J-Pop: Some Languages Sound Nice Being Sung… Japanese Isn’t One of Them

Japan produces good pop music like McDonald’s provides great health food options. Such a creature just doesn’t exist. J-Pop – or, Japanese Pop to the tragically un-hip – is, in my opinion, disharmonious, ear-piercing sonic-plastic – most songs without any redeemable qualities at all. Amass it together and you have the worst popular music catalogue of any country that I have visited – likely the worst in the world. I’ve never been to Serbia, but even Belgrade’s own DJ Salty Squirrel Nuts and his Euro-trash club anthems put J-Pop to shame. The saddest part: Japanese people don’t have a clue just how horrible their nation’s pop music is.

Stray dogs are in fact pickier about their choice of sexual partners than the Japanese public is about their music; they have horrible taste. There seem to be only a few requirements for success as an artist in the Japanese pop industry. They are as follows:

1. The beats/music must be as un-natural sounding as possible and smothered in thick layers of gorgonzola.

2. A song’s chorus must contain a few choice words sung in un-intelligible English. This is to give the band undeserved ‘street-cred’ and legitimacy. The singer must perform these mispronounced phrases in a shrill voice and with a complete lack of understanding of the meaning. During a television performance, these English words must be subtitled in order to provide a clue as to what the fool is singing (and, yes, the little bouncing ball helps the audience mumble along).

3. Male pop-stars must oddly resemble girls; female pop-stars must be strikingly beautiful.

4. Groups are better than individuals (as is always the case in Japan), and said groups must perform embarrassingly pathetic dances that seem to have been choreographed by dropouts from the Mickey Mouse Club. Yes, the boy band trend, which died on the table in North America years ago, is alive and well in Japan.

5. The names of groups must be written in the English alphabet (even though they have no chance of cracking the Western market) and must be extremely queer; a few choice examples: ‘Bump of Chicken’, ‘SMAP’, ‘Orange Range’, ‘Porno Graffiti’, and ‘Puffy AmiYumi.’

Just as Canada - with its lax security policy and care-free acceptance of all - is a haven for terrorists, Japan, a country with no musical morals, is a sanctuary for less than stellar musicians from other countries. These ‘musical refugees’, who are unable to overcome the stringent, listener-driven quality control standards on the radio waves of their home countries, needn’t look hard for musical exile, knowing that the ears of Japanese music listeners are open to just about anything. The only additional requirement for these pond-jumping, often half-Japanese hacks, is that they must include a few Japanese words in their songs - a small artistic sacrifice to make in order to plunge toward sure stardom in Japan. And one can’t exactly sacrifice their artistic integrity if they didn’t have any to begin with.

One such musical refugee is Shen, a white rapper fleeing from the hostile, high-standards of the Hawaiian music scene. He, along with his Japanese buddy Micro, makes up Def Tech, one of the ‘hottest’ groups in Japan at the moment. With millions in album sales, cheesy videos in constant rotation on television, and posters plastered on the walls of the hippest stores in the hippest sections of Tokyo, one would assume that Shen has the talent to back-up such a phenomenal and rapid rise to stardom. Wrong. He’s terrible; just utterly devoid of the type of talent that should be a prerequisite for stardom. I have friends from high school who are far better rappers! He is surely the worst famous rapper in the world; a male Britney Spears, yet missing two important ingredients: sex appeal and a team of professional songwriters and image consultants planning his every move. This is a man who couldn’t win a ‘battle of the bands’ contest in a back-country town like Smackover, Arkansas, and has yet gone on to become a sensation in Japan – a country where, and excuse me for making a bold generalization, the general public cannot seem to differentiate between crap and talent when it comes to music.

Shen’s lyrics flow from his mouth like marbles rolling down the stone path to a Buddhist temple. But there is nothing Zen-like about the messages that he is driving home. His words are the lyrical equivalent of smiling puppies sitting under a rainbow, but without the warm, fuzzy feeling that that image might provide. Listening to American MCs rap about how great they are and how many diamonds and ‘biatches’ they have is actually refreshing after listening to Shen’s guttural mutterings about catching waves. He should consider himself the luckiest bastard in the world. I’m ashamed to admit that even Britney Spears is more deserving of her fame. At least she’s got star quality.

