J-Pop vs. Brit Soul

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(I meant to answer Gareth on the SR thread but I was unavoidably detained...)

People listen to J-Pop because they think it's going to be funny, but if you listen to music because you think it's going to be funny it'll usually just be boring, which is why people bash J-Pop so much. So in coming up with reasons J-Pop sucks, they'll (I'll) say, "It's just a bunch of signifiers-with-meaning-removed all stuck together, pointless, and vaguely unpleasant if they think it's supposed to impress us, like the retard kid down the street who brings your girlfriend a valentine saying "WILL YOU BE MY GIRLFREIND I THINK YOU ARE BEATIFULL" covered in saliva."
Whereas BritSoul is just Kids From Fame shit made ugly by the fact that the Brits are trying to uphold this anti-American thing by ostentatiously identifying with 'America's oppressed', meanwhile forgetting a) oppression in their own midst, and b) soul = America baby + bathwater.

― dave q, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

As for that old chestnut about 'repressed Brits wanting some of that uninhibited expression' - a)Obvious objections hold, I don't need to spell it out for you do I? [Ask a GI], and b) 'Soul' is the most fucking mendacious music ever made anyway! (Not that that's a bad thing!) "Baby sweetie honey pie sugar I luv u" = "gimme the pussy", "Lord save us" = "Kill the landowners", etc. Callin' out around the world... (If I missed that Brits KNOW this already and it's the disingenuousness they're responding to, then slap me on the wrists please!) (Hip-hop's kind of the opposite, when they say "Gimme the pussy" it means "I wuv you", when they say "Fill your dome with lead" it means "I shall fill in gaps in your knowledge" etc. Sometimes.)

― dave q, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

People listen to J-Pop because they think it's going to be funny, but if you listen to music because you think it's going to be funny it'll usually just be boring, which is why people bash J-Pop so much.
I think it also has to do with the fact it's just exotic. Personally I'd like to strangle each and every J-Poop singer. Certainly when his/her record is playing top volume in Wave.

― helenfordsdale, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Let's say there is a person who grew up around J-pop, so they never entered its realm thinking it was going to be funny and never found it exotic. This person grows up with a Western POV and eventually recognizes the signifiers-with-meaning-removed all stuck together deal.... yet still finds the music can, at times, resonate due to past exposure. That is to say, something remains meaningful and relevant about the actual style over substance J-pop archetype because of the particularly non-Western point of entry. Is this BS? Is this person screwed and condemned to be ridiculed by the Americans and Brits that surround him on the message board he likes to post at? Or should he just keep his J-pop side on the hush hush.....

As for the question of the thread, I know nothing about Brit soul so I cannot properly engage with this battle.

― Honda, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

BTW, for the sake of argument people can assume that I don't exist. However, I still am peeking my head in with those questions.

― Honda, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Talking about BritSoul DQ - do you mean Brits making soul (which they mostly dont but for sake of argt Lewis Taylor) or Brits listening to it (and the way it comes in and out of fashion - but if so how is Britain different from anywhere else?) or Brits nicking the songs or stances or attitudes (in which case they often ARE making music directly applicable to Britain's own condition and you get the Style Council)?

― Tom, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Tom - mainly 1 and 3, tho 2 as it applies to crits etc. (Julie Burchill - "I always hated punk because it was the WHITEST music" - funny, I thought Chuck Berry invented it, but that wouldn't fit some people's romantic notions would it? I like Burchill but that quote seems germane)

― dave q, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Surely the idea that J-Pop is a bunch of signifiers which the listeners do not understand can also count for any pop. After all, do we really think or expect our pop stars to "mean it" when say All Saints sing "Never Ever". Conviction is out of fashion in pop, which makes S Club 7 as emotional as J-Pop, unless the listener wants to invest the music with some meaning.

