Jordin Sparks - Battlefield
I initially tried listening to her first album but I couldn't get into it at all, everything sounded the same and not in a good way. So I tried this one instead and liked it quite a lot, at least at first. I got sick of/bored of a bunch of songs before the 10th play, but there were also quite a few that I still really like: Walking On Snow, SOS (Let The Music Play), No Parade, Let It Rain, Was I The Only One and The Cure.

Sugawara Sayuri - Destiny, Koi, Tsuyoku Naritai
The other songs from her mini-album, Kimi Ni Okuru Uta, Destiny is a soft R&B song and Koi and Tsuyoku Naritai are acoustic-y songs. It's a toss-up between Destiny and Tsuyoku Naritai for my favourite.

Scandal - Shoujo S, Yah! Yah! Yah! Hello Scandal
I love these guys so very much and am really looking forward to their album. They have this great late-90s style girl pop-rock sound and it is so very, very catchy. My favourite song of these is So Easy from Shoujo S, but I also love Shoujo S and Future from Shoujo S and Space Ranger from Yah! Yah! Yah! Hello Scandal, though I really like pretty much everything,

S Club 7 - Someday Someway, If It's Love, Dangerous, Everybody Get Pumped
Someday Someway is the B-side of Reach and is quite catchy, but I never like the songs where the guys sing the lead quite as much as the ones where the girls do.

If It's Love is the B-side of Natural and is quite a pretty ballad, but again it's the guys singing the lead, and I don't find their singing to be anything special. It was the girls who brought the magic in that department (I loved the guys and girls equally in the show, in fact Bradley was one of my favourites.)

Dangerous is the B-side of Have You Ever, one of my all-time favourite songs of theirs, perhaps because it reminds me of my last day of high school, and is my favourite of this batch. I swear I've heard it before, though! It must have been on the first of my "crap that I bought from Real Groovy, copied and then sold back" CDs, which I lost. I don't know what the hell I did with it, but it never turned up, and I've forgotten what was even on it. This must have been one of the songs. It's a laid-back mid-tempo song with the girls singing the lead as it should be.

Everybody Get Pumped was made for their best-of album which came out after they started to get blah, so while it's catchy it doesn't really wow me.

Yorico - Memory Of Soul, Dear My Friend, Yakusoku No Basho De, Honto Wa Ne
Very beautiful ballady stuff. I particularly love Memory Of Soul, the chorus reminds me of an Enya song.

God, I'm so tired. I've been busy all week so after work today I just collapsed on my bed and spent the rest of the afternoon lying with my head on my new massive Lellow Bear which I won last week. Seriously, this thing is the height of a smallish child and twice as wide. It was on TradeMe last week and I bid on it but someone with an autobid bid more than I was prepared to pay. So Mum said that she likes to fuck with people with autobids by purposely bidding a bunch of times and making them pay more. So I was doing this and having a great laugh, until about the 5th time I did it, when I got told that I was the highest bidder, and Mr/Miss Autobid must not have been home (the auction went off at 3:30ish in the afternoon) so I stayed the highest bidder and won it. It was only $10 more than I had been prepared to pay for it, so today while I was working Mum and Dad went and picked up my bear and I came home to find the most massive Lellow Bear I have ever seen. LOVE!

Belinda Carlisle - Her Greatest Hits
One of the greatest female singers of the 80s. So much catchy 80s love. <3
Favourites: Heaven Is A Place On Earth, I Get Weak, I Feel The Magic, Leave A Light On, Circle In The Sand, Mad About You, I Feel Free, Summer Rain

Garnet Crow - Stay ~Yoake No Soul~
Mellow, often ballady pop-rock. I couldn't get into their last album at all but really enjoyed this one. And I now really want to find time to listen to their other albums because when I said that I really liked the album before their last one, Julia said it wasn't anywhere near as good as their previous stuff.
Favourites: Elysium, On The Way, Stay, Fall In Life ~Hallelujah~, Rainy Soul


And now miscellaneous stuff!

S Club 7 - Hello Friend
The B-side of Bring It All Back, their first single. The chorus is beautiful, but the verses are so cheesy that I avoided listening to it a lot.

S Club 7 - Our Time Has Come
The B-side of S Club Party, their second single. So very, very catchy.

Morning Musume - Subete Wa Ai No Chikara
The other B-side of Nanchatte Renai. It's definitely catchy and I liked it the first few times, but I got bored of it very quickly. It's not really anything special.

Yui - It's All Too Much/Never Say Die
Both pretty good, the first track is rockier while the second has a poppier sound (and is my favourite.) The acoustic track is OK, but I wouldn't rave about it.

Kome Kome Club - Koi No Gamble
I'm liking these guys more and more the more I listen to them. So catchy, and their sound is still like it was in the 80s and 90s, so it has the effect of being nostalgic when I've never even heard it before.

Juliet - Fuyu Love
Not my favourite song by them, but it's growing on me. There's a B-side too, but it's a Christmas song and it is ridonkulous to play Christmas songs in the middle of October (oh God, when is Nora going to start getting on our backs to play Christmas songs in the shop? Fuck it, she's hardly ever even there, so we can play what we want most of the time. And hey! She very likely won't even be able to make us play them when she's there, because our stereo won't play CDs anymore, only USB, and I highly doubt Nora would know how to make a USB of Christmas songs, or that she'll spend the money for a new stereo. She may ask us to make a Christmas USB, but we can just keep "forgetting" about it until it's actually Christmas! Oh hell yeah! Contrast this to Paper Plus where the music was all controlled by the bosses and we were subjected to the same fucking Christmas songs for TWO WHOLE FUCKING MONTHS, including this fucking annoying song called I'm The Happiest Christmas Tree and FOUR FUCKING VERSIONS OF FUCKING WINTER F

Stacie Orrico - Stacie Orrico
I had high hopes for this album after Stuck and (There's Gotta Be) More To Life, but the rest of the album was very disappointing. I liked Security and Tight, but the rest ranged from OK-but-not-great to downright blah, with some being so cheesy that I ended up skipping them. I don't think I ever played That's What Love's About to the end, and I started skipping Instead after awhile too.

Boowy - Only You
So very, very catchy. One of my favourite songs this week.

Amuro Namie - All For You
I don't tend to like Amuro Namie's R&B stuff because it's too hard-R&B for me (I prefer the poppier stuff and some of the the middly stuff to the hard stuff) but this is a beautiful ballad with powerful vocals in the chorus. Love it!

Mr Children - Kimi Ga Suki
I tend to like Mr Children's ballads quite a lot, and this is no exception. Beautiful song.

Fucking Boyfriend (from the Forgetting Sarah Marshall soundtrack)
Yeah, there was no way I could ignore a song with that title. Sadly, the song itself does not live up to the awesomeness of its title; I found it quite boring, and it was another song that I skipped a lot.

Ikimonogakari - Yell/ Joyful
Ikimonogakari are a bit hit or miss for me, sometimes I love them and sometimes I find them a bit blah. Lately I've loved their ballads - their previous single Futari and Boku Wa Koko Ni Iru from their latest album being two I particularly loved. Yell was another ballad, and while it didn't wow me quite as much as those two, it was still beautiful. Joyful was a fast, pop-rocky track and did not do it for me at all. I played it when I was at home, but when I was out I tended to skip it, and I usually favour the fast tracks when I'm out walking (and as I now walk to and from work, as well as at least part of the way when I go somewhere else, walking makes up a pretty big part of my out time.)

Sugawara Sayuri - Ano Hi No Yakusoku
Oh wow. I discovered her when Julia translated Kimi Ni Okuru Uta and I Still Love You and since I liked Kimi Ni Okuru Uta quite a bit I decided to give this single a listen. And it's great! Poppish R&B (the title track is mid-tempo R&B and the B-side is upbeat and poppy) with a great voice. I might give her album a listen at some point.

Greeeen - Haruka
Not my favourite by them (that's Kiseki, Ayumi and Hito), but still pretty good. Haruka is a beautiful ballad (practically everything I listened to while I was out this week was ballads!) Koe is midtempoish and OK but not that memorable. I had to replay it to remember what it was like.

Hiromi - Ai Saretai
Slowish R&B. Addicted was by far my favourite, and I think Stay In Love would be number two. I prefer the songs where she's not trying to sing strong ballady vocals, as she sings high pitched in those and it sounds kind of screechy, especially in Complete. The first version of Ai Saretai was OK, though.

These didn't get as much play as they could have, because I played them over and over while I was translating all day Sunday and got sick of a bunch of them and started playing my top 100 list instead.

LeAnn Rimes - Right Kind Of Wrong
Pop, very catchy.

Nine Days - Absolutely (Story Of A Girl)
Guy pop rock circa 2000, pretty good. I'm annoyed that I can't find one of their later albums online, though, because there's a song on it called Reality TV that I'm dying to hear purely because of the title.

A1 - Caught In The Middle
Boy band ballad from around the same time. OK, but not stand-up-and-rave material.

Stacie Orrico - (There's Gotta Be) More To Life
God DAMN, this song is catchy! Between this and Stuck, I think I need to get hold of one of her albums.

Moritaka Chisato - Watashi Ga Obasan Ni Nattemo
Bubblegum girlpop from the early 90s. OK but not great. (And huh, her married name is Eguchi! I had a nice coworker in Japan called Mr Eguchi.)

Luna Sea - I For You
Great rock ballad from the late 90s.

Tina Arena - If I Was A River
Great ballad.

S Club 7 - Anytime Anywhere, The Two Of Us
Some of their older stuff that never made it onto albums. I like Anytime Anywhere quite a bit, but The Two Of Us is a bit blah. It's apparently from Stuart Little, though, which brings back fond memories of seeing it at the movies with Andrew and Melissa, finding the movie itself puke-makingly cheesy, but loving looking at Geena Davis because she looked like Crush Sensei. :P

Elton John - Bennie And The Jets, Jamaica Jerk-Off, Sweet Painted Lady
Bennie And The Jets I downloaded because it was in a movie I watched awhile ago (27 Dresses, I think) and is pretty good. Jamaica Jerk-Off I downloaded purely because anything with "jerk-off" in the title is automatically worth a listen, and I ended up liking that one the best of the three, I think. I like stuff with a reggae sound. Sweet Painted Lady was a reject for my Air NZ playlist because while the whole reason I chose them for my next fright is because there are two painted ladies (and two painted men) in their safety video (which had BETTER still be there when I use them or I will NOT be a happy bunny), the lyrics were too mean. Anyway, this is a ballad and it's pretty good if a bit blah in terms of the melody.

Sting and the Police - Roxanne
Another prostitute song. I got to this song from Elton John because my dad used to sing those two songs. It's a pretty good song.

