Learning to Love: JPop
Autor: Prinz-Takeru
So why haven't we heard of these great songs over here? Really, I don't know. England seems to be closed to the music of other countries yet places like Japan love our music, some have even named their kids after Noel and Liam Gallagher. Even if you could say you've heard a Japanese song, it will most likely have been a traditional piece from a world music collection and doesn't reflect the current pop sensation that has taken the country by storm.
I have to say I like Japanese pop music better than any English pop song that this country or America can produce.
You may have heard music by JPop singers without even realising it. I broadened my knowledge of singers by playing computer games. As you know the majority of our games come from Japan. If you've heard a game soundtrack with words on some of the songs, it is most likely that the original song was Japanese and they've asked the artist to re-record the same song with English words.
Squaresoft is a good example of this. The soundtrack to their Final Fantasy games was all Japanese and they converted their songs into English. It was this way I heard about my second favourite singer. Kingdom Hearts was my favourite game when it was released onto the Playstation 2. Throughout the game and then at the end credits they played a song called 'Simple and Clean' by Utada Hikaru or 'Hikki' as she is more popularly known. I loved this song so much I had to seek it out so I looked into the artist on the internet. When I searched for the song I came across it but at the same time I found a track called 'Hikari' (which is the Japanese word for light). This was the song that was on the original Japan release of the game. When I listened to this I liked it so much better than its English version so I searched around and found Utada Hikaru was one of the best selling JPop artists in Japan. I started listening to her music more and more and this got me into the whole JPop phenomenon.
Around the same time, I came across an artist called Ayumi Hamasaki or 'Ayu'. This was simply because you couldn't mention the word JPop without floods of information coming back about this pop princess. She is the number 1 selling artist with all 34 of her singles going straight to the top of the charts as well as her album. She is also the face of a lot of advertisement and merchandise and even has her own fashion label. After listening to several of her tracks I was so gripped I had to buy one of her albums. When I realised the songs I liked were spread over several albums, I had to buy them all! And there isn't a single track on any of them that I don't like. Some of my favourites are 'No Way To Say', 'Because of You', 'Ever Free', 'Dearest', 'A Song for XX' and 'Hanabi'.
Slowly my Mp3 player filled up more and more with JPop until not a single English song remained. The music is so much better than our pop music I find it criminal that it is so sparsely known over here. It was listening to JPop that got me into learning the Japanese language and studying their culture. I am yet to visit the country but it is my dream to go on holiday to Japan and see Ayumi Hamasaki in concert.
Other famous names to look out for are Do As Infinity, BoA, Every Little Thing, Morning Musume and Hitomi Yaida. Obviously there are hundreds of other fantastic artists out there so the best thing to do is dive head first into the JPop phenomenon and start listening!
(c) James Baston