop music from the 1920s to the 1980s) in the Japanese music scene. The term was coined by the Japanese media to distinguish Japanese music from foreign music, and now refers to most Japanese popular music.

The origin of modern J-pop is said to be Japanese-language rock music inspired by The Beatles. Unlike the Japanese music genre called kayōkyoku, J-pop uses a special kind of pronunciation, which is similar to that of English.

At first, the term J-pop was used only for Western-style musicians in Japan, such as Pizzicato Five and Flipper's Guitar, just after Japanese radio station J-Wave was established. However, the term became a blanket term, covering other music genres—such as the majority of Japanese rock music of the 1990s.
In the 1990s, the term J-pop came to refer to all Japanese popular songs except enka.

J-pop - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, a really extensive page covering origins of J-pop and its history.

OK, I'll start with Pizzicato Five

To be honest, the first song I thought of was the Puddi Puddi song:

But here's some other stuff I found:

I have loads of Japanese music, but nearly nothing of J-pop in particular. I like some of the stuff that's been posted in here so far...I hope there will be more posted!

Ayumi Hamasaki:-

and this one is not exactly J-Pop, more Residents meets Kraftwerk:-

but I love the Polysics

from the classic era of J-Pop:-

Chage & Aska's On Your Mark - you have to buy the cartoon to see the glorious anime that goes with it (youtube can't license it, obviously):-

teenage girls in my teenage years were crazy about these guys:-

but my male frens and I were crazy about the panty-flashing antics of these three:-

Shohjo-Tai:-

I have never been a particularly big fan of J-Pop, but this song always makes me smile

I collect quite a bit of J-Pop, so I'll share a few gems here.

This is what happens when J-Pop meets ambient.

Downtempo, but nice and organic.

...and of course, you can't forget Utada Hikaru. She's arguably the best selling J-Pop artist of the last fifteen years.

Seiko is the queen of Japanese pop from when it was still in its classic period.

Quote:

Originally Posted by starrynight (Post 1038531)

Seiko is the queen of Japanese pop from when it was still in its classic period.

yeah i didn't arrange it properly - lemme edit it

I'm only familiar with Utada Hikaru...her album "Heart Station" was decent.

Wouldn't know where to begin with this genre, honestly. All I'm familiar with is the theme songs of various video games and animes. It's foreboding though, jumping into something I know nothing of. I'd hate to give it a good shot and only find the Japanese equivalents of top 40 radio, then give up before I found the worthwhile stuff. Can anybody provide educated album recs?