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

Gamble on this rainy day

Shiina Ringo - Gamble

Genre: jazz rock
Song style: a powerful, sensual orchestral song

This is an amazing song by Shiina Ringo that comes off of the soundtrack for the movie "Sakuran" - which I highly recommend (it's essentially a Japanese Moulin Rouge, about geisha in surrealistic colors). A good pace to a stale day of what feels like almost 72 hours of rain thus far. She's also in the group Tokyo Jihen, which had a release last month (which I mentioned back in the day).
The past couple of days, Western music has found its way back onto my plate - I've been listening to Boards of Canada, Hot Chip, and Casey Desmond for various random reasons. Luckily I still have a long list of Japanese artists waiting their turn for a blog post, and I'm sure soon enough I'll return to the dark side. A couple of days ago I downloaded the Novembers album "picnic" and I have to say it unfortunately didn't impress me as much as expected (though I'm addicted to the song "ama retto").

You pour hot water in

東京事変 (Tokyo Jihen / Tokyo Incidents) - 能動的三分間

Genre: jazzy rock
Song style: groovy, jazzy, electronic, chill

This song made it into the top 100 of 2009 and is Tokyo Jihen's newest single, after a long break from the band. This catchy tune will be appearing on their new album "スポーツ" (Sports), which comes out a week from today on February 24, 2010. The singer, Shiina Ringo, has been in the music industry for a while and just gets better and better.

I remember saying goodbye to someone important to me for the last time and then going to a party. The party was fun enough, but they happened to put on "our song" and I couldn't enjoy it 100%. Around 1AM after all the trains and buses stopped running, I skipped the after party and had a relaxing, contemplative walk home. It took me about two hours, but a friend kept me company over the phone, searching online for places I could catch dinner that would still be open. I never eat ramen... but I settled into a Chinese food place, not realizing that was all they served. This song came over the radio and it was the best ramen I have ever had in my life.