Busted - Air Hostess, Crashed The Wedding, Fake, Nerdy
Another group I really need to find an album for, because DAY-UM, their shit is catchy!

For those wondering why Air Hostess is showing up in iTunes as "Hotesse de la Cabin", I'm mocking Kioku Fansubs' (and Japanese airline drama fandom in general's) inability to translate the Japanese for "flight attendant" correctly in French, because I can. For those wondering why I put "Tsukasa's Song" in brackets, Tsukasa is the guy in Attention Please whose flight attendant fetish led Aya to apply to JAL in order to please him by becoming a flight attendant herself (and now that I've read almost all of the Real Air Hostesses' Handbook I really want to re-watch that episode so I can scream "MY ASS!!!!!!!" all through it because unless Pervy Boss Guy is an ULTRA-MEGA-PERV (which, admittedly, he pretty much is) and has an airline-boss mafia who will kill anyone who disagrees with him, she would not have gotten in in a month of Sundays in real life.) So anyway, this song sounded just like him, so yeah, Tsukasa's Song.

Oh, and one of the writers of the Real Air Hostesses' Handbook said that song might be about her. All I can say is, anyone who writes a book as awesome as that deserves to have a song written about them.

Anyway, the songs. The first three songs are insanely catchy pop-rock, while the last one is a slower rockish song.

Daniel Powter - Bad Day
I downloaded this purely because it was mentioned in Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella which is one of my favourite books ever. It's a pretty good song, a rock ballad.

Oasis - Wonderwall
Slowish rock song that I heard aaaaaall the time when I was in intermediate and early high school but never knew what it was called. I love that Liam Gallagher apparently said "I can't fucking stand that fucking song! Every time I have to sing it I want to gag." XD

Hooters - Karla With A K
Carla put me onto this one and I really like it. The violin melodies are so very, very catchy.

Dreams Come True - Mirai Yosouzu
I was downloading Nude No Yoru by them for my Air NZ playlist and saw this on the list of files in the torrent, and since I'd translated it recently I decided to grab that too. It's pretty good, this is the original that I know of and I like it a lot more than the covers I heard by Aoyama Thelma (who has been a disappointment all around lately, actually) and whichever Hello Project group covered them on that marriage songs album.

I'm actually going to be listening to these for a few more days, but I've just been told that I'll have a 10-page job to do soon, so I'm going to post about these now. I had a big backlog of miscellaneous tracks, so no album this week, just 24 miscellaneous tracks. (Same next week too. I kept finding random songs I wanted to listen to!)

Juice Newton - Angel Of The Morning
Oooooh, I loved this song so much when I was a kid! It took me awhile to found the version I listened to as it's been sung by a bunch of artists, but when I did...SO MUCH LOVE. <3

Sandy Posey - Single Girl
Country song that was on Nellie's playlist when I was working at Taka the other week. (Speaking of which, must sort out some new albums to bring in next week, I'm getting tired of the old ones. Also, I totally insulted our bitchy owner without even realising it! She said she liked the music, and I said they were albums I'd gotten hold of for my mum. Which, given that we are supposed to play classic 60s and 70s music because that's the atmosphere we're supposed to set, you'd think wouldn't be a big deal, but she was all, "I'm hurt! You're comparing me to your mother! I thought she was kidding, but yesterday I ran into her in Taka and she started telling the Taka girl that I hurt her feelings last week with the music, and she was doing that thing that my coworker told me about, where she pretends she's kidding but actually means it. So I INSULTED OUR BITCHY OWNER!!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!)

Anyway, the song is quite nice but not my favourite.

The Crystals - Then He Kissed Me
Another song from my childhood. Catchy and cute.

Smokie - Think About The Night
More from Nellie's USB o' goodies. It's a late 80s guy ballad and so good.

Smokie - Rock Away Your Teardrops
This one's a fast song and one of my favourites from this batch. So very good.

Smokie - Tambourine Man
I put this one on for the nostalgia but it didn't really stand up against the other songs. Still good, though.

Divinyls - I Touch Myself
I had heard many jokes about this song but never heard it, so when I came across it online I decided it was high time that I found out. And it's pretty catchy! It came out in 1991 and has that late 80s/early 90s sound that I really like.

Lisa Loeb - Stay
Alternative music from the mid 90s. Really, really good.

S Club - Say Goodbye
I heard this song when I bought the DVD of all their music videos and liked it a lot, but never thought to try and find the song. Then when I was trying to replace all those albums I accidentally deleted I came across S Club (7)'s entire discography and remembered this song and added it to this week's playlist. And GOD, is it good. Beautiful ballad with strong vocals. I didn't like their later stuff AT ALL (including the B-side of this single), but this song is as good as their old stuff.

S Club - Special Kind Of Something
Yeah, this is fairly typical later-S Club stuff, so not that inspiring. The poppy stuff with the occasional ballad was what they did best, and while I have come to like more R&Bish stuff over the years, I still don't like much of theirs at all (with the sole exception of Whole Lotta Nothing. That was pretty good.)

Will Young - Evergreen
Very, very pretty ballad by the first Pop Idol winner.

Shinohara Ryoko & T. Komuro - Itoshisa To Setsunasa To Kokorozuyosa To
Komuro Tetsuya was the guy who produced artists like Kahara Tomomi, so it's no surprise that this song sounds a lot like something she'd do. And I see what Travis meant about a lot of his artists singing really high pitched.

Oda Yuji - Utaenakatta Love Song
Nice ballad, but I'm not a fan of the vocals. His voice reminds me of Southern All Stars, whose voices I don't really like.

Matsutoya Yumi - Kekkon Roulette
I was wiki-ing for another song by her and decided any song called "Marriage Roulette" had to be worth a listen. (I also came across a song called Babylon that I was going to put on my Air NZ playlist as a shoutout to Air Babylon, before reading a far superior book and realising that Air Babylon apparently caused genuine offence. So no more Air Babylon jokes from me, and that song has been deleted from my Air NZ playlist.)

Anyway, this song is fairly typical 80s girlpop. Not brilliant but not bad.

Matsutoya Yumi - Salaam Mousson Salaam Afrique
Another one I downloaded because it had an interesting title. Again, fairly typical 80s girlpop.

Tohoshinki - Stand By You
I've actually only listened to the first two tracks on this (the third, Sky, went on my Air NZ playlist in case I couldn't find more songs about nudity or nakedness - or paint! Does anyone know of any songs that mention paint in the title, or mention it a lot in the lyrics? - by January) so I can only comment on those two at this point. Both are ballads and both are pretty, but I like Tea For Two better than Stand By You.

Gotou Maki - Crazy For You
Gotou Maki has been doing R&B stuff outside of Hello Project for awhile now, but I haven't really listened to much of it. This song is really good, though. Well worth a listen.

Shibasaki Kou - Lover Soul
I don't really understand Shibasaki Kou's fast stuff. Her ballads are so mindblowing, while her faster stuff doesn't tend to be anything special. I quite like the chorus of the title track, though.

Alan - Kuon No Kawa
More pretty ballads. Not my favourite by her so far, but they're growing on me. And I really like the music at the beginning of Chi Bi ~Da Jiang Dong Qu~.

Ice Creamusume - 1st Best CDM
If you will recall, I got all kinds of squee over Ame No Furanai Hoshi De Wa Ai Senai Daro by Morning Musume awhile ago. I raved about it to one of my friends, who discovered a couple of weeks ago that there is a Chinese spinoff group who have covered a bunch of Morning Musume songs, including that one! I played the Chinese version of Ame No Furanai Hoshi De Wa Ai Senai Daro over and over again last week. SO MUCH LOVE for that song. They've also covered Morning Coffee, Renai Revolution 21 and Go Girl! Koi No Victory, all of which are pretty good, as well as made a song of their own, Love Debut, which is pretty catchy.

Detroit Spinners - Working My Way Back To You
Oh, this song. This is one of those songs that I always loved as a kid but never got hold of. And now I have it and it's still awesome and like the Chinese Ame No Furanai Hoshi I could not stop playing it. This version came out in 1980 and it's a very, very catchy guy pop song.

Deep Blue Something - Breakfast At Tiffany's
This too. So much love. <3 Great guy rock song from the mid 90s.

Air Supply - All Out Of Love
80s power ballad. Need I say more?

Tiffany - I Think We're Alone Now
80s girlpop. I never actually heard this song but heard of it in Jawbreaker, so when it popped up again in this music game show a few weeks ago I decided to look for it. And I'm glad it is because it is so very catchy.

Boomtown Rats - I Don't Like Mondays
Late 70s power ballad about this, which really creeps me out.

Human League - Don't You Want Me
Very catchy 80s guypop.

Janet Jackson - Runaway
Very pretty slowish R&B song.

Janet Jackson - Nasty
I downloaded this because there is a running joke in 1bruce1 about Mr Collins the pervy English teacher involving this song. To quote the mod: Mr. Collins if you're nasty first appeared in the recap where Aaron Dallas was a rageaholic. There was an especially pervy scene between Mr. Collins and Elizabeth with all kinds of gross subtext, so I made the joke as a play on the lyrics from the song "Nasty" by Janet Jackson: "No, my first name ain't baby, / It's Janet... Ms. Jackson if you're nasty." It seemed fitting. Also, check out the diary! (Which was done by meeeeee! I'm world famous in 1bruce1! :D :D :D :D)

Anyway, I'm glad I checked this song out, because it's very catchy. I couldn't stop playing the "Ms. Jackson if you're nasty" part, natch. XD

Jon LaJoie - Radio Friendly Song
Oh. My. God. You all need to listen to this NOW. It is fucking HILARIOUS.

Lil'B - Jikan Wo Tomete...
They're back! I don't love this the way I loved Negaigoto Hitotsu Kimi E and Kimi Ni Utatta Love Song, but it's pretty good. I particularly like Omoide Ni Naru Mae Ni. This is girl pop-R&B, btw.

Fukuhara Miho - Let It Out
Powerful pop-rock with amazing strong vocals. Not my favourite by her, but still pretty good.

Tanimura Nana - If I'm Not The One
Girl ballad. Pretty good, but I like my ballads to have a bit more power in them.

High-King - C\C (Cinderella Complex)
Hello Project, so it goes without saying that it's insanely catchy. This has an R&Bish sound to it and I really like it.

A*Teens - Don't Even Know Your Name
Before I came home in August, I very stupidly wiped almost my entire music collection from 1997 to 2004, so I've been busy recovering it (I still had a lot of the CDs and was able to download most of the rest, so I'm only missing a few albums now.) One of the albums I re-downloaded was Teen Spirit by A*Teens, and the version I downloaded had a bonus track that I hadn't heard before, so I took a listen. It's a nice-ish ballad, nothing special in itself but I quite like it, possibly because their voices make me nostalgic for 2002, my first year of uni, when I listened to the rest of the album.