Not only does their own music suck (99% of the time), Japanese people also happen to have an unhealthy appreciation for the crappiest specimens of Western song. They have a special fondness for foreign artists whose CDs, in North America, you can only find in the overflowing discount bins of the Walmart electronics’ department. One friend of mine, a Japanese teacher of English whom I worked with last semester, is a perfect example of this misguided taste in music. He is a 30 year old guy – cool in every respect, with great English skills and a healthy appreciation for beer, women and foreign culture. However, he listens to the most dreadful American artists; boy bands well past their prime and pop princesses that are ruining music’s good name. His favourite artists include the Backstreet Boys, ‘N Sync and Britney Spears, and he would often bring the albums of these artists to class, forcing his poor taste on the children of the future. Nowhere in Canada would you find a mentally fit, 30 year old male with similar taste in music. That idea is just not fathomable. Twelve year old girls in Canada don’t even listen to the Backstreet Boys anymore. They’ve moved on to crap that is much more contemporary, like the Black Eyed Peas (also very popular in Japan).

Needless to say, this particular 30 year old English teacher still lives at home with his parents. But I swear, he’s a cool guy. In his defense, listening to ‘N Sync is a far better option than listening to the crappy boy bands of Japan. At least ‘N Sync had funkiness and talent, something that most J-Pop artists wouldn’t know if they were run down in a car driven by Mr. James Brown, himself. I mean, Justin Timberlake… come on. As easy as it is to dislike him, the boy’s got soul. Sing on, bruva.

In a country at the pinnacle of technological development, Japan is always 10 steps behind the latest North American music trends. They are a people easily deceived by the cookie-cutter sounds of programmed pop; a nation with a twisted obsession with out-of-style American pop-artists and obscure acts from the 70’s, such as The Carpenters, a group that is hugely popular in Japan, yet today virtually unknown amongst 20-somethings in North America. Ask any Japanese teenager if they know the poppy-folk sounds of The Carpenters and a smile will in all likelihood stretch across their face. The same goes for The Bee Gees and ABBA. The singing of the aforementioned groups’ songs is virtually a prerequisite in junior high school English classes. The lyrics are printed in the bloody textbooks!

Of course, there are exceptions to the norm; some Japanese people do have great taste in music. But, on the most part, they listen to music that, in North America, is more out of style than the abacus. Similarly, there are musicians here who are producing great material, but who was the last Japanese artist to crossover to the Western market? Or, has there ever been one?

And the radio waves of Japan are crying…

More J-Pop Facts! (taken from Wikipedia, as well the depths of my own tainted mind):

-J-pop’s impact on popular Japanese culture is immense. In anime and television shows, particularly dramas, opening and closing songs are changed up to four times per year. As most programs have both opening and closing songs it is possible for one show to use 8 tracks in a single season.

-Japan is the land of ‘one-hit wonders.’ The face of J-pop is constantly changing, with many artists only releasing one album and several singles before fading back into anonymity. It is very difficult to stay prominent for longer than this, and artists who sustain their popularity for a decade are considered outstanding.

-Recently, as video games have been taking over the world, J-Pop has been spreading like poison to other parts of the globe. Lethargic couch potatoes with no substantial hobbies and no hope for the future will import the Japanese versions of the games that they want in order to obtain them up to a year in advance of their Western releases, thus exposing the J-Pop soundtrack to wider audiences. Those ‘gamers’ are more dangerous than you think… Never trust them.

-The only song sung entirely in Japanese to reach #1 on the Billboard charts was “U o Muite Arukou” (‘Let’s Walk While Looking Up’) by Kyu Sakamoto. It topped the charts back in 1963. The song, and its beautiful melody, has been sampled and covered hundreds of times, most famously by those forgettable one-hit wonders, 4 P.M.

Check out Def Tech's ridiculous website here.