I still remember that the first time I listened to Japanese music was when in this classic anime Macross - the opening sequence. Back then, there's not much resources/material related to Japanese music, until in the late 90's where the "Japan Wind" (literally translated from Chinese, it means the J-Pop wave) started to hit the scene. That's when I started to hear Chage & Aska songs on Radio 5, which is Yah! Yah! Yah! Then, there's this Astro satelite television broadcast started the service, which I was able to watch NHK Pop Jam every saturday night before I moved to KL.
Back in those days - late 90's and early 00's, I've listened to numerous good Japanese songs from some well known singers/bands, of which some of them have not become that active anymore due to the music trend that slowly move away towards hardy rock? Or more radical? I don't really know, 'coz I haven't been following the scene for a long time.
Now, I was actually able to watch some of the music video on YouTube, which I really enjoy. So, who are the singers and what are their songs that I listening to? They are:
1. Chage & Aska -
(all time favourite #1)- You're Free, Yah! Yah! Yah!, On Your Mark (nice music video by the famous animation producer of Chobit Studio)
2. Glay -
(all time favourite #2 - I enjoyed to watch their live performance) - Mermaid, Scream, Survival, Winter Again, and many more
3. Luna Sea -
Gravity, Storm
4. TM Revolution (This guy is really unique when it comes to live performance, but no doubt that he's a really good singer) -
Hot Limit, Vestige, Thunderbird, Burnin' Christmas, Heart of Sword, and many more
5. Da Pump -
Feelin' Good it's Paradise, Raphsody in Blue, Corazon, Cray Beat Goes On, If, Dragon Screamer
6. Fukuyama Masaharu (This is another talented musician) -
Heart, Squall, Sakura Kaza (properly wrong)
7. Toshinobu Kubota (This guy is good, and he's one of the pioneer in R & B Japan) -
Lalala Love Song (all time favourite), AAAAhh!!!
8. SMAP (Basically, I don't think that they're that good, but they do have some nice song) -
Yozorano Mukou (The only song that I would say worth to listen over and over again from them - in my case)
The above were the one with quite a lot of music video to watch. The list could continue on and on. It's really hard to get the japanese CD distributed by local record company nowadays, 'coz the selling is not really that good due to the wide spread of free resources through Internet.
But apart from the above, I would say some theme songs from the past animation are worth to listen as well, such as the one from Yu! Yu! Hakusho!. There's a band called JAM Project that formed in Japan, of which they're mainly composing music for anime and game, most notably Super Robot War series. Their style are the old fashion super robot spirit type. It's worth to listen.
