I was among those who saw PSY for the first time on SNL, though I’ve been a fan of J\K Pop for many years. Seeing the ridiculousness of both the sketch, and the music video that inspired it, I thought it might be fun to share a few of my favorite artists/music videos in this genre for those who saw PSY and thought “I gotta get me some more of that”.
M-Flo loves Emyli & YOSHIKA – Loop In My Heart: If you like Asian Dudes wrapping, then you really can’t miss one of the J-Pop Masters, M-Flo. His album “BEAT SPACE NINE” pairs him a number of other Japanese artists for what is actually a fairly consistent and enjoyable albums. Here’s one of the first tracks:
Monkey Majik – Picture Perfect: Disembodied heads singing on a table your thing? Well then you can’t miss this. Check out the facial expressions (since there’s little else to watch.
SOUL’d Out – To All The Dreamers: If it was the awesome dancing that attracted you to PSY, then you gotta check out the CG disco dancing antics of the second ending of Yakitate Japan.
SuperCar – White Surf Style 5: Moving on to the more conventional weird, why not try this alternative to the typical abusive relationship. Warning contains breasts being used as missiles. Trust me, bizarre enough to grow on you.
Ayumi Hamasaki – Ladies Night: The household name of J-Pop female singers. Unfortunately most of her vids are not full length on YouTube, but here’s a taste of some of her weirder material.
BoA – Valenti: A more conventional J-Pop artists, this track feels like something you might turn on Telemundo or some such. An upbeat break from the last couple of wierds I just played for you.
YUI – Rolling Star: For some decent Rock or Folk you can’t go wrong with YUI, whose music has been used many times in my favorite anime Bleach.
HIGH and MIGHTY Color: Keeping the Bleach love going, this band is a little uneven, but their best tracks feel like new Evanescence singles.
Rip Slyme – Super Shooter: Another anime theme, this one from Gantz, this is probably some of the craziest Jap-Rap you’ll hear. I’m not sure if this is the official video or not.
L’Arc~en~ciel – Link: The most ubiquitous band on this list, you’ve heard their music and probably not realized it. Their lead singer HYDE is kind of amusingly bad, but the music itself is very enjoyable.
Find anything you like?
[BTW] : Ben Trube, Writer 