r/jpop

This was recommended to me and I absolutely love it. They seem pretty mysterious though, no social media links, nothing that I've seen.

TL;DR: I'm looking for artists that convey raw emotion and make you feel something. Feelings like despair, anger, indignation, sadness, anything. Japanese or international.

Hello, all. In my teens I went through a depression that made me apathetic and numb. During this time I listened to amazarashi for the first time and ugly cried for the first time in years... It felt like I finally could feel the feelings bottled inside, and honestly it felt great. I didn't speak Japanese at the time, and there weren't even translations for their songs... I can't explain it, but Hiromu Akita's interpretation just carried me. It was like he was teaching me *how* to feel the things I didn't know how to feel anymore.

Amazarashi stayed with me, and as I started to learn what the songs meant, their pure poetry, they just got deeper and deeper in my heart. 14 years later, I'm still a huge fan and they're still my comfort band. It's like Hiromu Akita gives me permission to feel things, like he knows what are the words I'm looking for, what is the part of me that needs to be cared for and looked at. No other artist or song ever made me feel like this.

The only other artist that ever got close to make feel like that is Aurora's All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend, except I miss the anger a little bit.

Well, I'm going through a rough patch right now and could really use some more artists for my amazarashi playlist... Grief does weird things to us, and I could really use someone else's voice to guide me again.

Do you have any artists that make you feel like this?

If you listen to amazarashi, do you know more artists who have this raw feeling too?

who else remembers that from like 2011? i always thought it was so fucked 💀 they did the actual members so dirty

“let’s cherry pick your best features to make the perfect idol”

Hello J-pop lovers! Hope this is ok to post but, over in r/popheads, we are currently rating three of the most iconic Japanese pop albums, those being Hikaru Utada's First Love, Ayumi Hamasaki's LOVEppears and Sheena Ringo's Muzai moratorium.

Rates are a monthly activity we do in popheads where 3-4 albums or a group of songs with a certain theme are chosen, and participants score them from 1-10 (with one optional 11 and 0) during the course of 5 to 7 weeks, after that the songs are ranked and the results are revealed in a live event. For this month, we selected 1999 J-Pop Ultimate, a rate I pitched because I think these are important albums and more people should discover & celebrate them.

This rate accepts ballots until 15th of May (with extensions possible) and reveals the following weekend over the course of three days. If you'd like to participate, it'd be awesome! More detailed explanations are in the Reddit thread I linked above and at the end of the post, and discussion of the music usually happens on the popheads Discord, which you can join in if you want to chime in (or to keep up with listening parties and similar announcements regarding the event). If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask! And have a nice weekend!

Rate info: https://www.reddit.com/r/popheads/comments/1saqgys/1999_jpop_ultimate_rate_hikaru_utada_vs_ayumi/

Could anyone recommend any artists with a similar singing style to Utada Hikaru? In the past, I’ve tried Ayumi Hamasaki, Namie Amuro, and Kumi Koda as they’re the most popular but, respectfully, I did not enjoy any of their singing styles.

I'm mostly looking for female artists but male artists are okay :)