Favorite Japanese music?

[nillapoet]

Who are some of your favorite jpop, jrock, and jrap artists?

[ClaecElric4God]

Ooooooooooh, yay, I love this thread!

The first one that comes to mind is Kokia. I adore almost all of her songs. On top of her beautiful singing voice, her songs are so...I dunno, unique. It has such a wide range of emotions behind it, and doesn't seem to stick to any sort of pattern. The song that introduced me to her music was Transparent, one of my favorites of all time. *goes off to listen to Kokia*

Also, FictionJunction. Parallel Hearts comes to mind.

I want to say Kalafina, but I find that I actually dislike more of their songs than I like.

Touhou? Does that count as an artist? I dunno, but drill got me into that music and I enjoy it a lot. Good stuff.

In my search for Japanese Christian music, I discovered Daisuke Yokoyama awhile back, and I really enjoy his music. A lot.

[artisticDreamer]

Also, FictionJunction. Parallel Hearts comes to mind.

I approve of this.

[Kaori]

Sakamoto Maaya is my personal favorite J-pop artist. She has a good voice and has teamed up with a lot of good songwriters, Yoko Kanno for example, so a lot of her songs are just strong across the board.

This is kind of a stereotypical answer, but Mizuki Nana is fantastic. I only have one of her albums, but I love the way she floats up to that high note in “Eternal Blaze” (which is a great song anyways).

Arisaka Mika is, surprisingly, an alto, and I like the rich quality that her voice has. Also, she spent some time living in the States, so her English is quite good.

I have one album by Ceui which I like pretty well, but the musical style is so uniform across all the songs that I tend to find most of them pleasantly unmemorable (they all just kind of blend together). The style is a sort of delicate and pretty-sounding J-pop (female singer).

Recently I’ve started to be interested in Yamazaki Masayoshi, who might be most familiar to people here for having sung the song that was used at the end of 5 cm/s, “One More Time, One More Chance.” Minuet (used as the intro for a video game) is also a fantastic song. He has a sort of folksy, minstrely sound which is really unusual for Japanese music.

I listen to a little bit of Hirasawa Susumu also, but rather than saying he’s a favorite artist, he has a few songs and albums I really like, but outside of those I have a pretty indifferent reaction to his music.

Have never really gotten into J-rock; I’m not sure why, but although I listen to a ton of Western rock I just have not found J-rock artists I really like.

Since Touhou was mentioned already, I really like listening to the Touhou rock/metal remixes which can easily be found on YouTube, and I also listen to quite a bit of Japanese VGM. But that might be a bit off-topic for the thread.

[Lilac#18]

It's been awhile since I listen to JPop. But recently I started listening to a japanese contemporary christian artist named Migiwa, who is now my favorite. I wish I knew how to get her CDs.

[anlptgtsg]

Well recently I saw some old music from the anime rurouni kenshin. I actually enjoyed many of the songs played in the anime. So yeah the bands/singer in that anime are enjoyable.

[artisticDreamer]

I really like Vocaloid songs. I'm actually listening to Vocaloid Eight songs right now; I just like the way voice synthesizers sound, I guess... So, yea... I also like Linked Horizon, because Guren no Yumiya and Jiyuu no Tsubasa.

[Thunderscream872]

I like a number of songs from UVerworld, Back-On, Stereopony, Nico Touches the Walls, Abingdon School Boys, The Gazette, Aqua Timez, and Larc En Ciel to name a few artists.

I like allot of Japanese music, but I don't know that many band/artist names (or song names for that matter). I associate most of the Japanese music I like with the anime they're used for rather than the artist. That's kinda sad I guess, lol.

[the_wolfs_howl]

Most of the Japanese music I listen to is from soundtracks, whether from anime or video games. Outside of that, I think my favorite J-rock band must be ONE OK ROCK. I discovered them through the live-action Rurouni Kenshin movies. After about two lines of this song, I fell in love with them. Whether they're singing in all-English, all-Japanese, or a beautiful mixture of both, it's so much fun to sing along.

[thedragongirl77]

I'm not too familiar with many artists, but I really like SID and Perfume atm

[Rose Faerie]

I like UVER World, LiSA, Kalafina, Scandal, Asian Kung Fu Generation, and Sayuri at the moment. From what I've heard of their songs I've liked them.

