My recent exploration of Japanese indie, rock and pop has helped me recognize something I have been missing in much of the mainstream music I encounter in the UK. I want to feel a song unfolding. I want its opening to make a promise, for something to change along the way, and for its ending to carry the weight of what has happened. Increasingly, I have been finding that experience through singers whose words I cannot readily understand.
David Hartley’s video, “The Real Reason You Can’t Enjoy Modern Pop Music”, offers a useful starting point. He describes a shift towards songs built around short, repeating musical patterns. A rhythm or sequence is established, then voices and other sounds are layered over it. Earlier songwriting often placed greater emphasis on movement between distinct sections, allowing the music to build expectation and provide a satisfying arrival.
Hartley suggests that this repeating approach suits streaming, where songs can circulate continuously and sustain a mood. That is a persuasive possibility, although it does not explain every change in popular music. His examples also reach beyond Britain. When I think about the UK here, I mean the mainstream listening environment around me, which includes music from many countries, rather than every song made by a British artist.
There is considerable pleasure in repetition. My interest in ambient music and music mixes makes that obvious enough. Returning to a phrase can deepen attention, create anticipation or let a feeling settle. Hartley himself acknowledges the creativity that loops have made possible. The difficulty comes when one approach becomes so familiar that a large part of the music passing through everyday life seems to offer the same kind of experience.
I find myself wanting more variation in how a song develops. A change in volume or the arrival of another sound does not always satisfy that desire. Sometimes I want the melody to open out, the singer to lead me somewhere unexpected, or a returning chorus to feel different because of the passage that preceded it. That appetite has helped drive my exploration of Japanese music.
My Japan Karaoke playlist has become one record of that exploration. It brings together artists including RADWIMPS, Spitz, sakanaction, SEKAI NO OWARI and Kenshi Yonezu, alongside other discoveries. The selection crosses decades and includes substantial commercial successes as well as music associated with alternative scenes. What connects many of these choices for me is the sense that the song has been given room to develop.
The companion playlist below brings together eight Japanese tracks with Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” and Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” as listening comparisons. Play it in order to follow the movement from these contrasting approaches into the Japanese selections.
Open Distraction Therapy: Further into the Song in Apple Music — 10 tracks, approximately 47 minutes.
Other listeners and musicians have noticed something similar. Guitarist Marty Friedman, who built a career in Japan after leaving Megadeth, made a particularly direct comparison in a 2021 interview with Guitar World. He described contemporary Japanese popular music as retaining features of the melodic writing heard in 1970s Western rock and pop. That is remarkably close to the connection I have been trying to articulate.
In a 2023 JROCK NEWS interview, Friedman developed the point. He suggested that familiar musical passages acquire freshness through unexpected connections, citing Official Hige Dandism as an example. A few seconds might sound recognizable, yet the next passage takes a surprising direction. He also stressed that this preference does not make one musical culture superior. Some listeners find that much activity overwhelming.
His observation helps explain why familiarity and discovery can arrive together. These songs sometimes recall an earlier approach to songwriting while sounding entirely alive in their own setting. Hearing that connection need not reduce Japanese musicians to custodians of somebody else’s past. Their choices, language and performances give the music its particular character. What reaches me is the result of that continuing transformation.
Spitz’s “Robinson” offers a useful example. In musician Ikuta Kobayashi’s analysis, the melody develops through small changes that gather into a larger movement towards the chorus. Put simply, each phrase prepares the next. The song’s emotional shape emerges through the relationship between the voice and its accompaniment. It gives the singer something to travel through, and gives the listener a reason to follow.
Kenshi Yonezu’s “Lemon” offers another route into this experience. Its sections lead towards different kinds of arrival, sometimes brighter and sometimes darker. A published analysis of its composition shows how familiar patterns are changed at significant moments. That mixture of recognition and uncertainty is part of what interests me: the music can hold more than one feeling without settling immediately into a single mood.
sakanaction’s “Megaakuaiiro”, nearly seven minutes long, represents a more extended ambition. Ichiro Yamaguchi has described the encouragement he received to pursue a complex song after the band had found a wider audience. His account is a reminder that these structures result from artistic decisions. Someone chooses to make space for a piece that asks more time and attention of its listener.
The predominantly male singers I have selected are central to this engagement. Their expressive performances allow me to be affected by the music despite the language barrier. I respond to the movement and pressure of a voice, its restraint and release, and the relationship it establishes with the sounds around it. The emotional encounter begins before I have translated a sentence.
There is something compelling about hearing a male voice move between delicacy and force. A quieter passage can make a later outpouring feel earned. An exposed note can hold attention without needing to announce its importance. I am describing qualities that matter within my selection, rather than suggesting that Japanese men possess a unique capacity for feeling. The attraction lies in the particular performances I have chosen.
The shape of the song gives those performances room. Where the music changes direction, a singer can seem to reconsider, hesitate or gather resolve. Those are my impressions of the sound, not claims about the literal meaning of the lyrics. Nevertheless, they create an engagement that feels personal. I can be moved by the act of expression while recognizing that some of what is being expressed remains beyond my understanding.
The language barrier therefore changes how I listen. With an English lyric, I may quickly start judging the statement, recognizing a familiar sentiment or anticipating a rhyme. With Japanese, my attention stays longer with breath, pacing and the way a phrase is carried. That can make the encounter feel more immediate, even though my understanding of the song is incomplete.
Saxophonist Patrick Bartley offers a useful qualification. In a 2016 interview about J-MUSIC Ensemble, he explained that learning Japanese helped him understand why particular musical choices supported particular words. A translation could communicate meaning, but knowing the language brought another experience of hearing the song. His account suggests that emotional connection is an opening through which understanding can grow, rather than a substitute for it.
I also need to keep testing my comparison. My playlist is a selection shaped by my preferences, not a representative survey of Japanese music. I am comparing discoveries I have actively pursued with a much broader stream of familiar music at home. That difference in attention matters. Japan has its own formulas, and Britain continues to produce songs with depth, development and expressive singing.
Nor do the Japanese artists I enjoy reject modern production. Discussing “Love Song of New Century”, Asian Kung-Fu Generation’s Masafumi Gotoh explained that material initially created largely through sampling was recreated through live performance. The song belongs in this discussion precisely because it complicates the boundary. Repetition and development can contribute to the same piece.
Hartley has given me a way to understand part of my dissatisfaction, while Japanese music has given me somewhere productive to take it. I can seek out songs that change, voices that expose something, and performances that reward sustained attention. The words may remain unfamiliar, but the desire to follow the song is clear. That desire is enough to keep the exploration open.
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