It’s been a whirlwind year in the Japanese music industry. Influential singer/songwriter Utada Hikaru released her first album in eight years; Boom Boom Satellites released their final (gorgeous) record before the passing away of vocalist Kawashima Michiyuki; iconic boy band SMAP disbanded after a run of nearly three decades; and BABYMETAL took one step closer to world domination when they opened for Red Hot Chili Peppers on their UK tour. To nobody’s surprise, fan-favourite idol groups such as Arashi and AKB48 continued to top many of the charts, but they were far from the only fare on offer in 2016. Continue reading “Best J-Pop/J-Rock Albums of 2016”
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Best J-Pop/J-Rock Albums of 2013
It’s been an interesting year for Japanese music. At the beginning of drafting this article I was actually feeling rather daunted, finding myself with a far larger number of titles on my potential top albums list than this time last year – many of which I hadn’t yet had the chance to listen to in full. Fortunately (or unfortunately, as the case may be), I quickly ended up crossing a lot of these off said list when considering my top choices. Plenty of variety there may have been, but comparatively very few of these albums were anywhere near as good as I had gone in expecting. As a result, there are exactly the same number of titles listed here as last year’s selections. Continue reading “Best J-Pop/J-Rock Albums of 2013”
OTAKU LOUNGE 