Miki Douzan - Lifetime Respect
Guy reggae, not bad.

Koyanagi Yuki - Anata No Kiss Wo Kazoemashou
Powerful girl ballad.

Kylee - Love Kicks
15-year-old Japanese-American rock singer. She sings in English and her stuff sounds wicked like Avril Lavigne's, in a good way.
Favourites: Not For You, Empty Handed, Wherever You Are Tonight

Pussycat Ditzes - Doll Domination, or Ditz Domination as I have taken to calling it.
For those who didn't see my previous post with them, I call them this not because I actually think they are ditzes (though it wouldn't surprise me at all if they were), but because of a skit on this kids' variety show, What Now, shortly before I went to Japan. There was a parody of this quiz show for intermediate school students, New Zealand's Brainiest Kid, which we had all enjoyed watching and making fun of together, so me and Kathryn watched it avidly. This parody was called New Zealand's Dumbest Adult and featured six dumb adults, one getting voted off each week when they answered a question correctly, usually by accident. (It also had the winner of the real show playing the host, and she copied the annoying way the real host used to throw her head about, which endeared me to her a lot more than when she was on the show.) And so one of the six dumb adults was Melody something from the "Pussycat Ditzes" (and I found out this week that one of them really is called Melody! Hee!) So I've called them the Pussycat Ditzes ever since.

Anyway, this album took a few plays to get into it, and I skipped Bottle Pop pretty much every time, but I got to quite like it. A lot of the tracks are slow, melodic songs which I got to really like. Favourites that spring to mind first are I Hate This Part, Out Of This Club, Happily Never After and Space, but I favourited way, way more than that. I also liked a few of the faster tracks, like Whatcha Think About That, If I Was A Man, Don't Wanna Fall In Love and of course When I Grow Up, which will always have a special place in my heart for the part that sounds like they're saying "I wanna have boobies".

Also, I love that the lead singer, who apparently gets 99.999999% of the vocals, got the lamest solo. XD

Nan Quan Mama - Colour Palette
Cantonese ballady stuff. A little too mellow for my tastes, but I found it quite pretty.
Favourites: Quietly Tell Her, Series Of Pink First Love, Mermaid's Tears, Guns And Roses, Good Bye Good Luck, Crystal Dragonfly, A Second Father, Not Far From Home, Rock.


Tube - Juunen Saki No Love Story
80s/early 90s guy ballad.

Sharan Q - Single Bed
Tsunko's band! This is actually pretty good, nice 90s guy ballad.

Aiko - Eriashi
I'm not a fan of Aiko, but this is quite a pretty ballad. But not as pretty as...

Nakashima Mika - Yuki No Hana
So beautiful. I was never a fan of Nakashima Mika but I may have to give her a second listen as this isn't the first ballad of hers that I've really liked.

Aska - Hajimari Wa Itsumo Ame
One half of Chage & Aska who sang Say Yes, which I loved. This isn't as mindblowingly awesome as Say Yes, but it's still a beautiful, powerful ballad with that 80s/early 90s sound that I love so much.

Tohoshinki - Box In The Ship, Sennen Koi Uta, Share The World/We Are single
Oh, Box In The Ship. I love it so. When Hiromi took me to the station on my last day in Japan she was playing the two-disc version of The Secret Code, which this is from, and I loved this song and made a note to myself to get hold of it for my next batch. And I did! I've been playing it during my walk to work a lot because it's so catchy.

Sennen Koi Uta is a ballad and is quite pretty, but it gets overshadowed by Box In The Ship which I LOVE LOVE LOVE.

Share The World and We Are are more very catchy, poppy songs, and Ashita Wa Kuru Kara is a beautiful ballad that didn't really get the attention it deserved because I was all over Box In The Ship.

Tina Arena - Italian Love Song, Soulmate #9, Symphony Of Life, Dare You To Be Happy
From her best-of album. My favourite is Italian Love Song, it starts with midtempo verses that are nothing special, but then it launches into this beautiful, beautiful chorus. Soulmate #9 is a midtempo rockish song, Symphony Of Life is one of those songs with slow vocals but faster music in the background and is quite nice, and Dare You To Be Happy has a mature pop sound to it.

Morning Musume - Nanchatte Renai
Another very, very catchy song that I played a lot during my walks to work. I'm really, really liking Morning Musume's stuff at the moment. The B-side, Aki Urara is also quite catchy, but I didn't take to it anywhere near as much as the title track.

Hamasaki Ayumi - Sunrise/Sunset ~Love Is All~
These songs have the same melody and similar lyrics (speaking of which, Travis, do you think you'll translate them?) but Sunrise launches into a fast chorus while Sunset plays the same melody slowly and softly. I really like both of them.

Aoyama Thelma - Wasurenai Yo
Another ballad from Thelma that's OK but not mindblowing - just good enough that I still have hope that she'll sing more stuff that blows me away the way Soba Ni Iru Ne, Good Time, Last Letter and Diary (oh God, Diary) did. The B-side is R&B/hip hop, a bit much so for my liking, but I like hearing her speaking at the beginning, and the "HOLLA!"

B'z - Ichibu To Zenbu
They're back from the dead! I thought they'd called it quits. All 3 of the songs are very catchy pop-rock songs, and I love, love, love his voice.

Crystal Kay - After Love
Another one who we haven't heard from in a year! After Love is a beautiful melodic R&B song, Girlfriend (which features BoA) is a midtempo R&B song and Deaeta Kiseki is an R&B tinged ballad.

Garnet Crow - Hana Wa Saite Tada Yurete
Two more beautiful ballads from Garnet Crow (speaking of which, Julia, do you think you'll translate them? Oh, and are you there yet? How was your fright and how's Japan?)

AAA - Break Down/Break Your Name/Summer Revolution
All very fast dance songs. Catchy I guess, but they never grabbed me the way some of the other songs did.

Girl Next Door - Be Your Wings/Friendship/Wait For You
It's Bitchy's band! (In Uta No Ojiisan, the lead singer of this band played Ohno Satoshi's ex who dumped him from their band which was called Giselle. Instantly that made me think of this, so I immediately dubbed the members members Wasteful, Bitchy and Stupid and the band Heatwave, after another quote about Giselle which I can't find anymore in which Elyse said "Giselle coined the term 'heat wave' as a euphemism for farts which thus far is her major contribution to society.")

Anyway, this isn't half bad. It reminds me a lot of Tamaki Nami, not least because she's got a song about friends in this batch too.

Juliet - Natsu Love
Nice, laid-back slowish songs. I really like both of them.

Maria - Kanashimi Rensa
Another one that sounds like Tamaki Nami/Heatwave. I didn't get into this as much, although I did like the B-side, Mirai E No Kiseki, which is a slower song.

Tamaki Nami - Friends
Much more mellow than the stuff I'm used to hearing from her, but pretty nice. Negaiboshi is pretty much her usual dancy stuff, and Happy Forever is a cute poppy song that I really like.

Mano Erina - Summer Party
The latest darling of Hello Project. This is by no means the best H!P stuff I've heard, but it's pretty catchy.

Kago Ai - No HesitAtIon
It's Kago Ai! She used to be in Morning Musume and various other H!P groups like W (who were awesome) but got kicked out for underage smoking (teh scandal! Though my favourite will always be a tie between Yaguchi Mari HAVING A BOYFRIEND OMGWTFBBQ and Sawajiri Erika attracting a national scandal for answering a question sullenly at a premiere. God, Japan.)

Anyway, like Yaguchi Mari recently, she's back on the scene under a different, presumably less restrictive label and her song's pretty damn good. She still has a very cutesy voice, but the songs are a lot more mature than Hello Project's stuff, and well worth a listen.

Hello Project Chanpuru ~Happy Marriage Song Shuu~
Compilation of cover songs by a whoooooole lot of new H!P subgroups. Tsunko has obviously finally run out of names for subgroups, because he's "resurrected" a bunch of the old groups - Pucchimoni, Mini Moni, V-U-Den, etc - but with completely different members. Yeah.
That said, a lot of these songs are pretty good, even the ones I've heard the originals of.
Favourites: Diamonds, Ai Wa Katsu, Tentoumushi No Samba, Kimi Ga Iru Dake De, Mamotte Agetai, Cosmos, Only You

Now That's What I Call Music 30 (NZ Edition)
Kathryn was going to buy this, but I compiled it myself the day it came out. :D I can't believe we're up to #30, the first one came out when I was in 3rd form and had just started to get into recent music.
Favourites: When Love Takes Over by David Guetta and Kelly Rowland, Jai Ho by the Pussycat Ditzes, I Do Not Hook Up by Kelly Clarkson, If You Seek Amy by Britney Spears (I only just realised why it's called that. As I was listening to it this afternoon I was like "Why Amy?" and then was like "...Ohhhhhh!" Also, I can't believe she's been around for 10 years!), Love Sex Magic by Ciara feat. Justin Timberlake. I've been playing these songs all afternoon. I also really liked LoveGame by Lady Gaga, Bad Influence by Pink, Knock You Down by Keri Hilson and Waking Up In Vegas by Katy Perry, even though I really don't want to like her after the lyrics of some of her previous songs.

Coeur de Pirate - Coeur de Pirate
French folksy music. Samey, but good samey - the kind where no one song stands out so I wind up favouriting everything.


And now the lastest last Eurovision stuff! These are the rejects from Semifinal 2!

Sinead Mulvey & Black Daisy (Ireland) - Et Cetera
Pop-rock with a female vocalist, not bad.

Intars Busulis (Latvia) - Probka
More pop-rockish stuff, this time with a male vocalist. OK.

Marko Kon and Milaan (Serbia) - Cipela
Weird, but I quite like the chorus.

Lidia Kopania (Poland) - I Don't Wanna Leave
Girl ballad. I like how it gets all powerful in the second half, but the first half is kind of boring. It actually reminds me of the equally boring ballad Britain did, which came fifth, except that this girl has a nicer voice, so I am thoroughly confused as to how that crappy British ballad did so well. I get that the UK gets a free pass to the finals, but that still doesn't explain how it came fifth. >_<

Christina Metaxa (Cyprus) - Firefly
Another girl ballad, I like this one more than the Polish one.

Kamil Mikulčík & Nela Pocisková (Slovakia) - Let' Tmou
Ballad by a male and a female vocalist. The verses are a bit boring, but I love how it gets all powerful in the chorus

Quartissimo feat. Martina (Slovenia) - Love Symphony
Technoey song, not bad.

