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The Really Good Japanese Pop Music Guide — 34 Comments

  1. I find it hard to get excited about jpop and this lose is super handy. Agree, Perfume IS catchy as hell. I usually can’t stand the cutest high voices that seem to plague jpop but their voices mesh well with the well crafted pop tunes.

    Pizzicato Five are always awesome, and it’s nice to see them mentioned. I’ve also always loved Chara, who does a lot of offbeat stuff with great albums but I haven’t heard much from her lately. Great voice, evocative lyrics, and my idol in the 90s ^^

    • Glad to hear it! :) I agree, most J-Pop is pretty boring. I used to be one of those music-elitist guys (all pop music is bad!) because I had been exposed to one too many bad J-Pop song but there are some people who actually do make good pop music. :)

      Ooh, I’ve always liked Chara, too. I’ve listened to a lot of YUKI, who is another singer who is similar. I always hold a lot more respect for pop singer-songwriters.

  2. Thanks for the list! I’ve been scourging around for new J-Pop and I was pleasantly surprised by Perfume and now I’m spending all my time (;D) listening to their albums. Given that Perfume’s on this list, I’ll be sure to check all the others out! :3

    • Yeah, Perfume is pretty great. :) Perfume was actually the first J-music I ever heard, so they’ll always hold a special place in my heart. If you like Perfume, you should take a look at some of きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅ’s music too. She’s produced by the same guy who makes Perfume’s music (中田ヤスタカ), so ya know it’s good.

  3. チョコレートディスコ by Perfume was by far one of the catchiest Japanese tunes I’ve ever heard. Even to this day, I can’t get it out of my head.

    • Yeah, Perfume has a talent for getting music stuck in your head! :) Dream Fighter is probably my favorite earworm.

    • Grooveshark is great. Japanese music streaming is still stuck in the dark ages for the most part so there’s very little on Spotify and the like, but Grooveshark lets anybody upload music so there is a lot more variety. As a result it’s usually very disorganized but it’s tolerable. :) Glad you liked the post!

  4. My first exposure to Perfume was actually an episode of “American Dad”. They played モノクロームエフェクト and it was awesome. To this day, that’s still one of my “happy songs”. There’s something about it that just cheers me up.

    …which makes me kind of dread the day I reach fluency and am able to understand what it’s actually about…

    I can’t wait for the J-Rock version of this post…because I have OPINIONS.

    • Ha, I had a similar discovery. My first Perfume song was “ポリリズム” played in the background of a scene in “Cars 2”. :) Gotta love that Japanese funk from the future! ;)

      I know what you mean. :) Pop music isn’t exactly known for its deep lyrics. :) I’m one of those guys who doesn’t really pay much attention to lyrics, anyway, though, even in English songs.

      The rock post is on its way! :) Hopefully I won’t make too many enemies by leaving out everyone’s favorite band :)

    • Compared to stuff that is downright silly like *48 songs the Perfume ones are more poetic. Probably the “worst” of the batch are the CM songs and the ドラえもん songs. Also their earlier stuff, before 中田ヤスタカ, is pretty much AKB48 level.

      In any case the best time to start fluency is now!
      http://mojim.com/twy106808x21x6.htm%5D

      • Agreed, their lyrics are a lot better than some of the goofier pop groups. They still aren’t all that deep, though :) BTW, MOJIM is a great site. To be honest, I don’t study much to music, I usually just turn it on ’cause I like it, but I have memorized a few Perfume songs in the past. I sing them in the shower. Don’t tell anybody.

        • What the what? That is awesome. I’ve been wanting to fill the Lyrics field of my MP3s with lyrics…but in most cases I could only find the romaji to a few select songs. And romaji is icky and mostly useless.

          This is fantastic. Thank you!

          Also, Eric sings Perfume in the shower. Pass it on.

          • MOJIM doesn’t have it all, so when I want lyrics I usually just do a search on google.co.jp for songname + 歌詞. You can find just about everything. Some websites are crappy and don’t let you copy & paste lyrics, though, so watch out.

            On a related note, I play most of my music in foobar2000 and there’s an extension that automatically loads lyrics from various sources and plays it next to the song so you don’t have to do all the work yourself. I downloaded it recently, and it is nice. I won’t go into detail as to how to set it up because it’s a lot of work, but there are a lot of similar addons for media players that are probably less complicated. Sometimes it scrounges up romaji and sometimes it turns up nothing (obscure songs) but it’s very nice for the songs it does work with.

          • Great list! I’ve been a fan of 椎名林檎 and Perfume for a while, but I hadn’t heard of the others. I’ll enjoy giving them all a listen.

            If you are planning a part 2, could I suggest considering いきものがかり and Kalafina as two groups with really well written pop/rock songs?

            • Good to hear! :) I am planning on a part two, but the next post will be the rock guide. Unfortunately, I already grouped my favorite pop-rockers in the pop guide, so I won’t be including any more pop-rock. I will say that いきものがかり is a great band, though. :) NEWTRAL is my favorite from them.

  5. Great recommendations! Listening to TOWN AGE from 相対性理論 right now and loving it :)
    Planning to do a Part 2 of this Guide?

  6. Great list, Perfume is all I’ve been listening to lately and I’m still trying to find some similar artists to them. I’m already familiar with Kyary Pamyu Pamyu but still getting used to her vocals…

      • Perfume has always been the only idol group I can stand. I could never get into the big manufactured groups like the AKB gang and the big K-Pop superstars. Maybe I’ll give Juice Juice and C-ute a chance :)

    • Thanks! If you like Perfume, try (producer) 中田ヤスタカ’s other projects as well. You’ve already met きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅ. Capsule, MEG, and Coltemonikha are all great.

      Besides that, unfortunately, there isn’t much to get excited about. Saori@destiny and Sawa make some pretty good electropop, though.

  7. I’ve been listening to Japanese music since forever and there are a lot of catchy things out there that you can only find in Japan if you’re willing to explore a bit outside of the mainstream groups.

    For example, there are some really talented doujin music groups (circles) at every Comiket. I prefer songs with a catchy melody so my recent favorites are:

    Twinkle Twinkle – Amateras Records
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrW2eLnUBiY

    Hide and seek × Spirit away – T.Piacere
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uKzBkJ8Cjk

    And Comiket isn’t limited to EDM, they also have jazz oriented songs such as:

    雨はりらりら – ShibayanRecords
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5rDgwhLkEE

    I also like covers (歌ってみた) of Vocaloid songs from ニコニコ動画. For example:

    6900000000 – covered by ヲタみん
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okaG4tqQt-A

    Finally, Adshap mentioned supercell, my favorite of his songs, but it’s probably lesser known (it was actually the ED for Cencoroll!), is the following :

    Love & Roll – supercell
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVMGyjxW18Y

  8. I like, Scandal a lot (A LOT), they’re so cool and fun; YUI of course – my first Jpop obsession; UVERworld are boss; Sekai no Owari are fun; School Food Punishment are… indescribably awesome… like… relaxing and yet really exciting and emotional and…; andymori are fun too; Kreva is nice laid-back rap; and you’ve gotta love Arashi (Supercell was also on my list).

    I think that generally the stuff I like is more jrock than jpop and you can see from how they’ve seeped into this list even though this article is about pop! Scandal are sort of hard to categorize as the started out rock, got progressively more poppy and then did a U-Turn (thank god).

  9. My most favorite artists are:
    Mr.children (in band)
    Maaya sakamoto (in single singer)
    It’s always been like that for the past 15-20 years or so.

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