Artist Recommendations
 

Hey all.

i've been a huge Jpop fan for over 10 years now. I started off listening to hitomi, Every Little Thing, MAX, Ayu, and m.o.v.e.

I then started listening to many other artists including Hikaru Utada, dream, Namie Amuro, and Koda Kumi. As you can probably tell from my lists I'm a pretty big Avex fan.

I did go absolutely insane for a few years and buy every single album, DVD, and single released by artists I listened to, but life's responsibilities made me start to become sensible in what I buy. I still buy the albums and DVD's/Blu's by artists I like but only a few select artists will I buy singles for (IE: Ayu) as the exchange rate against the Yen has gotten really poor as well. (I even sold some artists singles I had so I wasn't tempted to continue buying to have complete collections of certain artists). It also got to the point where my collection was so large it required it's own bedroom to store (over 1600 JPop CD's/DVDs)

Anyway, what I'm here for is recommendations of artists as the last 2-3 years i have not ventured out into anything but the artists I am familiar with. There used to always be 1 or 2 artists each year that debuted that I really enjoyed, it may just be that Avex have stagnated on debuts. So give me some recommendations guys of some great Jpop artists out there I may have missed as a lot of the artists I enjoy seem to be on significant hiatuses or release so infrequently that I'm hardly listening to more than a few artists now.

Here is a list of all the artists (of which I can recall) that I really enjoy.

Ai Otsuka
alan
Ami Suzuki
AAA
Ayumi Hamasaki
Angela Aki
BoA
day after tomorrow
do as infinity
dream
every little thing
girl next door
hikaru utada
hitomi
hitomi shimatani
hyna
koda kumi
max
move
namie amuro
rin'

Ummm... Maybe you should try miwa or ayaka?

If you like strong voice and lyrics like Van Tomiko or alan, I recommend ayaka so much ;) But if you like some cute voice like Ai Otsuka, I recommend miwa ;)

I give suggestions live videos, because their voice in live and CDs is 99% exactly the same ;)

miwa - don't cry anymore


ayaka - Te wo Tsunagou

Be a bit clear, I like Ai's ballads, not so much the nasally happy go lucky cheesy stuff.

Kana Nishino - R&B and pop ballads --->my favourite song..... Distance
Meisa Kuroki - Pop music --->my favourite song....Woman's Worth / Wired Life
ICONIQ - Electro pop --->my favourite song....Change Myself
Kalafina - I don't know --->my favourite song.... Hikari no Senritsu
MiChi - Pop --->my favourite song....PROMiSE
SCANDAL - Rock pop --->my favourite song.... SCANDAL Nanka Buttobase
Stereopony - Rock pop --->my favourite song.... Chiisana Mahou
Kanon Wakeshima - I don't know, she makes music like Kalafina --->my favourite song.... still doll

Maybe you don't know them, or maybe yes, XD
I love J-pop music a lot, there are a lot of talent, K-Pop is good too.

I recommend Kana Nishino :D

you might like BENI :D

my favorites are yura yura, gimme gimme, 2FACE, nice&slow, crazy girl, and darlin'

When you like DAI and Do As Infinity (I LOVE these two groups too, by the way! :heart), then you might want to give Onitsuka Chihiro, Sakamoto Maaya and Kalafina a try!

These are my favourite songs from them:

"Infection" by Onitsuka Chihiro


"Okitegami" by Sakamoto Maaya


"Lacrimosa" by Kalafina

How about May'n?

- JASMINE
- Kuroki Meisa

Don't think you're into hip hop , rap if not rock so I wouldn't recommend any artistes in these categories but if you want to , sure 8D

B'z, SPYAIR, Koshi Inaba, Girls' Generation (their Japanese discography), KARA (their Japanese discography), Perfume, YUI, Masaki Yuka, Crystal Kay, globe, Kana Nishino, Mai Kuraki, Meisa Kuroki, Miliyah Kato, Matsushita Yuya, Porno Graffitti, Shoko Nakagawa. Those are the only ones I can name off the top of my head. ^^;;

I'm recommend you Aikawa Nanase ^^

^I luv Nanase Aikawa!! :luv2 Especially Koigokoro!! :heart

Many thanks to everyone for the recommendations so far. Some of them are quite good, I'll have to look into them more. Unfortunately none of them stand out and make me want to immediately buy their albums right now. Although Onitsuka Chihiro comes quite close as that voice is amazing! I'm especially shocked as well to hear of her personal history of attempted suicide, so that's quite surprising.

I forgot to mention that ayaka is someone else I've enjoyed for quite some time, so that was always a given that I'd listen to her :0

We seem to have pretty similar tastes and I've also had the same problem recently that some of the artists that I used to follow are hardly releasing anymore or went on hiatus... Here are some random artist that made some songs that I like and a few songs I really like:

Aya Matsuura:

You probably know about her already. She's not really releasing anymore, but I'd recommend all of her singles (A sides and B sides) up untill ki ga tsukeba anata and also that wonderful CM song she did for aoyama after that. =)



MINMI:

Recommending her album "Mother". She's first and foremost a reggae artist, but this album spans quite a few genres and is just really pleasant to listen to.

B'z:

Really like LOOSE album, but also their two most recent studio albums. Here's a clip from their 2009 single ichitozenbu / DIVE



Masami Okui:

mostly the old songs she did for animé Digi Charat, Slayer, revolutionary girl Utena... and also this brilliant party tune:

I'd also STRONGLY recommend Kanon Wakeshima and especially her album Shōjo Jikake no Libretto ~Lolitawork Libretto~ and the singles she did with under the name of kanonxkanon. Absolutely great stuff and def an artist to follow in the future, as long as you can get past her voice of course..

This clip should be convincing enough! :P



here's kanonxkanon




Hope it helps!!!

Thanks for the further recommendations. It's hard to make decisions when you know no one in life that is into the same style of music as you (Jpop). Definitely makes it hard to enjoy Jpop sometimes when you have no one to share it with.

Used to have a good online circle of people that I chatted to about this kind of stuff but I disappeared for a few years due to issues in my personal life and they all seem to have retreated into other walks of life.

Glad to see so many friendly people here still after being gone for so long. Could I also ask, any Avex artists that I may have missed that have popped up in the last few years?

I seem to have a soft spot for Avex Trax :)

She's not really releasing anymore, but she was on avex and def had a very avexy sound for her releases, her name is sifow. Have you tried her?

h and the newest maki goto album is really good and was just released. If you havent been around for a while, she sweitched to avex and released som epretty decent stuff just recently:

here are the two lead songs from her newest best of/ studio effort:

I especially like scandalous (starts @ 1:35):

Yes, she is amazing, believe me! I own all her albums and they're all great.

She also deals with her depressions a lot in her lyrics. If you would like to read translations of her lyrics, I can really recommend this site: http://www.nostalgic-lavender.net/chihiro/index.html

Chihiro's lyrics are always very deep and meaningful. I love to get lost in the world she creates with her words!!