Ádok Zoli (Hungary) - Dance With Me
Ricky Martinish song. Catchy, but the lyrics are pretty dumb and that started to annoy me after awhile.

The Toppers (The Netherlands) - Shine
English ganbare song. This has cheesy lyrics too, but I love the melody so much that it doesn't bother me as much.


The Hollies - Carrie Anne
The only lyrics I remembered from this song were "I played a janitor, you played a monitor", "Hey Carrie Anne, what's your game now, can anybody play?" and "[This time] I'll be the teacher" so once I was old enough to know what role playing was, I always thought it was a kinky song about teacher roleplay sex. In fact, when I thought of this song and decided to look for it, I didn't have time to do it at that moment and didn't remember the title, so to remind myself I wrote a note saying "Kinky teacher sex song". Sadly, it's actually not about kinky teacher sex, but it's still a great song, one of my favourites this week. Now that I know all the lyrics, I like to think that the narrator is Mameshiba and Carrie Anne is Dim Blub (Julia will know what I mean. Just substitute "prefects" with "butlers"...)

The Hollies - The Air That I Breathe
Classic song. I don't like this as much as Carrie Anne, but it's still a great song.


And now some songs that Julia translated which I ganked for my site!

Arashi - Ichioku No Hoshi, Futari No Kinenbi
These are the B-sides for their Wish single. As usual, I like the last one the best (I almost always like the last song of Arashi's singles the best for some reason.) Ichioku No Hoshi is a poppy, fairly average song, while Futari No Kinenbi is a pretty ballad.

Checkers - Julia Ni Shoushin
Cheesy 80s song. OK, but not my favourite.

Sugawara Sayuri - Kimi Ni Okuru Uta, I Still Love You
I really like Kimi Ni Okuru Uta, which is a laid-back R&B song. I Still Love You, which ALWAYS makes me think of Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquois by Kylie Minogue, is a ballad and quite nice.

Flumpool - Hoshi Ni Negai Wo, Over The Rain ~Hikari No Hashi~
Hoshi Ni Negai Wo is a fastish pop-rock song and Over The Rain ~Hikari No Hashi~ is a ballad with a really, really nice chorus.

Yuzu - Umaku Ienai
Soooooooooo preeeeeeeeetty. This is my favourite Yuzu song that I've heard so far.

Uverworld - Shamrock
I listened to Bugright, the album this is on, last year, but never got into this song that much. Then I started watching Dandori, which it's the theme of, and started playing it again, and I really like it. So very catchy.

The music I listened to during my last weekend in Ariake and the frights!

Ueto Aya - Happy Magic ~Smile Project~
Yeah, I listen to Ueto Aya albums during long haul frights because Ueto Aya starred in Attention Please. Aren't I witty? :P I played this album during the first fright, from FUK to Hong Kong.

I wasn't sure what to make of this album, as the two of her other albums that I listened to didn't do it for me that much (one didn't have much new stuff, the other was pretty samey apart from the single tracks) but I liked this one a lot. A good balance between upbeat poppy tracks and ballads and both were really good. I actually ended up favouriting the whole album. The two-year break has done her good!

Ayaka - Sing To The Sky
All of the albums in this batch have some relation to flying or Cathay Pacific, and I have been saving some of them for a while. The significance of this one is...OK. First of all, I listened to her first album and some of her singles after that and found the vast majority of it lacklustre, to the point where I stopped downloading it altogether. Then I started liking Mizushima Hiro, who was married to her, and I developed a little of that...well, not really jealousy-hate, as I am fully aware that I will probably never meet the guy, more like "making up celeb man-candy fantasies is nowhere near as much fun when the response is always "But he's married to Ayaka!"" type hate (in the end I just started saying that he just made that up to protect my privacy and keep the paps off my doorstep. I got some of my students and coworkers going rather nicely - some of the 8th grade boys would yell "You're not going out with Mizushima Hiro!!!" every time they saw me, to which I would say "Yes I am!" and a nice "Are not!" "Am too!" fight would follow, sometimes halfway to the staffroom. XD With my coworkers it took a slightly more sophisticated form: "That's just a delusion!" "Yes! Hiro being married to Ayaka and not me is your delusion!" and again it'd go round and round until one or both parties was cracking up.)

So anyway, a few months ago me and Julia friended each other on LJ, and she likes Ayaka. So we used to wind each other up, her saying that Hiro is married to Ayaka and me saying (sometimes in German) that Ayaka is boring. This was around the time I booked my flight home, which despite being a different airline was still a night flight, and as I always have trouble sleeping on planes, I said that this time I was going to play Ayaka's album to make myself go to sleep. I got hold of her second album, this one, a good few months ago and had been saving it ever since. And then when I played it, it was actually pretty good! Samey for the first few listens, but there are a lot of songs that I actually liked quite a lot. I have gotten to like ballady stuff a lot more of late, especially the powerful ones, and she has a lot of those. So in the end I actually ended up playing this album during my awake hours on the night fright.
Favourites: Sky, Why, Gold Star, Ai Mo Uso Mo Shinjitsu, Clap & Love (albeit partly because of this), Winding Road, I Believe (English Version). And Okaeri. Oh God, Okaeri. This was the song I always loved (along with Melody), even when I didn't like much of her other stuff. This was the theme song of Zettai Kareshi (better known among those on my flist as Homegirl Fucked A Robot Once) which made me cry like a motherfucker numerous times, and so ever since then this song has gotten me every. Damn. Time.

Fiona Sit - Smile
The significance of this one is that she is from Hong Kong and this time I used a Hong Kong airline (Cathay Pacific, who are awesome even with their lack of body paint) and flew home via Hong Kong. This was the one I ended up listening to during my sleeping hours, because the majority of her songs are very soft, slow songs. It's very hit or miss as to whether this appeals to me, and had I not had a night flight in mind I might have deleted it on the first listen, but as I listened to it a few more times a lot of the songs grew on me a lot, and I noticed that a lot of them are really pretty.
Favourites: Heaven's Smile, Sweet, Stegosaurus Strolling On The Grass (and how awesome is that for a title?), My Choice X


Eurovision! This week's batch is all the artists from the first semi-final who didn't make it to the final.

Andrea Demirović (Montenegro) - Just Get Out Of My Life
Very, very catchy girlpop.

Gipsy.cz (Czech Republic) - Aven Romale
The first couple of times I listened to this I was like "...This is...just noise..." but the traditional Romani music has grown on me quite a bit.

Patrick Ouchène (Belgium) - Copycat
Hadise, the representative from Turkey who came 4th, is actually from Belgium but has lived in Turkey for awhile. She chose to represent Turkey instead of Belgium because they care more about the Eurovision in Turkey. How much less Belgium cares about the Eurovision became apparent when I listened to their representative. Seriously, my reaction was "What. The. Ever. Loving. HELL?!" It's kind of catchy, but the wannabe cowboy shit makes me cringe every damn time. I actually skipped over it last night because I was afraid that my brother, whose room is next door, would hear it and not let me live it down, and I will willingly listen to the cheesiest of Hello Project shit within earshot of him with no shame whatsoever.

Petr Elfimov (Belarus) - Eyes That Never Lie
Catchy guypop with rock riffs. I didn't notice it much during the first few plays but now I like it quite a lot.

Susanna Georgi (Andorra) - La Teva Decisió
One of my favourites in this week's batch. Kind of reminds me of 90s pop-rock singers, which is instant LOVE.

Lovebugs (Switzerland) - The Highest Heights
The name and opening melody makes me think of the Thunderbugs, who sang Friends Forever, so I was actually quite surprised when these guys turned out to be guys. I like it quite a bit, though. Midtempo rocky song.

Krassimir Avramov (Bulgaria) - Illusion
Guypop. Kind of catchy but not my favourite.

Next Time (FYR Macedonia) - Nesto sto ke ostane (Macedonian version)/Something Sweet That Will Remain (English version)
Wow. Just wow. This is probably my favourite song of all the Eurovision songs and I am gobsmacked that it didn't get into the finals (people chose that violin drivel over this?! Seriously?!) It's pop rock and so very powerful and so very catchy and just LOVE. I played this EVERY TIME I took a bag of my crap up the road to the rubbish area on Saturday and a big chunk of Sunday, and I must have done that about a million times.


Aiko - Kabutomushi
Ballad. I don't like her voice much, but the melody's quite pretty.

Spitz - Robinson
Apparently these guys chose this name because it means "sharp" or "pointed" in German, but I still like to think they're really named after this. Incidentally, our current neighbours have a dog that barks FUCKING CONSTANTLY. Melissa would like very much to shoot it, and no longer wants a dog of her own. XD Anyway, this is a nice, laid-back mid-90s guypop song. I like it quite a bit.

Makihara Noriyuki - Mou Koi Nante Shinai
More 90s guypop (1992 this time), pretty catchy. I wouldn't mind hearing some more of this guy's stuff (when I don't have a massive backlog of other stuff that I've been wanting to listen to...)

SMAP - Ai No Uta ~Jeong Mal Sa Rang Hae Yo~
I really don't like SMAP. Partly because even I can tell that their voices are subpar, but also because of the massive hype surrounding them. If I'm just eh on something, seeing it hyped to death will turn that "eh" into full-blown hate before you can say "SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT FUCKING SMAP ALR

It is my last day of work ever tomorrow and then next Monday I leave here to go home. Yeah.

So the music for basically my last two weeks here is:

Tohoshinki - Secret Code
I never really listened to Tohoshinki all that much besides a few songs, but Hiromi's mad about them so we were dancing to their DVD at her place the other week and I really liked a lot of their songs. They have some really, really catchy stuff, like Purple Line and Surivor, as well as some really pretty ballads like Bolero, Doushite Kimi Wo Suki Natte Shimattan Darou and Kiss The Baby Sky.

Village People - The Ultimate Collection
After hearing YMCA, Big Mac and more recently Go West, I knew I had to get hold of one of their albums, and this does not disappoint. Catchiest. Shit. Ever. My favourite tracks besides YMCA and Go West are In The Navy (which, like Fame by Irene Cara, I cannot listen to without thinking of the Japanese cover by Pink Lady), Can't Stop The Music and San Francisco.

Juanes - Mi Sangre
Another artist I started listening to because my friend really likes him. Her favourite song is La Camisa Negra, and apparently when he sings it live people throw panties onto the stage. XD My favourite from the very beginning was A Dios Le Pido, but I like pretty much everything quite a lot, it's hard to pick favourites besides that one.


Eurovision! This is the last of the finalists. I enjoyed this week's batch a lot.

