Marty Friedman's "What Is J-Pop?"
Here’s an interesting section where he talks about singing styles in Japan:
One thing that I really like to point out, particularly about her song and many female singers in Japan, is that they just sing the melody. There’s no bullshit, there’s no like ad-libbing, there’s no gospel singing, there’s no screaming. If a girl sings high, she’s just singing high, she‟s just singing the melody. It’s almost like playing the melody one note at a time, on a keyboard; which is unlike American pop singing. Especially the female ballads, the American girls have to constantly show all of their vocal ad-libbing, how great they can riff and stuff like that. […] To me that’s all American Idol stuff and American Idol, in my opinion, is everybody is just searching for the next Celine Dion and the next Mariah Carey, and it’s all about the vocal skill and range.
This is one of those things that annoys me the most when watching Ayumi’s concerts. When she tries to pull off this stuff, like in the “forgiveness” intro during “POWER of MUSIC,” it fails horribly and actually exposes her limits rather than make any kind of impact. Vocal gymnastics aren’t always the ideal technique and J-pop flourishes without it.
On the other hand, this lecture is problematic in many ways.
Ayumi Hamasaki: “M (Above & Beyond Vocal Mix)” (M, 2001)
“The sound of Ayumi’s voice, which is very distinctive, and the sound of the words becomes an instrument in the mix.”
- Tony McGuinness, Above & Beyond
Ayumi Hamasaki, 2001
Ayumi Hamasaki, ayu-mi-x II version Non-Stop Mega Mix (2000)
Ayumi Hamasaki: Ready Go!, October 2003
(Source: fuckyeahayumihamasaki)
Ayumi Hamasaki, ayu-mi-x 4 + selection Non Stop Mega Mix Version (2002)
It’s like 2003 all over again. I just shed a tear.
Back in 2006, I did a brief post about Hamasaki’s career in remixes (that I ended with a preposition — !), which leads me to blame her for introducing me to modern European dance music in general.
Ayumi Hamasaki: S Cawaii!, February 2010
Musical Consumption, 2010: 50 Incomplete Thoughts
01. If anything, writing about Korean pop for 10Magazine has expanded both my interest and knowledge in the genre, where before I was content to dabble in a few of the bigger names. In terms of tapping into the popculturenow via singles, South Korea did it better than any other country this year. Still finding major problems with albums as a whole, though.
02. My second largest genre of musical consumption this year was Indian film music, beginning with Hindi and ending in Tamil and Telugu, which took up the bulk of my research from July to November. Unbelievable how some of the worst films had some of the best music (see: anything Pritam composed this year).
03. Girls’ Generation (SNSD) came out with three phenomenal singles this year in “Oh!,” “Run Devil Run,” and “Hoot.” My vote, musically, goes to “Hoot” and lyrically for “Run Devil Run.” I don’t really remember much about “Oh!” except how ridiculously cuuuu~te its portrayal of the female gender was.
04. In January, I always read year-end lists and listen to things I either didn’t have the chance to or hadn’t come across. My favorite missed-in-2009 albums were Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix and Bat for Lashes’s Two Suns.
05. A friend bought me a copy of Lady Antebellum’s Need You Now, telling me that I absolutely had to hear the title track. My reaction was kind of like…uh. This song would be a lot better if the male vocals were not happening. Also, whoever got paid to play the piano hook got away with the smartest paycheck.