― Pete, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I think the idea is that J-pop is all 2nd-rate-pop pastiche that's supposed to sound refreshed and unknowingly innovative but lotsa people simply find it annoying, hollow, and redundant. Pop in America can at least be considered the first strand of meaninglessness before Japan grabs it to floss its teeth with.

― Honda, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I've not heard J-Pop but what I have heard I've not found that interesting - I've not disliked it but it hasn't gripped me. I find it misses the chiaroscuro I like in Western pop (elements of tragedy or mania, as I said on the mad Kenickie thread) BUT I think it probably does have this just as much, it's just I don't understand the lyrics, which is often where those elements come out.

― Tom, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

True, Honda, I think I just approach it the wrong way. It is superficial but why should that be a bad thing?

― helenfordsdale, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

That should say "I've not heard MUCH J-Pop", sense fans.

― Tom, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"Unless the listener wants to invest it with meaning."

Yes, Pete, but a) this is surely major point of pop, and b) lyrics sung in one's own language, however shallow, tend to make that a whole lot easier.

― Tim, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Being annoyed by non-native speakers' attempts to express things in English is a bit harsh... maybe that's not quite what you're talking about but that seems to be the problem you're saying people have with J-pop. You can't expect learners of English to be able to communicate with the finesse that native speakers can--and besides, sometimes you get completely fresh, beautiful metaphors from the way non-native speakers put English words together. I had a roomate from Norway, and she got me into Norwegian pop music--the lyrics are strange and sometimes seems meaningless or shallow, until you really listen to what's being said. Then you find that emotions are being communicated in what we'd call a non-English way, but that have extra power because of that.

As far as britsoul goes, I have to admit I don't know what y

― laurie, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Laurie, I meant English listeners listening to pop with English lyrics vs English listeners listening to pop with Japanese lyrics. All the J-pop I've heard has been in Japanese. Is this not the norm?

― Tim, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

" I find it misses the chiaroscuro I like in Western pop "

i don't mean to sound rude.. but what the fuck are you on about?

chiaroscure. christ.

― Wyndham Earl, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I think Q's original point was talking about J-Pop which is sung poorly in English, at least that is what I was taking it to mean. And I take your point re language obfuscating meaning.

― Pete, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

chiaroscure. refers to the usage of light and shadow.

― helenfordsdale, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

If I did make a spelling mistake then I apologise. But "chiaroscuro" gets 30,000+ Google hits and "chiaroscure" gets 55, so it's not an uncommon anglicisation if indeed it is one. Do you get pissed off when people write "Venice" instead of "Venezia"?

Usage of light and shadow = metaphor for the mix of emotions I like in pop. Not that difficult surely Wyndham?

― Tom, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Looking it up (with the "-o") in Artlex.com it sez "this is one of the means of strengthening the illusion of depth on a two-dimensional surface", so it's an even better metaphor for pop than I thought! I am right hurrah.

― Tom, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Am I right in assuming that exactly no-one discussing this questions speaks Japanese? And that therefore there's a pretty heady eau de dilettante in the air? Perhaps this board is qualified to define "J- pop as consumed by westerners," but otherwise it's something of the three blind men & the elephant phenomenon. We can report on our own experiences with it, but to say much qualitative about it is overreaching.

This is a question I think rather a lot about, don't mean to sound smarmy & sorry if I do.

― John Darnielle, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

helenfordsdale speaks japanese for one

(tom speaks italian, which = japanese for 18th-century germans)

― mark s, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Mark-chan is right. I do speak Japanese, albeit not as good as English or Dutch.

― helen, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i am a big fan of j-pop. and i'm a musically literate source. actually a music student at cambridge university. take utada hikaru, for example- still a teenager, she writes her own material- music with fresh grooves which pees all over the bonfires of "brit-soul".

― Simon Cosgrove, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Chuck Berry did not invent punk. Pur-lease.

― Ben Williams, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

So is J-pop Japanese music with the singer singing in English? Or is it all Japanese pop music?

