TV Asahi recently surveyed 1,740 overseas anime fans to determine their favorite anime theme songs and Oricon News shared the top 20 here. The results are interesting… I think there’s a lot of recency bias going on. Idol and SPECIALZ over Tank! is crazy. A Cruel Angel’s Thesis is well placed. I have never watched Evangelion (and won’t) but it’s a classic that I listen to regularly.
(more…)Tag: j-pop
-
Music Rotation #1
When I was a young(er) person on the internet learning more about j-pop, my lifelines were the various mp3 rotations scattered around self-hosted domains on the web. Eventually those died out (who even has a personal website anymore? haha… 😬) and transitioned to places like LJ. Of course, they were legally dubious, but fans had to do what they had to do back then.
These days you can stream just about anything, which is great, but playlists don’t really hit like the old mp3 rotations do. So I thought it would be pretty cool to share on a regular basis all the current stuff I’m listening to.
No playlist, just YouTube links. But you can find these songs on your favorite streaming services.
(more…) -
Best of 2017: Japan 🎶
This isn’t a sponsored post y’all, I’m just a Spotify stan. I listen to it at work, in my car, at home… (kind of, my iTunes library is deeper lol).
Last year I set out to listen to more Japanese music outside of my favorites, and I’m pretty happy about that choice! With some effort, I was able to discover a lot of new and great artists. Japanese music is notoriously difficult to find (even with an Amazon JP account there’s a region block, so buying digital music is impossible), but Spotify Japan’s presence has made it just a bit easier. Some playlists I like to follow:
– Tokyo Super Hits!
– Tokyo Rising
– Road Trip To Tokyo
– Early NoiseYou can find more on their page. It really is just a treasure trove of stuff — just now I found Asano Tadanobu’s band (SODA!)…
Unfortunately there’s still a lot that’s widely unavailable, but I think it’s getting better. I’m hoping there will be a big shift come Tokyo 2020, but ANYWAY. Here are my favorites for last year: (more…)
-
Flashback Friday #2
See also: “history tag” from last year! And since Namie Amuro is retiring, I figure it’s as good a time as any to do this…
1. What was your first song?
Technically the first Japanese song I was ever exposed to was the .midi version of the Sailor Star Song on some Geocities (!) page. Those don’t have vocals so it doesn’t really count! The first actual song I heard after that was BODY FEELS EXIT, but sometime around 2000 or so.2. How did you discover j-pop?
OH BOY. Like a lot of people, I discovered j-pop through anime… but it was more of a semi-discovery because back when Sailor Moon first aired in the US (late 90s), it was dubbed and all the songs were in English. I think I found out about Namie Amuro through a Sailor Moon fansite, so when the webmistress posted some of her favorite Japanese songs, that was the one I immediately took to. I also used to frequent a lot of MP3 rotation sites!Then I fell deep into the anime trap, NO thanks to Toonami/Adult Swim (2000-2001). What a time.
-
Best of 2016: Japan
WHO KNEW that a song commissioned by Yamato Transport would be the song of the year? Amazing. I’m kidding (sort of), but NEKO FUNJATTA is genius and visually stunning in every way. Meow!
I listened to a lot less Japanese music than I should have and the only real release I looked forward to this year was Utada Hikaru‘s Fantôme (featuring my personal favorites, 俺の彼女 and 真夏の通り雨). I was looking forward to Gesu no Kiwami Otome.‘s album, but Kawatani Enon sucks and we can’t have nice things!! A few days ago I took it upon myself to listen to some new-to-me acts (chay, WONK, G.RINA) and old favorites (Nobuchika Eri, Superfly, the pillows) who also dropped new material this year. Some recent favorites:
-
overdose, overreaction; call it what you may
For some reason I felt like blogging about the top 10 most listened to songs on my iPod/iTunes.
(more…)