#21 - Malena Ernman (Sweden) - La Voix
I love this song so very, very much. The beginning and choruses have this operatic stuff combined with dancy music and just. SO. AMAZING.

#22 - Chiara (Malta) - What If We
Ballad. OK, but didn't grab me as much as some of the others.

#23= - Soraya Arnelas (Spain) - La Noche Es Para Mi
So very catchy. And it's in Spanish!

- Sasha Son (Lithuania) - Love
Another ballad. Like Denmark, the beginning was so blah that I came to think of the whole song as blah, forgetting that the chorus isn't bad.

#25 - Waldo's People (Finland) - Lose Control
Eurodance. Very, very catchy.


Every Little Thing - Fragile
Ballad, quite pretty.

Porno Graffitti - Ai Ga Yobu Hou E
Slowish song. Very, very pretty, and will forever remind me of the last day of my last term here (term ended on the 17th, I've just been coming to school in the mornings, emailing people and such and going home at lunchtime to use up the time I have left.)

Princess Princess - M
Early 90s ballad, quite pretty but as with Every Little Thing, it suffers by being right next to a song that I really love, so it tended to get passed over.

Kuwata Keisuke - Shiroi Koibitotachi
I wasn't surprised to hear that he was the singer from Southern All Stars, I thought the voice sounded like them. The melody is pretty, but I'm not really a fan of his voice.

VA - Sekaijuu No Dare Yori Kitto
One of those midtempo songs that sounds like the end theme of a TV show or a movie, so in my book can't go wrong.

Jigsaw - Sky High
One of those songs that I LOVED as a kid but never got hold of, so I was SO happy when it turned up on an album Mum asked me to download while I'm still here and therefore still have my unlimited Japanese broadband. This is another song that will forever make me think of my last day of my last term.

David Dundas - Jeans On
Another song that was on Mum's 70s compilation. I grabbed this song to listen to purely because the band in Pop Babylon sang a cover of it as their debut single and references to the Babylon books are always welcome. I'm not that much of a fan of the song itself, but Babylon references!

Helen Reddy - I Am Woman
Eh, for a song that's been touted so much, it really didn't do it for me at all. I guess I always pictured a more aggressive song (the only lyrics I knew was the often-quoted "I am woman, hear me roar") rather than the ganbare song on a guitar that it is.

On the other hand:

Helen Reddy - Delta Dawn
I liked this one quite a lot. This is another song that I always heard about but never heard, as one of our cats is called Delta and so Dad would sometimes sing "Delta Dawn, what's that flower you have on?" to her. This is a slowish song with a powerful chorus, and I do love a powerful chorus.

Letty De Jong - De Zon Zal Weer Kommen
This was in a file that I downloaded to compile that 70s album for Mum. I grabbed it because, Dutch song! It's quite cute, quite an old, folky sound.

Sinsemilia - Tout Le Bonheur Du Monde
French song. It means "We wish you all the happiness in the world", so Amanda and her coworkers sang this to their graduating students at their prom. Amanda = awesome teacher. This song is kind of midtempo and I can't really describe the sound, but it's a great song.


These next few are songs that Noguchi Sensei sang at karaoke a few weeks ago that I really liked.

Nakajima Miyuki - Tabibito No Uta
I love this song so very much. It's a powerful ballad, and the lyrics fit so well with how I'm feeling on the occasions that it actually hits me that I'm going home (sometimes it hits me and I get sad, sometimes it hits me and I get excited, but the majority of the time I just feel like I'm still going to be here like normal. I didn't get very emotional at all during most of my goodbye sessions at my various schools because it hadn't hit me that I was actually leaving.)

Yamamoto Linda - Nerai Uchi
70s song. Catchy, but not my favourite. I find her singing to be a bit overdramatic to the point of silly in some places.

Matsutoya Yumi - Inochi No Hana
Slowish song from the mid-90s, not bad.

Matsutoya Yumi - Manatsu No Yoru No Yume
Midtempo song from the early 90s, pretty good.

Pocket Biscuits - Yellow Yellow Happy
Mid-90s girlpop. Very, very catchy.

Tokio - Heart Wo Migakukkyanai
Mid-90s Johnny's, pretty catchy.

Ikimonogakari - Hotaru No Hikari
Not as good as the musical orgasm that was Futari, but pretty catchy with their trademark sound. The B-side, Omoide No Sukima is a slow song with harmonica melodies (no, not "Wwwwaaaaaank!") Quite pretty.

Raydio - Jack and Jill
More 70s stuff. Quite catchy.

Brad Paisley - Online
Country. I love the lyrics of this song so very, very much.

Brad Paisley - If Love Was A Plane
I came across this while I was searching for the lyrics of Online and yeah, anything that references plane crashes automatically gets a listen. Even if you don't have unnatural fangirlish tendencies for anything relating to flying, this is a beautiful song, again with great lyrics.

Player - Baby Come Back
More 70s stuff. This is another one that makes me nostalgic for when I was a kid.

Gah, so tired. I was wondering when that late night/early morning in the week would catch up to me. I stayed up late-ish at Hiromi's place dancing to Korean rockbabies and cuddling her family's kittehs, but I felt that it would be a shame to break my morning exercise routine so I got up early as per usual. I didn't feel tired at all throughout the week, but then yesterday I slept until 11am after going to bed fairly early the night before (it can't have been after 10) and didn't feel like doing much but sleeping for the whole day. I went to Kohoku and bought stuff for dinner, ate dinner while watching ANTM, then decided to call it quits and went to bed. Feeling a lot better today, but probably still won't do much - just update this blog, do a bit more downloading and packing and then watch some more of Quirrell In A Skirt On A Plane.

Also, after seeing the trailer courtesy of Amanda, I HAVE to watch the Hannah Montana movie just to laugh my ass off at Tyra Bank's crap acting. The fact that I can tease Kathryn (who hates Hannah Montana) doesn't hurt either. Oh Cathay, why can't you have personalised entertainment on your current Hong Kong-Auckland flights (Uncle Graham says they don't, you have your own TV set but it plays the same thing as everyone else's) so I could watch it for free now. I bet Air NZ have it. I wonder if it's on Warez-BB or Demonoid? *looks* HA! Found it on Warez-BB! I'm going to take it home on my external harddrive and watch it in front of Kathryn!

So! On to this week's music!

( Through here! )

Tube - TUBEst
Summery early 90s boypop and sooooo goooood. <3 I do love Being's stuff. <3
Favourites: Season In The Sun, Because I Love You, Dance With You, Beach Time, Summer City, Be My Venus

Tata Young - The Very Best Of Tata Young (Thai)
This is from several years before Sexy Naughty Bitchy and is nothing like that song, which makes me think that her change in image happened after she discovered what "tatas" are. :P

Anyway, it's a nice album. It's mostly ballads (my favourite being Kon Derm Jai Derm, which is freaking beautiful, but I love Ruk Tur Dai Mai and Proong Nee Mai Sai too) with the occasional pop or pop-R&B song (Oo Oui, Ma Laeng and Sak Ga Nid. I like Oo Oui the best, but they're all awesome.)

Shibasaki Kou - Single Best
I love this album so very much. It's mostly strong ballads (my favourite kind of ballad), with the occasional softer ballad and faster track. I favourited pretty much everything that I hadn't already heard. Seriously. Such a great album.

And now onto the singles!

First, Rihanna is HOTT. <3

Janet Jackson - Feedback
Promotional song for Cycle 10 of ANTM; not my favourite of the ANTM songs so far. Fairly standard R&B stuff.

Eurovision songs!

#6 Urban Symphony - Rändajad (Estonia) (video)
Pretty, dramatic song. It's in Estonian, which makes it interesting to listen to. This video has an English translation of the lyrics.

#8 Patricia Kaas - Et s'il fallait le faire (France) (video)
Ballad, in French. Eh, it's OK.

#9 Regina - Bistra Voda (Bosnia and Montenegro) (video)
My first thought was "I like the majestic Eurovision music at the beginning better than the actual song" and my second was "Those are men?!" (although I ripped the sound files from the videos, I didn't watch the videos until I'd listened to the songs a few times.) Both thoughts stand, but I've gotten to like this song quite a bit. It's in Bosnian, and quite pretty.

#10 Inga & Anush - Jan Jan (Armenia) (video)
It's official - Armenian artists will forever make me think of StephaniEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. This is my favourite song of this week's batch, though. So catchy, and I love their traditional(?) outfits and seizure monster flashes of colour. The singers are pretty good looking too. :D


Play - I Must Not Chase The Boys
I basically downloaded this song because of this parody. :P The song itself is fairly catchy, but it didn't go the distance for me - I got tired of it after a few plays.

Yui - Again
First, I may have mentioned this before, but she purdy.

Of the songs on there, I like the B-side, Sea, the best. It's a soft ballad with a bit of power in the chorus and it's sooooo pretty. <3 The title track's pretty good too - one of her rocky songs.

Guardian 4 - Omakase Guardian
Are they a Hello Project subgroup thing? They sound like one, and their name sounds like one. Wikipedia! Ding! Yay!

If you don't know what I just referenced, you need to watch this video NOW.

Anyway, typical catchy H!P stuff.

Zard feat. Kuraki Mai - Sunao Ni Ienakute
Eeeee, Zard sounds exactly the same as before! Very pretty, very 80s-sounding songs. I didn't pay much attention to them this week (you'll see why in a minute) but now I want to keep playing them.

Kishimoto Hayami - See You Darling
R&B-tinged pop. I really, really like the first B-side of this, Epilogue. The other two songs aren't brilliant, but they're not bad.

Ayuse Kozue - Apple Pie
I downloaded this thinking it'd be like One and Cry Baby (the latter of which I loved to death) but it wasn't much like that at all. These are faster songs, and while the title track and second B-side are OK (especially the second B-side, which again, I didn't notice much for reasons that will become clear in a moment), they're nothing on Cry Baby. The first B-side didn't do it for me at all.

Tommy February 6 - Everyday At The Bus Stop
I'm not normally a fan of Tommy February 6, but I knew I had to download it after someone showed me the video. Sweet Valley High crack dreams!

Sawajiri Erika - Free
Most of her stuff doesn't do it for me at all, but this song was pretty good - pop with a bit of rock.

Orange Range - Ikenai Taiyou
Pop-rock with a summery sound, pretty good.

Jyukai - Ai No Hoshi
Girl pop-rock, pretty good. Again, didn't get as much play as usual for a reason that I am going to tell you...

NOW.

