J-Pop Artist Project Help

[airichan623]

In one week, I am giving a 15 minute speech on Japanese Pop. For emphasis, I need some examples of artists in the J-Pop genres. do you have any ideas for artists that should be highlighted. Any additions?

J-Pop "Greats":
-Ayumi Hamasaki
-Utada Hikaru
-BoA
-Nami Amuro? (possible)

J-Rock (Visual Kei):
-An Cafe
-L'arc En Ciel

Idol Groups:
- Hey!Say! JUMP
- KAT-TUN
-SMAP
-Morning Musume
-Berryz Koubou
-C-ute

Electronic:
-Aural Vampire

Other:
-Kanon Wakeshima

Anime music:
-Kirari Tsukishima

Any more ideas? I particulatrly need electro, dance, hip hop, and other genres. Also J-Rock needs work. HELP! Anything would help.

Only Rule: NO ENKA

Thank you!

[Tsukuyomi]

You seemed to have covered the basics ^^

Hmmm, how about Gackt for J-Rock ^^ He seems to be pretty popular ^^

Ooh, how about Maaya Sakamoto ^^? She also does voice acting as well as singing ^^ You can also add that some of those artist sing in different languages ^^ That may fluff out the speech if needed ^^

Would the Vocaloid craze be a good mention ^^?

[airichan623]

You seemed to have covered the basics ^^

Hmmm, how about Gackt for J-Rock ^^ He seems to be pretty popular ^^

Ooh, how about Maaya Sakamoto ^^? She also does voice acting as well as singing ^^ You can also add that some of those artist sing in different languages ^^ That may fluff out the speech if needed ^^

Would the Vocaloid craze be a good mention ^^?

maaya sakamoto does seem like a good choice for another anime music. i am also thinking of mentioning Nana Mizuki and the formation of Buono!.

Do you know of any good reference sites that could tell if certain artists, like possibly YUI or Ikimonogakari, were thrust into the spotlight because of anime.

Vocaloid is a good idea to mention. But which genre should it go in?
And are there any J-Pop stereotypes that I need to address?

[Tsukuyomi]

Do you know of any good reference sites that could tell if certain artists, like possibly YUI or Ikimonogakari, were thrust into the spotlight because of anime

I'm not really sure o___o; I'll look around and see what I can find ^^

As for Vocaloid.. I'm not really sure XDD Since, they like to do covers of other J-pop songs :-?

Perhaps, there should be a Miscellaneous category ^^?

[blkmage]

You'll probably want to reduce the scope of your talk, otherwise, you'll likely make tons of omissions (entire genres). For instance, for anime music, there's people like Nana Mizuki (who recently became the first seiyuu artist to have a number one album on the Oricon), Maaya Sakamoto, and other seiyuu who also sing. There's also anison people like JAM Project or I've Sound (members include MELL, Eiko Shimamiya, KOTOKO, and more) or marble who aren't seiyuu but do a lot of anime projects.

And then there's rock that's not visual kei, like such longstanding bands as the pillows, the brilliant green, or Supercar and more recent bands like Asian Kung-fu Generation, Beat Crusaders, and Orange Range. And there's also indie rock, where we get into newer and smaller bands like school food punishment, Rin Toshite Shigure, and 9mm Parabellum Bullet. If we're looking at more electronic stuff, there's Boom Boom Satellites and Polysics.

And if you're going to go into Vocaloid, there's the whole doujin music scene and Nico Nico Douga artists. Most notable Vocaloid music isn't actually covers of other songs, but are original compositions. There are a ton of famous artists, like livetune, supercell, cosMo, DECO*27, 164, OneRoom, etc. and they compose songs covering all sorts of stuff ranging from electronic to rock to pop to traditional. And the same is true for all the doujin music, but I'm far less familiar with that unless we're talking about derivative works like IOSYS' Touhou remixes or zts and dai's work on the Umineko soundtrack.

Basically, what I'm saying is that you can have a lot of material to work with if you choose even just one genre. Otherwise, you're going to be missing a lot of stuff.

Now specifically in response to your question about anime influencing popularity, the most accurate way I've found is to look up on Wikipedia for an artist's discography and hope that it includes the Oricon ranking of each single and album. Most big artists (like YUI) do.

Using YUI as an example, you'll notice that her early singles were all over the place. LIFE, the fourth Bleach ED, ranked 9th and the next single, Tokyo, ranked 15th. Her first real hit was Good-Bye Days, which was the theme to the movie she starred in, and ranked third. Her next single, I Remember You, did even better, at second. But her second anime song, Rolling Star, the fifth OP for Bleach, ended up in fourth. After that, her singles continued to rank consistently in the top, but she has about five singles before her next anime song, Again, the first FMA Brotherhood OP. So taking all that data into account, we can guess that because her initial anime singles didn't dominate and her other ones did, that she was likely helped a bit by her anime songs but they didn't catapult her to stardom. That is, she was popular in her own right and likely would have been without doing anime songs.

[airichan623]

Wow thanks guys!

I'm gonna stick with the genres I had in the beginning: they are the most well-known internationally known.

I think Vocaloid's out cuz they don't sing new stuff. GACKT, Miyavi (?), sakamoto and mizuki are in.

Anything else that's glaringly missing? and stereotypes for reference would b helpful.

[blkmage]

I said that the majority of Vocaloid songs are original, as in they aren't covers. And there are an enormous number of them. The more famous artists (livetune and supercell) and songs (Last Night Good Night, Melt, Black Rock Shooter, Romeo and Cinderella, Double Lariat, magnet, From Y to Y) get a couple million hits for their videos and there are tons of smaller notable artists (AVtechNO, cosMo, OneRoom, 164, DECO*27, buzzG, baker, samfree, and others). Vocaloid composition is fascinating because it would've been impossible for this community to have grown without the help of something like Nico Nico Douga.

[airichan623]

hm.....still, since im not already a fan i'm not gonna cover it.