As part of my study, I've been wanting to learn the lyrics to a few japanese songs that I can listen to when I'm not studying.. But most japanese music makes me want to smash the speakers to make it stop. The few Japanese musicians that I've enjoyed listening to tend to not have many lyrics. I've found a few musicians that I can tolerate and their lyrics are quite intelligible, but I haven't found any lyrics for them yet.

I'd really appreciate if someone suggested some good music with intelligible lyrics that are available as text somewhere. It's hard to explain my taste besides to say I can't stand jpop. Besides that, my taste is all over the map and only what I consider 'good'. The best I can do is point to this spotify playlist.

Here is what I'm looking for in order of most important to least:
1. Enjoyable to listen to.
2. Has intelligible japanese lyrics that are available as text somewhere.
3. Available on spotify (nice, but not essential)

Thanks

Oh, btw. Here's a playlist of all the J music I've found on spotify that I can stand listening to. It's not to say I'd listen to most of it if I weren't studying japanese, but there's a few tracks I might listen to solely for enjoyment.

I see you have some Cornelius and Pizzicato Five in your playlist. You should investigate the 90's Shibuya Kei movement further. I'm super into that kind of music right now. The whole thing is really fascinating. I'd recommend Original Love and Flipper's Guitar(Cornelius' band before he went solo).

Original Love only has his newest couple of albums on spotify but even that is still really good:
https://play.spotify.com/track/0qpWZmDwc9eVW9wlgeNN8O

Here's a youtube of his biggest hit overall:

Flipper's Guitar has their greatest hits on spotify:
https://play.spotify.com/album/52EmdMDhqAel47Pxy4NqW7

"Young, Alive, In Love" is one of their more popular tracks.

Happy listening!

Edit: Forgot you wanted text.

You can find the lyrics to all the songs I mentioned on this site
http://j-lyric.net/

Karia Nomoto had a good album she did with Konishi of Pizzicato Five called KARLY. The whole album is sung kind of slowly and it's super easy to listen to the lyrics. I can hear pretty much everything even if I don't understand all the words. Definitely recommend Flipper's Guitar also as far as Shibuyakei is concerned.

I've been listening to a lot of Jun Togawa recently but not to practice listening to lyrics. If you're into really really weird pop music then you're covered but whether you consider it good or not is a different story. It's an acquired taste for sure.

How about this group?

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=12048

The Pillows (did the music for フリクリ / Furi-kuri / Fooly cooly).

Awesome band - they like to mess with a bit of English at times too. They have taught me a lot of Japanese.

Recommend!

Hey thanks everyone! I'm working my way through your recommendations now, but keep them coming. Here's few of my first reactions:

Rael89 Wrote:I see you have some Cornelius and Pizzicato Five in your playlist. You should investigate the 90's Shibuya Kei movement further. I'm super into that kind of music right now. The whole thing is really fascinating. I'd recommend Original Love and Flipper's Guitar(Cornelius' band before he went solo).

I did a survey of shibuyakei a few years ago and, although there are definitely a few choice tracks, there's a lot of so-so tracks mixed in. There's so much of it, I'm sure I've only scratched the surface, so I should probably dig in a little deeper. A few of the slower, quirkier Flipper's Guitar tracks sounded good and I added them to my playlist. Original Love, was a little too happy-sappy for my taste, but I did add 99 Tsubu no Namida because he seemed to be goofing around a little bit and that was refreshing.

Rael89 Wrote:You can find the lyrics to all the songs I mentioned on this site
http://j-lyric.net/

Thanks for this! I've seen this site before, but I was too lazy to navigate it and find the japanese names of the bands I was interested in. I tried it out today and it seems pretty extensive. One question though.. Do you know what the dropdown menus in the search box do? Google translates them as forward match, perfect match, intermediate match, etc.. I was thinking they might be starts with, exact match, etc but I haven't played with it too much. Do you know how they work?

JKS87 Wrote:Karia Nomoto had a good album she did with Konishi of Pizzicato Five called KARLY. The whole album is sung kind of slowly and it's super easy to listen to the lyrics. I can hear pretty much everything even if I don't understand all the words. Definitely recommend Flipper's Guitar also as far as Shibuyakei is concerned.

I've been listening to a lot of Jun Togawa recently but not to practice listening to lyrics. If you're into really really weird pop music then you're covered but whether you consider it good or not is a different story. It's an acquired taste for sure.

I listened to a few Karia Nomoto tracks but I'm not sure it's my cup of tea. Just too 'feel good'. I'll listen a few more times and see if anything grabs me.

You might be right about Jun Togawa being an acquired taste. The first track or two I listened to I couldn't stand, but each subsequent track sounded better and better, so I'll definitely dive deeper. I heard 2 distinctly different genres from her, one was some 80's new wavey electronic music, and then I heard some other tracks where she was doing a decent job emulating the sound some old french chanson music. Both sounded kind of kitschy and fun. I wonder what else she does..?

john555 Wrote:How about this group?

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=12048

Hahaha! Is this Japan's answer to the Monkees? Maybe there's a karaoke song in their repertoire for me.

Predulus Wrote:The Pillows (did the music for フリクリ / Furi-kuri / Fooly cooly).

Awesome band - they like to mess with a bit of English at times too. They have taught me a lot of Japanese.

Recommend!

The Pillows sound a lot like california pop/punk bands I hear a lot of considering I live in california. They were definitely listenable, but nothing jumped out and grabbed me yet. I'll keep listening though. Some of the music youtube was recommending as related had a lot of promise, but they were either instrumental or had english lyrics.



Thanks again for all of your recommendations! Keep them coming if you have any.

Here are a few bands that really stuck out for me:

- サカナクション

- Asian Kung Fu Generation

- 100s

- andymori

- NICO Touches the Walls

Mileage may vary.

i had the same problem like you. most japanese music that i've listened prior to starting my language studies was either instrumental or with unintelligible vocals. so i had to dig around and find things that i like and that could at least be somewhat useful for study. here are some artists that i came to appreciate:

tama

morita douji

tako

angel'in heavy syrup

itsutsu no akai fusen

kenichi fumoto

onna

shi o suteyo, machi e deyo(soundtrack) - i love lyrics for this one, very funny

i'm sure i've already posted some of them before, sorry

yogert909 Wrote:

Rael89 Wrote:You can find the lyrics to all the songs I mentioned on this site
http://j-lyric.net/

Thanks for this! I've seen this site before, but I was too lazy to navigate it and find the japanese names of the bands I was interested in. I tried it out today and it seems pretty extensive. One question though.. Do you know what the dropdown menus in the search box do? Google translates them as forward match, perfect match, intermediate match, etc.. I was thinking they might be starts with, exact match, etc but I haven't played with it too much. Do you know how they work?

Your instincts were right. The dropdowns are starts with, exact match, contains and ends with.

Might as well throw in another rec while I'm at it. Judy And Mary. Top notch freaking stuff. Here's a few of my favorite tracks.

motto

Daydream

Lover Soul