MIDDLE EASTERN MUSIC OMG
OH MY GOD THIS STUFF IS SO GOOD. Seriously, I don't know what it is about Indian and Middle Eastern music, but I really love the kind of melodies those songs have. The person I got it from (via this post in jpop_uploads) uploaded a big compilation album for me after I said I liked this mix, so expect more of this soon.

Also, those who haven't already, check out this video. It's freaking hilarious.

Is freaking amazing.

For those who know Sexy, Naughty, Bitchy, it's nothing like that. It's a really (really, really) beautiful ballad.

Also, I didn't used to be a fan of music in languages I didn't understand, but between this and the Middle Eastern music someone posted in jpop_uploads (the OP had asked for Jpop with an Arabian influence) and BoA's Korean stuff, I'm interested to hear more non-English, non-Japanese stuff? Does anyone know of anything good (especially pop, pop-rock, R&B or ballads)? Any language is fine.

So very, very tired. I got up at 2am this morning to finish a big translation I was working on. But by the most freak stroke of luck ever, my visit school got cancelled this afternoon, so I got to go home. Going to sleep at 1:45pm would be a very, very bad idea though (I can't get into properly fucked-up sleep patterns yet, as I still have a full-time job) so I shall post this week's songs instead!

Itou Yuna - Dream
Only 5 new tracks, but it was really good to listen to the single/B-side tracks again. I actually really liked Koi Wa Groovy x2 a lot this time round, whereas before I didn't think much of it all. Somehow it reminds me of the night I went to the yosakoi performance in Sasebo and got stranded there (and to add insult to injury, the show sucked - hardly any dances, the rest was just an hour or two of talking.) Anyway, it reminds me of then, but the weird thing is, I don't remember actually playing it then - I remember playing something else. *looks at date in iTunes* Ah! It must have been when I went to FUK a couple of weeks before that! Anyway, I really like that song now.

I also really liked replaying Miss You, as I've always loved that song. Actually, I can't think of any single/B-side tracks on there that I didn't like.

Out of the new tracks...my favourite was Baila Baila, which has kind of a Hawaiian sound to it. I also really liked No One Else, which is a ballad.

B'z - Best Pleasure II
I rented this to get Gold, which was in this book I was reading that deconstructed Jpop lyrics (and I'm glad I did, because it is now one of my favourite Jpop ballads.) I kept the whole album and after listening to Flashback I decided to dig out the whole album and give it a listen. And I'm glad I did, because if I liked Flashback, I LOVED this album. It's of their stuff from 1999-2005, I guess, and just SO AMAZING. I seriously cannot choose favourites. It's poppy rock (with the occasional power ballad, which by definition are awesome) and I love it so. I had planned on getting hold of their other best-of albums, but now I think I may have to get hold of all their albums.

Lady Gaga - The Fame
This was weird, weird, weird to listen to. I've barely listened to any English music in years, first because I didn't like a lot of what was out at the time and now because I have so much Jpop to listen to that I've had to invest in an external harddrive. So I don't listen to English music much, and the only time I listen to current, mainstream English music is when I go home. So this album made me really nostalgic for my last trip home, even though I didn't actually play it then.

It's a great album. I particularly loved the melodic R&B songs, like Paparazzi, Poker Face, Boys Boys Boys, Paper Gangsta and I Like It Rough. I also really liked Summerboy, which is a poppier track, Starstruck, which is pretty standard R&B, and Eh Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say) and The Fame, which I'd loved to begin with. And Lovegame, purely for the references to "taking a ride on your disco stick."


Mystery Jets - Half In Love With Elizabeth, Young Love, MJ.
Bruce, my friend who upped it for me, describes it as "neo-New Wave pop". It is really, really good. I've grabbed the whole album, so expect to see that some time soon. Also, check out the video for Half In Love With Elizabeth. XD

The Pussycat Dolls - When I Grow Up
I downloaded this because it was the promotional song for Cycle 11 of ANTM (I'm going through the promotional songs for each series, or at least the ones that are posted on Wikipedia) and when I got to the chorus, I was like "OH! THIS SONG!!" Me and my sister played this a couple of times when I was home last time, and she told me that the part that goes "I wanna have groupies" sounds like "I wanna have boobies" and so I can't hear it as anything but "boobies" now either. XD Also, we call them the Pussycat Ditzes because of a skit on What Now aaaaaaaages ago, before I came to Japan. XD It was called New Zealand's Dumbest Adult, and it was a parody of New Zealand's Brainiest Kid, this kids' quiz show (which was (unintentionally) hilarious in itself. Me and most of my family would just sit in the lounge mocking the shit out of it.) The parody featured about six dumb adults on this quiz show (the host was played by the winner of NZ's Brainiest Kid, and it was hilarious because she had the NZBK host's mannerisms down pat and mimicked them at every possible moment XD) and each week, the person who answered the question correctly (usually unintentionally) would have to leave. One of the dumb adults was "a singer in The Pussycat Ditzes" and me and my sister have called them that ever since.


Now for some songs from this year's Eurovision Song Contest! I want to eventually listen to all of them, but here's the top 5 + one my friend put me onto.

Sakis Rouvas - This Is Our Night (Greece, #7)
My friend posted the video of this in her blog because she was mesmerised by his dancing shirt. You will be too!

As a song, it's actually very catchy, and the lyrics scream "English ganbare song" in the most hilarious way. Seriously, it's like someone took every cheesy "Go for it, achieve your dreams!!!!!!1!!one!" Jpop song, put them all together and translated the result into English. There's even a "Yes, we can." XD Also, the part that goes "Fly to the top, baby/Yes, we can do it" makes me think of those ANA ads that I saw in FUK Airport on the way back from Yokohama in March saying "YES, WE CAN FLY".

Alexander Rybak - Fairy Tale (Norway, #1)
THIS got the highest score in the history of the contest and almost twice as many points as the second place winner? SERIOUSLY?! I mean, it's not bad, but it's not all that either. Somehow this kind of turns me off (I'm always like that. If I think something's just OK to begin with and then see it getting hyped to shit, I generally like it less.)

Like I said, though, it's pretty good, upbeat pop song accompanied by a violin. Maybe it just won because it was different from the usual Europop/Eurodance/Ricky Martinish stuff.

Yohanna - Is It True (Iceland, #2)
This song really, really reminds me of No Angels, the winners of the German series of Popstars, the forerunner of Idol. It's a ballad and even if it didn't make me wicked nostalgic for the beginning of uni when I played their debut album a lot, it's a nice song.

AySel and Arash - Always (Azerbaijan, #3)
Fairly standard, catchy Europop, with some traditional-sounding music at the beginning. I like it quite a bit.

Hadise - Dum Tek Tek (Turkey, #4)
This is my favourite song of this week's batch. Very, very catchy, and I like her voice a lot too, it reminds me of Pandora. I want to look for some of her albums.

Jade Ewen - It's My Time (UK, #5)
This song confuses me. I know the UK do some good stuff (though like I say I haven't listened to much lately) and THIS was the best they could submit? It's a Whitney Houstonish ballad and it's not terrible, but it's my least favourite of this week's batch. When I Zamzarred it the commenters on YouTube were saying stuff like "We [the UK] should just stop entering, our entries always suck and everyone makes fun of us." I don't know about "always" because this is the first year I've listened to the Eurovision songs, but if this song is anything to go by, I can see what they mean.

And now an older Eurovision song!

Bucks Fizz - Making Your Mind Up
This was Britain's entry in 1981 and it won. I didn't find it much to write home about, but it's kind of catchy, I guess. Also, it has the same "English ganbare song" thing as Dancing Shirt Man. Also, the line "Don't let your indecision take you from behind" is making me giggle far too much. (It's OK, Bucks Fizz, I prefer my indecision to use the missionary position too.)


And now for the Japanese stuff!

Okui Masami - Starting Over
Eh, it's OK. Standard anime pop stuff. I might like it more ordinarily, but this week was almost all stuff I loved, so it didn't stand out.

Arashi - Ashita No Kioku/Crazy Moon ~Kimi Wa Muteki~
Not my favourite single by them (but again, it had stiff competition) but pretty good. Ashita No Kioku is a ballad and quite pretty, and Crazy Moon is an upbeat, catchy, 80s-ish song.

There will be a brief moment of delay while I jump up and down squeeing about the fact that I have another biggish translation job! This is especially yay-worthy, as the first one was haaaaard and I was worried that I hadn't done it well enough. But I must have if they've given me more! :D

Misia - Ginga
The reason Arashi didn't stand out so much this time. Wow. Just wow. On my first listen I didn't like it to begin with, because she had that golf-ball-in-her-mouth thing that I remember Nakashima Mika doing. Then it kicked into the chorus. And just...wow. I freaking LOVE strong, powerful ballads like this. You can suck on golf balls all you want, Miss Misia, if that's the result.

For B-sides...I wasn't a fan of Itsumademo, but Sukoshizutsu Taisetsu Ni is really pretty too.

Garnet Crow - Doing All Right
The title track is OK, a nice mid-tempo song. I actually like the B-side, Nora, better, and not just because it reminds me of one of the most cracktastic Sweet Valley High books in the (already cracktastic) series. It's a ballad and really pretty.

Hi-Fi Camp - Hitotsubu Dai No Namida Wa Kitto
Nice, laid-back guypop. They remind me of One Draft, who sang Ai Wo Kudasai a few months back.

Ikimonogakari - Futari
And it's a hat trick for beautiful ballads! It makes me think of Boku Wa Koko Ni Iru on their latest album a few months back, which I also loved. I didn't bother keeping the B-sides, which were live performances of a couple of their previous singles that I wasn't so fussed on.

Yamada Yuu - Free
I felt that it was my duty to check this out, because Yamada Yuu played the evil heiress chick in Me-e-ei Chan No Hitsuji. It's pretty good - fairly standard, catchy R&B.

And finally, we have Ayase Haruka.
Period, Kousaten Days, Hikoukigumo
I had already been comparing this chick to Ueto Aya, as they've both each been in an airline drama/movie and a rich girl/poor guy drama, and then I found out last week that she sings too! Or sang, I should say, as she released these singles in 2006/2007. She's not bad. The first single's a bit blah, but I like the title tracks for Kousaten Days and Hikoukigumo a lot. Kousaten Days is one of those slowish songs that kind of sounds like the theme song of a TV show, and Hikoukigumo is faster and quite catchy. The B-side of the latter, Chiisana Kujira, is growing on me too. It's a ballad and quite pretty.

Topic for discussion: Who wore it better?

Also, that just reminded me that Ueto Aya has a new single coming out soon! Yay! I thought she was gone for good!