[ClaecElric4God]

I'm gonna have to repost here because my Japanese music library has expanded drastically in the last 6 years.

Kokia is still at the top of my list. Sound-wise Song of Storm and Fire is my ultimate favorite, but lyrics-wise I'm in love with Ningen the Sonna Mono Ne. If you understand Japanese or can find a subtitles version I highly recommend it.

Also like a lot of Spyair and Radwimps. I Wanna Be... by the former and Daijoubu by the latter are personal favorites.

I'm getting more into non-anime Japanese music as friends introduce them to me. I really like Spitz and Gen Hoshino, as well as Maiko Fujita. Oh, and Kenshi Yonezu! I know there are others but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

Here's another favorite song, with my favorite video game. I've listened to it so many times it regularly comes up in my Youtube recommendations

Original Japanese version
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j78ua9fpJ70

Not too shabby English translation
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HZyOMZaOFRc

[Kaori]

Unlike Claec, the Japanese artists I listen to haven't changed a lot in the past 6 years. I still listen to all of the artists I listed above (in 2015), some more than others (Sakamoto Maya is still my favorite; I still like the one album each that I own of Mizuki Nana and Arisaka Mika; but I only occasionally listen to Hirasawa Susumu). But I want to add some more thoughts on Yamazaki Masayoshi, since I've listened to a lot more of his music since 2015:

Yamazaki Masayoshi
-Writes his own music and has songs in a variety of genres including rock, blues, and pop; I gravitate towards his more energetic early-career albums.
-Despite the fact that I don't like all of the musical genres he plays, his music-writing, lyric-writing, and text-setting are all excellent, and that's why I listen to him.
-His lyrics are interesting in that they're always, infallibly, from a very male POV, which is not always the case in Japanese music (male singers often sing from a female perspective, and vice versa).
-Content warning: though his lyrics are never explicit (that I've heard), some of them do lean towards the erotic.
-Favorite songs: "One More Time, One More Chance" (5 cm/s ending); "Menuet" (メヌエット) (Romancing Saga: Minstrel Song opening song); "Hoshi ni Negai wo"; 心拍数 ("Heartbeat"), but only the version from his Blue Period collection, not the original version.
-Recommended starting point: Blue Period (2-disc early-career best collection).

There are also a few artists I can add:

Kokia. I think I got into Kokia because of people's recommendations on CAA, so thanks to whoever kept recommending her. Remember Me is probably my favorite album of hers--there are a few songs on there I always skip, but also some of my favorite songs are on that album (esp. "Daiji na Mono wa Mabuta no Ura"). "Transparent" from her outworks collection (also recommended by someone on CAA) is also a really incredible song that rips my heart to shreds.

Tamaki Nami (玉置成実): I've mentioned this before elsewhere, but I like hear early albums. She has a lot of high-octane dance tunes, and I really like the positive, encouraging, and forward-looking vibe of her lyrics.

The album Dream Field by See-Saw is one of my favorite albums. See-Saw is a sort of off-and-on Kajiura Yuuki project, and this one album has numerous excellent songs: 千夜一夜 (a song I thought I wouldn't like at first, but really grew on me); 記憶 (a personal favorite); 優しい夜明け (used as either the OP or ED of .Hack//Sign, I forget which); indio (the more I understand the lyrics to this song, the more it rips my heart to shreds--although, or rather perhaps partly "because," musically, it's incredibly beautiful).

下巣の極め乙女 has several songs that I really like a lot, but it's hard to enjoy their music because of something that happened in the personal life of one of their members. But I like the mixture of jazz and rock and would like to find something else like that.

Jizue (speaking of jazz rock) is a great instrumental jazz rock band, but I don't listen to them all that often because if I'm listening to Japanese music, usually I want to hear the Japanese language.

Looking back over everything, although I was at one point hoping to discover some Japanese music outside of anime/game music, still almost everyone I listen to is someone I found out about through anime or game music. (E.g. getting into Yamazaki Masayoshi through "One More Time, One More Chance" and "Menuet," though in general he is not an "anime music artist," just someone who happens to have a couple of songs used in anime/games.) This might be partly because it's just very common for Japanese artists to have their songs used for anime/games even if that's not the main thing they do and partly because I just like the style of music that tends to get used in anime more than generic pop/rock. But I've come to more or less accept that that's okay and there's nothing wrong with that.