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Oh, the shame.

Okay, so I prefer to think of jpop as something I listened to in middle and high school, which I mostly now indulge in for purposes of nostalgia. Everybody listened to crappy music back then, right? I mean, at least I learned a bit of a new language with mine!

And there's some good stuff, too. Yoko Kanno is an amazingly versatile composer, Maaya Sakamoto sings real pretty, and nobody shall ever convince me that Arai Akino doesn't make some of the most hauntingly beautiful and ethereal music ever. I don't think that Pizzicato Five even count as jpop, but they're pretty cool too.

And there's the borderline stuff... for instance, 相川七瀬 is kind of bad, but she's bad in such an awesome way. She's like Joan Jett, ten years too late, very very commercialized and in Japan. And globe, while indefensibly terrible, is more in the realm of bad techno, which is a different thing altogether. Also, their cover of "Stop! In the Name of Love" is just amazing. …