Also, Ayase Haruka was apparently arrested as a suspected spy in NZ after she was caught flying around in a plane taking pictures after/during the filming of Happy Flight. I like to think she just got arrested because the NZ airline industry hated her movie (though this is probably left over from my annoyance with Attention Please 1970.) I really want to watch it now to see how cracky/I-call-shenanigans it is. But it'll have to wait, cause I GOT ANOTHER BIG JOB!!!! WOOT!

Finally, a telemarketer just thought I was Japanese. Woot?

So, there was this drama recently called Uta No Oniisan, which basically features Oono Satoshi from Arashi as a singer on a kids' TV show. When he first starts at this show, it is ruled by these two egotistical and bizarre singers who like to dress up as a prince and princess. The prince (who is the worse of the two) starts to feel threatened by Satoshi and the other noob, so he purposely sticks a nail into the side of the stage and rips his pants on it, and hilariously yells "LOOK THIS PANTS!!!!!" So me and my friend have called him the Pants Prince ever since, and we call the princess (and the actress who plays her) Pants Princess by association.

Despite our pisstaking, as in many cases, we actually really like this actress, who is called Katase Nana. So when Julia discovered that she sings too and I discovered her best-of CD at the video library a few weeks later, I got it out and ripped it. It's not really my thing, but I thought I'd upload it on Megaupload for you guys. This will be available until the link expires, so enjoy! :D

Katase Nana - Reloaded Perfect Singles

How to tell you spend too much time on the internet: when you hear your principal grill a student on the plural of "child" and when they say "children" you immediately think "No, it's not! It's chrilden!"

So much stuff I was excited about this time. <3

B'z - Flashback (Disc 2)
The second disc from the album I posted last week. More catchy Euroey stuff.
Favourites: Oh! Girl, Break Through, Stardust Train, Rosy

Bonnie Pink - One
Soft acoustic rock, pretty nice.
Favourites: Won't Let You Go, Fuschia Fuschia Fuschia, Princess Incognito, Kane Wo Narashite, Himitsu, Get On The Bus, Ring A Bell

Matsuda Seiko - Bible (Disc 1)
Fairly typical 80s girlpop. It's samey, but good samey. I love Canary in particular, but I ended up adding 11 of the 19 tracks to my favourites playlist.


Vixen - Edge of a Broken Heart
I do love it when ANTM recappers put me onto awesome 80s songs. This is a powerful rock song by female vocalists and just so. So. Awesome. <3

Carly Simon - Let The River Run, We Have No Secrets
Little Black Book is responsible for these two. We Have No Secrets came out in the early 70s and is kind of eh, but Let The River Run (which came out in 1988 and was in Working Girl, which I want to watch purely because it was ripped off in a Sweet Valley High miniseries and I really want to see what the real thing was like.) Anyway, this song...wow. Just wow. So beautiful and powerful and uplifting. Last Monday when I went to a city about half an hour to an hour away to run some errands, I was playing this song almost nonstop.

Morning Musume - Shou Ga Nai Yume Oibito
I was just eh on this song at first, but I've gotten to really like it, especially after paying attention to the lyrics. I like to think that this impossible dream of his is to become a model and the reason she wants to dump him is because he spends all her money on cocaine, but I have a one-track mind. :P Anyway, I really like this song. It's pretty and sad and just aw. The B-side is...you know Take Off Is Now from their latest album? Like that, pretty much. Midtempo rocky stuff.

Superfly - My Best Of My Life
Beautiful, powerful ballad. I like it. I like it a lot.

Stephanie - Future
Catchy! The first B-side, Breakdown, is kind of slow rock and took awhile to grow on me, but it's pretty good. The second B-side is a remake of Pride, which, any version of this song makes me happy, because it makes me think of the movie, which I can't wait to see when it comes out on DVD (which I think is right after I leave for my few months in NZ - figures >_<) because it looks awesome.

Hirano Aya - Set Me Free/Sing A Song
I downloaded this purely because of this cover. The two songs are pretty much exactly like the cover - insanely catchy, upbeat pop. Good stuff.

Jyongri - Maybe Someday
As I kind of mentioned last week, this single is more of the same OK-but-not-great stuff Jyongri has been putting out for ages...until you get up to the last track, First Kiss. This is the Jyongri I fell in love with when I heard Hop, Step, Jump, Let Me In and Lost Girl. It just has that sound, I can't really put my finger on what makes it so great, but it is so, so awesome. I can has more of this, yesplzthkyou?

Imai Asami - Day By Day/Shining Blue Rain
More insanely catchy girlpop.

Buono - My Boy
And more! I like the B-side, Warp, better, but they're both great. And can I just say that I love the phone people for starting to include B-sides as ringtones? Now if they'd just go back and do How To Fly and Smile by Arashi, I would be a very happy bunny!

Yu-A - Aitai
R&B. Again, I like the B-side better. The title track is a ballad and I was wibbling over whether to keep it, then I heard the B-side, Little Girl, which is midtempo R&B and I really liked it. I kept the title track too and that's grown on me quite a lot too.

NEWS - Koi No ABO
Usually when I download a NEWS single I like the title track but the 345348756348 B-sides bore me to tears, but this time it was the opposite! The title track was just eh, but the first two B-sides, Labyrinth and Open Your Eyes, are really good! Labyrinth is fairly standard catchy pop stuff and Open Your is a pretty slowish song. The last track, a live performance of a song called Share which I haven't heard before in any form, is pretty good too.

Lady Gaga - The Fame
I downloaded this upon discovering that it was the promotional song of Cycle 12 of ANTM (those of you who followed it, what were your thoughts?) and I'm glad I did because it is very, very catchy. Watch this space for the promotional songs from the previous cycles!

Kahara Tomomi - As A Person
I downloaded this years ago, purely because Grace told me that Tomomi wrote it as a jab at her producer, who she had been dating and then broke up with. I wasn't a fan at the time, but as I enjoyed Hate Tell A Lie recently I re-downloaded it and liked it quite a bit.

First of all, Katou Miliyah, you make me sad. You come out with this amazing single and almost-as-good album 2 years ago that makes me download everything else you release in the hopes that there'll be someone else as good. And then release increasingly uninspiring singles and albums ever since. But I can't stop downloading your stuff because a part of me always wonders if I'm missing another Eyes On You/Kono Mama Zutto Asa Made. Damn you, Miliyah.

And Jyongri, you're just as bad. Your latest single is just good enough for me to keep it, but only just. And again, I can't ignore your releases in case by some chance you turn out to have gone back to releasing stuff as amazing as Hop Step Jump, Let Me In and Lost Girl.

ETA: I've just listened to the last track on your latest single, First Kiss. That's more like it. I can has more of this, yesplsthkyou?

Finally, Hey!Say!Jump. I'll put up with the stupid pun that is their name, but when the hell are they going to put a fucking album out? They've been in action for nearly 2 years, released 5 singles, all of which went to #1 according to Wikipedia, but still no album. What's the deal, Johnny?

Also I must take back every bad thing I said about Ueto Aya's character in Attention Please. I thought she was annoying, but she has nothing on the incredible, eye-sporking, vomit-inducing celluloid torture that is Kino Hiroko's character in the original 1970 version. (And I can't stop watching it because it's an airline show, and thus I must watch every episode.) Come back, Aya, and bring your bed head and fierce (and legitimate) scarf with you. And touch and play with everything in the cabin as you go. (Although it does make it more bearable to remember that the couple of industry insiders I talked to about the 1970 version both said that there is not a snowball's chance in hell of someone as bad as Kino Hiroko ever being allowed to be responsible for passengers.)

Also, these ads with Ueto Aya are freaking awesome and I give jadore_histoire huge props for finding the first two.

And now for the music!

B'z - Flashback (Disc 1)
The first disc of a 2-disc best-of album (the second one's coming up next week.) This is pretty different to the stuff they release now; it's very upbeat, catchy, euro-ish pop. And it is so, so good. <3 Although, like I said last week, some of the lyrics are a bit suspect. XD
Favourites: Safety Love, Kimi No Naka De Odoritai, Lady-Go-Round, Hurry Up, Guitar Kids Rhapsody, Dakara Sono Te Wo Hanashite (although I really liked pretty much everything.)

Lindberg - Lindberg II
80s pop-rock. Like Lindberg I, this is samey, but in a good way - it all sounds similar, but it all sounds good. I didn't even attempt to pick favourites, it all went on my favourites list.

Metis - Te Wo Tsunagou
I had no idea Metis released more (mini) albums after One Love! I came across this and her other mini albums when I was looking for her latest single on Jpopsuki. It's all pretty slow, which would normally bore me, but it has that reggae sound which I love, so I actually really liked this album.

One thing that gets. On. My. Tit, though, is the way she pronounces "everybody" as "everyborry" in Te Wo Tsunagou. I freaking HATE it when Japanese people pronounce the "d" sound (especially in words like "water" where the "t" is pronounced like a "d" in several branches of English) like an "r" and think they're being soooooooo clever. IT IS NOT AN R. IT IS A D. Yes, your tongue hits a similar part of the front of your mouth to the Japanese R. It is still not the same. And your tongue is nowhere near the same place when pronouncing the English "r" (it doesn't touch the front of your mouth at all, in fact), so pronouncing the "d" in "everybody" like an English "r" like Miss Metis has done here? Instant fail.

That aside, though, this is a great album. I love what a strong voice she has, and I love that this album is all slow songs yet I still love it. If I had to pick favourites I'd probably say Te Wo Tsunagou (in spite of the "Look! R!" thing) and Aoi Namida.

Also, her name has always made me think of "penis" for some reason. :P


Berryz Koubou - Waracchaou Yo Boyfriend, Munasawagi Scarlet, Kokuhaku No Funsui Hiroba, Tsukiatteru No Ni Kataomoi
Various singles from 2006-2007. They're all pretty catchy, but I like Waracchaou Yo Boyfriend and Tsukiatteru No Ni Kataomoi in particular.

Rock'A'Trench - Every Sunday Afternoon
A single from last year by the same people who sang the theme song of Me-e-ei Chan No Hitsuji (which, incidentally, one particularly sex-obsessed student of mine changed to "Sa-shi-ta-ku-te, sa-shi-ta-ku-te..." (I wanna put it in, I wanna put it in...)) Pretty good guyrock stuff.

D&D - Grab My Love, Girl Friends, You're No.1; Aya & Chika - Kiss In The Sun, Dancin' My Heart, Waitin' For Heaven
Mid-90s euro. Whenever I feature euro I pretty much always say that euro is a big hit or miss for me - I either love it or it bores me silly. This is definitely the former, especially You're No.1, Dancin' My Heart and Waitin' For Heaven.

Metis - Zutto Soba Ni
Pretty ballad. I like the B-side better, though, as it's a lot more reggae.

