Top 100 Japanese Artists

HMV's Top 100 Japanese Artists

I've been going over my music to decide what will make a good compilation for a special event. In thinking through all of the artists I've encountered in the past couple of months, I've remembered this interesting list that I found on a bunch of Wikipedia articles about artists (great source right?)

It's the HMV list of top 100 Japanese (pop) artists. Don't trust the pop label, because I was surprised at the wide range of rock artists who also made it on here. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to post the list on here and then see how much this blog eventually covers one day.

1. Southern All Stars - popish rock group I may cover some day.	51. Misia
2. YMO	52. Minako Yoshida
3. Yumi Matsutoya	53. Namie Amuro
4. Happy End	54. Taeko Onuki
5. Hibari Misora	55. Akina Nakamori
6. Tatsuro Yamashita	56. Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi
7. Momoe Yamaguchi	57. Alice
8. Yosui Inoue	58. L'Arc～en～Ciel - Hyde's group, may have to cover them someday
9. Eiichi Otaki	59. Shogo Hamada
10. Seiko Matsuda	60. Tatsuya Ishii
11. Ryuichi Sakamoto	61. Unicorn - planning on putting these guys up
12. Keisuke Kuwata	62. Chage & Aska
13. Motoharu Sano	63. Dragon Ash - these guys may go up
14. Eikichi Yazawa	64. Hi-standard
15. Flippers Guitar	65. Glay - pretty famous dude
16. RC Succession	66. Masayoshi Yamazaki
17. Kenji Sawada	67. Akiko Wada
18. Kyu Sakamoto	68. Moon Riders
19. Blue Hearts	69. Smap
20. Miyuki Nakajima	70. Tomoyasu Hotei
21. Tetsuya Komuro	71. Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra
22. Boowy	72. Lisa Ono
23. Yutaka Ozaki	73. Blankey Jet City
24. Hikaru Utada	74. quruli
25. Tamio Okuda	75. Roosters
26. Mariya Takeuchi	76. Kyosuke Himuro
27. Mr Children	77. Thee Michelle Gun Elephant
28. Kazumasa Oda	78. Denki Groove
29. Spitz	79. Kenji Ozawa
30. B'z	80. Yuzo Kayama
31. Pizzicato Five - totally putting them up!	81. Yellow Monkey
32. Off Course	82. Jacks
33. Murahachibu	83. Fishmans
34. Pink Lady	84. Noriyuki Makihara
35. Tulip	85. Ken Hirai
36. Ringo Shiina	86. Yonin Bayashi
37. Toshinobu Kubota	87. Rip Slyme
38. Char	88. Princess Princess
39. Godiego - these guys will go up!	89. Original Love
40. X Japan - may go up, wayy famous	90. Luna Sea - may go up
41. Yujiro Ishihara	91. Mute Beat
42. Ayumi Hamasaki	92. Alfee
43. Cornelius	93. Hiroshi Fujiwara
44. Haruomi Hosono	94. Sadistic Mika Band
45. Dreams Come True	95. Mondo Grosso
46. Takuro Yoshida	96. Judy And Mary
47. Anzenchitai	97. Zeebra
48. Checkers	98. Crazy Ken Band
49. Candies	99. Ua
50. Yasuyuki Okamura	100. Begin

Cover & Oldies: Strange foreigner

久保田早紀 - 異邦人

Okay, so this above song is not quite "indies" or "rock" or anything like that. It was a popular Japanese pop song in 1979. Don't you dig the camel? But it's also a very important song to me and I can justify it with this catchy rendition below.

Acid Black Cherry - 異邦人

Genre: pop-rock
Song style: old school Japanese pop with an electronic twist, somewhat androgynous vocals

I first heard the original 異邦人 when my mom bought her first CD off of Amazon Japan something like ten years ago and started blasting it on her cd player. My sister and I ran upstairs to see what the strange noise was and saw our mom dancing around and singing along to this song. My sister and I started imitating the dance and had a fun and bizarre night. This was our first ever exposure to Japanese music. For the longest time after that night, we thought our mom had some strange hidden history as a Japanese popstar.

Ten years later, my sister and I got into this band "Acid Black Cherry" for their catchy single "Black Cherry" (which I will post soon!). It really surprised us when we discovered their cd "Recreation" (2008) which features solely covers of old, nostalgic Japanese pop tunes. I really give props to Acid Black Cherry for continuing a modern tradition of Japanese pop-rock but not forgetting its roots.

It seems like this is a popular song to cover, too. If you would like to hear a more truthful rendition but with extra guitars, check out this cover below featuring Tak Matsumoto and Zard. Matsumoto is lead guitarist of popular pop-rock band B'z (which doesn't quite fit my tastes so might not make it on here...) and Zard was a female singer who unfortunately recently passed away from cancer.

Tak Matsumoto of B'z & Zard - 異邦人

So with all these songs of foreign romance, hope you all have exciting and mysterious weekends!