Either way, I think their postmodernity, or whatever you want to call it, isn't anymore phoney or any less sincere than Creed's Vedder/everyman croon or Mick Jagger feigning some hideous southern drawl--or, for that matter, Green Day or Combustible Edison. It's not all kitsch all the time.

― Mickey Black Eyes, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Utada Hikaru may be one of Japan's biggest stars, but she's also somewhat of a red herring. She lives in NY, is a fluent English speaker, and her music actually introduced a very Western stylized R&B- heavy tremor into the J-pop spectrum. She's more Joe or Mary J. Blige than Namie Amuro or Morning Musume (Her "Blow my whistle" was on an American release, w/ Foxy Brown cameo and Neptunes production).

Also, I assume that "J-pop" excludes the hipster Shibuya-Kei stuff that Westerners embrace and moves right for the chirpy 11 member kawaii girl groups who are topping Japanese charts. The emphasis seems to be on the starry eyed naivete and cutesy-overkill-factor... so somebody like Takako Minekawa or Utada Hikaru don't quite fit the bill.

― Honda, Wednesday, 6 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I LOVE Puffy AmiYumi... when they were at SXSW I followed them around like a lovesick puppydog.

― Andy, Wednesday, 6 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I love J-pop simply for the fact that I do not know much Japanese (I know that "benki" means "toilet"!). I love the sounds and twists of the language (Pizzicato Five's "Love's Theme" gets me ecstatic!), and with WORD RUBBED OUT (sort of), it turns into another instrument. Same goes with Serge Gainsbourg.

― Ashley Andel, Thursday, 7 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

yeah, I love j-pop too. I'm not as fond of Korean pop, because most of it is like 90's Celine Dion with lots of crappy synthesizers. But there's a band called Jaurim that kicks ass--they're really funky and full of rock. They sing in Korean, though, so I have no idea what the songs are about. I don't even know what the songs titles are, because they're all in Korean as well.

We run into dangerous territory criticising all Japanese pop music based on its musical quality--who are we (as non-Japanese people) to comment on how it fits into society? As far as style goes, that cutesy, wide-eyed innocence thing is an Asian culture thing that's just different from how the western world looks at sexiness.

The initial question wasn't really about that anyway, was it? dave q obviously doesn't like it, but he was being kind of snobby about it saying that Japan is obviously so backwards in pop music compared to the west that it's embarrassingly bad (hence the retarded kid metaphor). dave, I think you're just being kinda rude. How do you know they're trying to impress us? Probably on the whole, they don't really care, becaus

― laurie, Thursday, 7 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

WHY DOES THIS THING ALWAYS CUT ME OFF!!??

Because they like it.

RRgh.

― laurie, Thursday, 7 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Laurie - actually, I was just being clumsy in trying to compare J-pop (which I still don't care about enough to dislike) FAVOURABLY with Brit-Soul, by a very long way

― dave q, Thursday, 7 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Okay. The metaphor was just so graphic, and could be construed as offensive especially if you really felt that way... ;) But I don't even know what BritSoul means, so I couldn't figure out what the comparison was abou

― laurie, Thursday, 7 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I like "Just An Illusion" and "Body Talk" by Imagination a great deal.

― Tom, Thursday, 7 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Weren't Imagination that band with a fascination for showing off their short'n'curlies?

― dave q, Thursday, 7 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I was too young and innocent to know - lead singer was Leee John (triple e is a USP not a typo) who is now a UK Garage maven.

― Tom, Thursday, 7 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

having studied film studies for 6 years i do know what chiaroscuro means (chiaroscure was a typo that was confusingly picked up by other people on the board), i was just bewildered by the unnessecary floweriness of your language.

but i still love you tom.

― Wyndham Earl, Thursday, 7 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"I'm not as fond of Korean pop, because most of it is like 90's Celine Dion with lots of crappy synthesizers"

Yes! But let's not forget the multitudes of tired disco-pop numbers and cartoonish rap jesters.

― Honda, Thursday, 7 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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