The Wallflowers - One Headlight
Awesome soft-rock song from my early high school days that I rediscovered when I watched Excess Baggage during Golden Week.

On August 3 I am going to be finishing my contract here and going back to NZ for a few months. Once I arrive in NZ on August 4, I will be taking requests again, for a fee. For those who remember when I did it for free, the upside of doing it this way is that your translation will get done a lot quicker. Instead of spending months on a waiting list, you'll get your translation in a couple of days. It's also more flexible - I now take romaji-only requests as well, and you can also request translations of material other than lyrics. See here for details.

This week it's all (or mostly) H songs. No, not that kind of H*, songs that start with H.megchan(God, I haven't thought of her as Megchan in years) did another of those alphabet memes (I tried for a little while last year but I've never been good at narrowing shit down, so I'd have 100 or more songs that would take me forever and a day to write about, so I decided to just stick to recent stuff because it's more manageable.) I wound up grabbing a ton of songs, so I listened to those instead of albums.

*That's next week, by the sounds of it. This song by B'z that I'm listening to as I'm typing this has a line that I think is supposed to say "You're tasty girl", but actually sounds like "Your testicle". I'm pretty sure there's another song in next week's batch that set off my dirty mind too.

Ah yes, here it is: Kimi No Naka De Odoritai (I Want To Dance Inside You.) This would make me giggle at the best of times, but having just rewatched Borat last week (for those who haven't seen it, at one point he talks about making romance explosions on Pamela Anderson's "stomatch")...yeah. Dying here!

Which just reminded me of a somewhat embarrassing moment in Year 13 Japanese, where our teacher (who, incidentally, I had a gigantic crush on) read out the description of this speech contest we could enter. Year 13s had to talk about an element of contemporary Japanese culture, and one of the suggested topics was "chapatsu (dyeing hair)". Most NZers under 35-40 apparently pronounce "here" and "hair" the same, but my mum is British, and while she's pretty much lost her British accent, it's not 100% NZ either, so I have always distinguished between "here" and "hair" (my dad pronounces them the same, but I always thought that was a quirk, not the other way round.) So when my teacher read out "dyeing hair" I misheard it as "dying here" and thought a whole lot of Japanese people came to NZ to die and told several other people that they did. I was really embarrassed when I saw the paper for myself and found out what it really was, and I have never told anyone about this before.

First up is not an H song, it was after we got on the topic of Matsuda Seiko, who starred in Natsufuku No Eve, where the main characters go to NZ (it was an 80s movie set in Christchurch/the South Island, not 00's Auckland (my hometown, which is on pretty much the other end of the country), but it was still pretty cool to watch.) I don't remember how we got on the topic, butmegchansaid the only song by Matsuda Seiko she really liked was this one, and since it was just the one song I just added it to the list with the H songs.

So I give you Watashi Dake No Tenshi ~Angel~. It's a soft ballad and quite pretty.

B'z - Hadashi No Megami
One of my favourites of the bunch. It has that early 90s boypop sound that I love so, so much. <3 <3 <3

Bad Religion - The Handshake
megchandescribes this as "melodic punk". I am beginning to discover that I quite like punk music. I preferred Slumber, which she posted in her S meme, but this is pretty good too.

The Blue Hearts - Kimi Ni Yasashiku
Japanese punk music with a male vocalist. I don't like it as much as Linda Linda, which is awesomesauce, but it's pretty good.

Blumchen - Heut Ist Mein Tag
German electronica. I took German in high school and remember enough to know that the first few words mean "I feel ---" but translate literally as "I feel me/myself ---" which makes me think of Natasha from Cycle 8 of America's Next Top Model (it's #2 in the general commentary after the Tyraisms.) One of the first icons I ever made was about that. *points to icon*

The Brilliant Green - Hello Another Way ~Sorezore No Basho~
Mellow, acoustic-y ballad. Not my favourite song to begin with, but it's really pretty and once I got done squeeing over EARLY 90S BOY BANDS OMGWTFBBQ I got to really like it.

Damn Yankees - High Enough
80s hair metal. I didn't know what hair metal was before this and pictured something really heavy, but this is actually a very nice, melodic rock ballad. (And I swear I've heard the opening verse before, maybe in an ad or at the beginning of a video, but I can't think where.)

Don Henley - The Heart Of The Matter
80s power ballad. Not my favourite, but pretty good.

Faster Pussycat - House Of Pain
I downloaded it purely because Potes on Television Without Pity referenced it as the title of this recap of America's Next Top Model...wait, no, it was the actual title of the episode! Huh. Either way, you should check out this video about it by Rich on fourfour, because it is freaking hilarious. The best stuff is from 1:38 pretty much all the way to the end.

Anyway, this song is another 80s power ballad and it's pretty good. The verses don't do much for me but I like the chorus quite a bit.

Fukuyama Masaharu - Heart
Laidback acoustic song, released in *wikis* 1998. Nice song.

Gin Blossoms - Hey Jealousy
Midtempo rock song from the early 90s. It's kind of catchy, but there's also something kind of beautiful about the vocals. Also, not that I'm a tad preoccupied about how I'm going to get my translation career started in a few months or anything, but the first few times I played this playlist I wasn't looking at the track names, so I heard the part that goes "Heyyyy jealousy" as "Aaaaagency". XD

GLAY - However
J-rock ballad that came out in 1997. It didn't do much for me at first, but as with Hello Another Way, once I was done squeeing over early 90s boypop I realised how beautiful and powerful and awesome it is and I really like it.

Hide - Hurry-Go-Round
I'm going to take a guess and say that this came out in the late 90s *wikis* Yes! I thought so! It just has that sound, that takes me back to my early days of high school in the late 90s, even though I've never heard it before.

God, this song is amazing. It's a midtempo soft rock song and it's so beautiful. I love the instrumentals. They take me straight back to 1997/98 (even though, like I said, I heard this song for the first time last week) and just omg. So beautiful. Da-dada-dada-da-dada-da-dadada, da-dada-dada-da-dada-da... LOVE. <3

Hootie and the Blowfish - Hold My Hand
Early 90s rock. Not bad.

Hyde - Hideaway
I always assumed Hyde's stuff would be too heavy for me, but this song is actually really catchy. The chorus makes me think of the end theme of a movie or something, which is a surefire way to my heart.

Although is it just me or does "You've grown a big bojangle" sound kind of dirty?

Hysteric Blue - Haru ~Spring~
Late-90s pop-rock, reminiscent of Judy And Mary. I can't listen to a whole album of their stuff, but individually their songs are pretty good. Again, the chorus of this song sounds like it could be the end theme of something, so it makes me happy.

Kahara Tomomi - Hate Tell A Lie
I actually bought the single of this from megchan in 2005 but didn't like it all that much. Then I re-listened to it last week and liked it quite a bit...because it reminds me of 2005! Gotta love the way my mind works. She does have quite a distinctive squeaky voice, though, so the distinctiveness would have helped.

KAT-TUN - Haruka Na Yakusoku
I don't generally like KAT-TUN, but this song is so upbeat and catchy that I can't not like it.

Kiss - Hide Your Heart
Rock/metal. As with Hyde I'd assumed that they'd be too heavy for my liking, and I don't think I could listen to a whole album of their stuff, but this song isn't bad at all.

L'Arc En Ciel - Honey
J-rock. L'Arc En Ciel are one of those bands that I get bored stiff listening to a whole album of, but when Grace posts individual songs I often quite like them (especially Vivid Colours and Snow Drop. God, I love those songs.) I didn't like this one quite as much as those two, but I like it quite a bit nonetheless.

Le Couple - Hidamari No Uta
Ballad with a female vocalist. It took a little while to grow on me, but it's quite pretty.

Letters To Cleo - Here & Now
Alternative rock with a female vocalist. It's not my favourite song by them (that's I Want You To Want Me...god, I love that song. Although the fact that it makes me crazy nostalgic for high school doesn't hurt) but pretty good.

Me First and the Gimme Gimmes - Hello
Punk cover of the Lionel Richie song. Between this and their cover of The Rainbow Connection, I have to conclude that punk covers make everything better.

Mr Children - Hoshi Ni Naretara
Early 90s guypop. God, I love that stuff.

My Little Lover - Hello Again ~Mukashi Kara Aru Basho~
Mellow, acoustic rock with a female singer. Another one that took awhile to grow on me but I really like now.

Rocket Diary - Heart Messenger
Korean rock, not bad. Pretty catchy.

Saitou Kazuyoshi - Hey Mr Angryman
I translated this song a little while ago without ever listening to it, and I always associated it with Hey Mr Wonderful by Smile, which is the cheesiest of Europop. XD (And incidentally reminds me of the first time I came to Japan, in 2003.) The song is actually laid-back guyrock and pretty good.

Spitz - Hadaka No Mama De
Slow early 90s j-rock. Not my favourite of the bunch, but it still has that nostalgic sound that takes me back to my childhood days when I've never even heard it before.

TM Revolution - High Pressure, Hot Limit
Oh, man. Early 90s boypop at its awesomest. At first I actually thought they were Being, a studio that produced most of my most favourite 90s boypop EVER. They're not, but still awesome, catchy and so very 90s. LOVE.

Tommy February 6 - Hey Bad Boy
I'm not a fan of most of Tommy February 6's stuff (other than Where Are You My Hero, which is <3 <3 <3) Euro is very, very hit or miss with me, and Tommy February 6 is usually a miss. This song isn't my favourite either, but it's not bad, I guess. If you like Euro you'll probably like it.

Yuzu - Hajimari No Basho
Guy folk music. I love the harmonica melodies.

Blu Cantrell - Hit 'Em Up Style
Not a couple of hours before I read megchan's post, I read this snark in bsc_snark, in which the snarker says:

...she can hear the screaming before she even gets to her door. Her dad must have just gotten the credit card statement and he’s pissed by how much money Mrs. McGill has been dropping on jewelry. It sounds like she did go overboard—her jewelry tab  adds up to $2000 on one statement. Mr. McGill generally acts like a giant douchebag in all the books, but I’m on his side here. That’s a lot of money to throw down in one month on luxury items. Anyways, her defense is that he works so much that he neglects her, so she shops. Clearly, she took advice from the divine Blu Cantrell and decided that she’s going to “hit him up style” and spend all his cash. 

I had already been debating looking for the song and then I came across megchan's post! 'Tis fate!

This song is really good. I did remember it from when it first came out so there's a bit of nostalgia there, but I was a lot pickier about my music then, so I never listened to it all that much, so in some ways it was like hearing it for the first time, especially since I'd never properly listened to the lyrics, which are hilarious. XD