Music is one of the many things I feel unqualified to talk about despite thinking a lot about it. Some call the zeitgeist around music types and their surrounding subcultures 'pretentious gatekeepers', and others feel it's completely justified. If you look for one specific genre of music, there will be people in the comments saying that the music you found isn't actually of that genre, but of a different kind. I look around on Spotify for playlists, and I see playlists labelled 'REAL [insert genre]' or 'ACTUAL [insert genre]'. and like. it's so HARDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD to find music that gels with me, and sometimes what gels with me is really really embarrassing. There was a phase I went through at around age 12 where I'd only listen to the specific type of dubstep used in Geometry Dash levels. When I was 14, the only playlists I had on constant rotation were a meme song playlist and an animation meme song playlist. my second most listened to song that year was fucking #BrooklynBloodPop... I feel like those have tainted my music taste forever and ever and ever.

But still, I listen to music. I enjoy music. I stumble through the creation of music sometimes (none of it has lyrics yet). Something something can a rat in the gutter not look at the stars... I am the rat (or fox, as it may be) in the gutter, and I'm going to talk about music. I'll fuck up terminology, but that's alright because we're all just land-dwelling hairy fish on a blue orb in space and one day all energy in the universe will reach a static state. So yeah.

FALL OUT BOY

I like Fall Out Boy. Everyone likes Fall Out Boy at least a little, but I feel like I have a lot to say about the band.

Here are my album rankings from favorite to least favorite:

I don't listen to Paramore as obsessively as I do Fall Out Boy, but I like them. They have a nice sound. Hayley Williams has a great voice. Whenever I put Paramore on shuffle, it seems like I come across a lot of songs with lyrical content that seems hopeful. I think that's something that people trying to riff on emos (of the 2000s variety at least) miss, the fact that some of the great musical pillars of the subculture make music about pain and sadness, yes, but also about hope for a better future and the will to keep living. idk mate.

Don't even ask me about MCR dude. Everyone likes MCR. I was once in a class with someone who said that people only wear My Chem shirts because they look cool, and like. um. correction: YOU would only wear an MCR shirt because it looks cool. My Chemical Romance is like that one musical that every theatre kid likes, and for good reason. I envy Gerard Way, because how can you politely say in an interview "I like Dune a lot. And I really enjoy Akira." and then go onstage and sing like your whole scum-ridden digestive system is fighting to escape out your shameless esophagus?? there is no greater disconnect between speaking voice and singing voice that i can think of. I haven't listened to a lot of MCR recently, but I frequently get their songs stuck in my head regardless. that's the power of That One Classic Musical That Every Theatre Kid Likes, I suppose.

To be honest, this is a bit more of an awkward intersection between some of my other tabs. It also feels wrong because I worry it implies that Japanese music is a monolith, which it isn't. There are scales used and instruments and patterns used in a lot of the things I've heard, but there's still pop, and rock, and jazz, and weird geeky experimental electronic shit. The ways I found out about all the bands and artists I'm gonna list here are also not a monolith. Just bear with me. I trust that if you're here, you're here because you like my specific style of rambling.

ORIGINS

I don't know what my first introduction to any song in Japanese was. Wait no I do. It was the folk song Usagi Usagi. My mom had a nursery rhyme song CD that she'd play for me in the car when I was really really little, and Usagi Usagi was on there. I also remember being in a music class where we sang the folk song Hitori De Sabishi together. Did those plant the seeds for anything? Maybe, maybe not. It's a cute and nice example of American multiculturalism, and perhaps a less cute and nice example of fetishistic American perceptions of Japanese culture. Who am I to talk? They're nice songs.

CITY POP

I suppose this thread starts as many things on this page start: with my childhood fascination with electronic music. Stay with me. So, you know how I said that I listened almost exclusively to songs in Geometry Dash when I was 12? That was what introduced me to the future funk genre (which I plan to talk about in my Vaporwave tab). I listened to remixes by the likes of Night Tempo, Vantage... Moe Shop. I noticed that a lot of the songs seemed. similar. scarily so. And then somehow I found out that Crystal Dolphin by Engelwood sampled Kingo Hamada's Machi No Dorufin (Dolphin in Town), and my once blind eyes were opened. So many future funk songs are just remixes of city pop songs, but I've only seen Night Tempo actually credit the original in the title.

Anri is of course the queen of city pop in my opinion, and I think Toshiki Kadomatsu would be the king. The two of them did do a lot of collaboration, and Kadomatsu was a producer for some of Anri's work. That's very neat :3
Wink's most notable pieces are covers of other pop songs not in Japanese, it seems, but like. they're awesome. pure '80's vibes. I gotta rep my QUEENS!!!!
Omega Tribe is probably one of the defining sounds of city pop, with a very yacht rock feel to it, but honestly most of their songs I've heard don't tickle me with a 'wow'. I REALLY really like Summer Suspicion though.

Yeahhhhhhhhhh you can tell I'm not an expert on this subject... I think I just ought to list a bunch of recommendations.

