6th Station ~Other Bands for H!P Fans~

[Starra]

I'm so selective about Fleetwood Mac songs. I don't mind them if Buckingham or McVie are on vocals, but I tend to avoid the ones that Stevie sings on. My personal opinion, I just think she sounds... not good.

I'm reminded of the South Park episode where the kids are dealing with a goat and some soldiers think it's Stevie Nicks .

[AyuHikaru]

Stevie Nicks is an acquired taste for sure. I used to think she sang horrible for years, but I think my love of Jpop had actually made me less critical of technical singing perfection and now I look for personality. Stevie's voice has a lot of personality and she sings with a lot of emotion.

She also totally can sound like a goat.

[Zunu]

^ Haha I pretty much feel the same way. Plus the rise of shows like American Idol, which didn't exist back in the day, have made me actively dislike an overreliance on technical proficiency. It's like, if you eat sirloin steak ALL THE TIME, after a while it's just ew gimme a dive joint burger please.

[esm]

As long as it doesn't sound unpleasant and dull to me, I don't care that much about skills (minus maybe being able to hit the right notes within your range and getting the right rhythm). You don't need like five octaves of notes for a good melody, and there's also way more to music than just a good melody and more to an artist than just good music. The other day I read about how being on the road for so long can be psychologically damaging for touring artists.

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Anyway, I was going through some J-Pop I used to listen to all the time, and this is still amazing.



Also, I never really kept up with Every Little Thing, but their Crispy Park album is one I've always gone back and listen to again from time to time.

[TotallyUncool]

With singers (and when it comes to music in general), emotional power generally matters much more to me than technical proficiency. And some of my favorite singers sound like goats.

Now I'm thinking about some fo the stuff that I used to listen to. Around 2002 or 2003, Twins and Youjeen really stood out among all of the random WinMX and Usenet newsgroup downloads.



Both very non-goat singers, althrough Youjeen definitely has a raspy rock-singer's voice, which in her case sounds absolutely wonderful. She's still one of my favorite singers, although I haven't kept up much with Cherry Filter in recent years.

[erilaz]

With singers (and when it comes to music in general), emotional power generally matters much more to me than technical proficiency. And some of my favorite singers sound like goats.

A critic in People magazine once said that Exene Cervenka of X, one of my favorites, is "not as good a singer as your local fishmonger" — and this was in a positive review.

[TotallyUncool]

Close enough for punk!

[esm]

Nostalgia





After around 2008 I don't really recognize the songs anymore, apart from a very few of them (like the AKB48 stuff).

[Zunu]

I don't recognize nearly as many songs in the second clip either, although to be honest they sound just as good and just as "epic." I think by that time the rise of iTunes and similar services meant I no longer had to troll random sites for music...I could just listen to exactly what I wanted to, endlessly. And maybe that's a bit limiting in a way. Like for example those ikimonogakari clips all sound pretty good and I've pretty much ignored them as a group during their entire existence. Even, dare I say it, the Arashi clips sound good. And I also recognize every single AKB song, although not sure if that would hold in 2014-15.

And, I don't know how I ever missed out on that touching and lovely Toire no Kamisama song. Thanks, esm, for introducing me to a toilet song. You're so special.

[esm]

For me, it's also that I began to become more interested in Western music around 2008, and that's clearly more accessible overall. Also, there was a point when everything was shared so freely on JPM, and then suddenly at one point that whole practice was demonized and some of my other sources also got shut down, so it was difficult for me to keep up with J-Pop (also I liked K-Pop from then and before much more than what's going around now). Once I had enough money to spend on iTunes every now and then without thinking much, I bothered even less with hunting for (illegal) uploads. And now I use Spotify almost all the time, so I discover new music mostly through there. My iTunes library remains static apart from keeping up with H!P releases and AKB48 singles (and maybe a few more Taylor Swift albums in the near future).

With the rise of social media and how you can feel closer than ever to your artists, J-Pop feels even farther away from me than ever. Like it's not that I'm not into the stuff anymore; it just takes too much effort (beyond H!P and other random stuff every now and then).

But right now I'm spending some time organizing the J-Pop I have on my computer on iTunes so that I can listen to what I already have more and maybe get back into exploring other J-Pop. Also, I have the newer H!P stuff organized, but a lot of the older gems are not super organized so I end up not listening to them.