ROCK AND ANISONGS

I like E ve. the guy who made the Jujutsu Kaisen opening theme. the guitar work in his music is wonderful. props to Numa, the guy who makes those chords. Every single E ve song has a whimsical, wistful sense to it, but depression, isolation, sorrow, and grief are also very prominent motifs. There's a lot of emotion there. And he makes a lot of callbacks to his previous songs in the lyrics of his music. Sometimes he just makes up words for songs (i.e. Yuuseiboushi, Kororon). I don't speak Japanese, but I don't doubt when people say his lyricism has poetry to it. Also there's lore connecting his music videos (at least some of them), which I've tried to theorize about in the past, but it just keeps growing. more music videos, more characters, less cohesion. Also when it comes to theories about E ve's music videos, I know the artist Trickle posted a Pixar-theory-style analysis to Reddit that proposed that every music video shows the growth and development of one single character, and I don't like that. We know that characters from certain music videos are separate, we know that there's supernatural phenomena going on in the Eve Extended Universe, there's a whole manga and a whole light novel about it. and I also feel like interpreting it all as a metaphor is dismissive of the actual lore going on. that being said, theres a fucking lot.

The Pillows are really really good. I have to thank FLCL for introducing me to them. I think Mass of The Fermenting Dregs has an analogous style, but I haven't listened to a lot of them.

JUST POP

Especia my GOATS. i'm a little obsessed with Kurukana, its weathery theming and almost sensual beat reminds me of Clear from DRAMAtical Murder. I really like the song's retro theming, which is especially evident in the music video. I came across this recording of Especia performing Kurukana at some venue, and I love their dancing... it's so cute and charming, and there's something about the thrusting/drinky bird dipping thing that's especially cute to me.
(NOTE: while I found out about Especia from a plain J-Pop playlist, their music overall fits my definition of 'vaporwave', which is a thing made to elicit wistful thinking about the past with its sound despite being modern. I will ramble about how I think they are peak vaporwave in the designated vaporwave section.)

CAPSULE and Perfume are really good too.

holy fuck i have BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEF with vaporwave i have BEEEEEFFFFF with frutiger aero i have beef with WEIRDCORE SHIT too. I ranted about this in the jpop segment as well, but SO MANY ARTISTS will just take some random older song, slow it or pitch it down, add stereo effects, and repackage it as something else. Like, please at least try and title your remixes as what they are, or something tangentially related. unfortunately I love the feel these types of nostalgiaslop give me.

At least Home's music is original. I'm pretty sure Home was making music in the. what. late '90's? so before vaporwave was even a concept. and their music is DROWNED in synths, but also so, so peaceful. It really does feel like, well, home. The only thing that makes me cringe somewhat when listening to them is the sinking feeling that I may be listening to a Saberspark video (because he uses their music in the background of his reviews). I dunno. Pyxis, Sunshower, and Billiards are really good. Resonance is too. It's the designated 'popular song', but I think it deserves that space.

If you want to listen to something that's ambient and ominous and sounds like it would fit well layered over a picture of a liminal space, listen to No Love In The House Of Gold. I don't know what songs they sample, but I feel like they create an atmosphere really well. One of desolation and silence, the sound of a world slowly crumbling. When I was on a liminal space music kick due to attempting to write a cosmic horror fanfiction of an otome game, No Love In The House Of Gold's tracks were the only ones that didn't show up on every playlist, and thus the only ones that didn't feel derivative.

Odd pairing, I know. On one end we have hyperpop shit, and on the other end we have a cacophany of samples and synthetic drums. my battery acid flavor music. my brain explosion music.

Machine Girl is so fucking good dude. I am obsessed with how they're somehow able to make music that's so loud and chaotic but so harmonic at the same time. I think it's a shame that the Machine Girl song that everyone knows is Uzumaki, not because it's a bad song, but because people only know it for the Palm Tree Panic P Mix sample and don't care about the rest of the song. If you want more of a chill sound, you can start with a song off of Re:Porpoised Phantasies, like Cyan Hardcore or Waited So Long, even Infinite Potentiality despite the loud distressing noises at the end that ARE PART OF THE EXPERIENCE I SWEAR IT WOULDN'T BE AS GOOD A SONG AS IT IS WITHOUT THE LAST FINAL MINUTE OF AGONY TRUST ME I PROMISE YOU-- Orrrrrrrrrrrr you can listen to something off of ...Because I'm Young, Arrogant, And Hate Everything You Stand For (other than Uzumaki), especially the song of that title. I feel like BIYAAHEYSF (the song, abbreviated) encompasses Machine Girl's melodic chaos pretty well. Athoth A Go Go does too. that one is beautiful and feels like losing consciousness mid-orgasm while free-falling through the vaccuum of space with nobody but your partner and the stars watching you. oh dang i should make an actual list of my most favorite Machine Girl songs.

Femtanyl is really good too.

note to self: talk about Jane Remover later when feeling more motivated

I don't listen to much 100 Gecs, but I am thoroughly convinced that nobody who hates them gets them.