Jpop Albums Download

[Narkis Eatman]

Japanis the second-largest music market in the world and the following lists cover the top-selling albums in the country of Japan, based on information provided by the Recording Industry Association of Japan and Oricon Inc.[1]

In the history of the Oricon weekly albums chart, which started in January 1970, only 280 out of all of the charting albums have sold more than one million copies, a feat mostly achieved by domestic acts.[2]

This is a list of the top-selling albums in Japan, based on data compiled by Oricon. Prior to January 1987, the domestic albums chart was separated into LPs (created in 1970), cassette tapes (introduced in 1974) and compact discs (launched in 1985), until their unification, which remains the current form. It is worth noting that Oricon only takes into consideration physical sales for its charts, meaning that digital purchases are excluded.[2][3][4][5] The best-selling album is First Love (1999) by non-binary solo artist Hikaru Utada, which sold over 7.5 million copies by the end of that year.[6] Ryuichi Kawamura's Love (1997) topped the album chart with sales of 1,021,000 copies, making him the only male solo artist to have an album sell over one million copies in its first week in Oricon history.[7] Love went on to sell 2,788,000 copies, and holds the record as the best-selling male solo album of all time.[8] Whereas, Mr. Children's Atomic Heart (1994), still remains its position as the top-selling original studio album by a male band.

Message, originally released in 2001 by Okinawan punk band Mongol800 became the first album in Oricon's history to sell more than one million copies despite being released on an independent label.[9]

This is the list of the albums that have shipped over 1,000,000 copies and been certified Million by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ).[11][12] Albums are listed in alphabetical order of each recording artists' name.

What I Would Have Written At The End Of 2020: Nothing can ever stay stable. Not your favorite neighborhood, your interpersonal relationships, or even your surprise success as an out-of-the-blue J-pop superstar responsible for a year-defining hit. Daoko knows this all too well, and anima attempts to reckon with the seismic activity around her while finding out where she, exactly, stands.

What I Am Writing At The End Of 2021: Pretty much that! This one remains as powerful a listen as it was the day it came out. Credit for Cuushe being just ahead of the current trendiness of older UK dance styles. Get it here, or listen below.

The end of 2021 is on the horizon! Regardless of how you experienced the last 12 months or how much unease new coronavirus variants inspire in you, we can all come together in December for one common exercise\u2026to create lists of our favorite music to share online.

And so begins Make Believe Melodies 2021 bonanza\u2026by finally wrapping up the 2020 top ten. As much as I want to pretend I had it tough, I really can\u2019t complain. Among the reasons to be thankful is I had plenty of work to keep me busy, so much so that getting around to the part of a year-end list people care about the most fell to the side. I am a dweeb at heart, though, and I couldn\u2019t let a year vanish completely from sight without making sure the world knew what Japanese albums I considered worthy of single-digit placement.

To mix things up a bit though, this list will attempt something new for this blog/newsletter (ie here\u2019s how I flip my procrastination into a good thing). The top ten is pretty much what I outlined back in January (save for one big mover), so I\u2019ll share an original note of what I would have written back then, followed by how it sounds now, months later. A lot has changed in a year\u2026and besides, we should all admit is lookbacks from 2020 were obsessed with COVID-19 (which\u2026made sense), with nearly everything put through a prism of the pandemic. Here\u2019s a chance to have some distance and evaluate with clearer eyes, albeit mask still on.

What I Would Have Written At The End Of 2020: \u201CLocal Visions remains the most exciting label in all Japan, warping the world\u2019s nostalgia obsession into something fresh and often unsettling. It was another strong as hell year from them, with this being the centerpiece \u2014 a melancholy stroll through empty city streets, heart heavy and brain full. It\u2019s among the prettiest albums Local Visions has put out, with just enough off around the edges (pitched-down vocals, those machine rumbles on \u2018Dried Flowers\u2019).\u201D

What I Am Writing At The End Of 2021: Indulging in this exercise revealed how much my favorites from 2020 still loomed large over 2021 too. That\u2019s because the past year felt stuck, thanks to the ongoing pandemic, with the musical supply chain \u2014 especially on the more mainstream side in Japan and, really, everywhere \u2014 feeling especially disrupted. The silver lining is that revisiting these 10 albums showed that the directions Japanese music across the spectrum went this year weren\u2019t a surprise, but part of a bigger, still-unfolding narrative.

Reality comes closest to not fitting with any of that. It\u2019s the only original finalist here I considered swapping with something else (candidates include: ZOMBIE-CHANG\u2019s last album, those tricot albums and YTAMO\u2019s Vacant, which still sticks in my head). Then I listened to Minori Yoshikawa and TOMC\u2019s melancholy ode to walks in the rain and nights spent online, and like\u2026nah, it\u2019s a lock. It helps that this year revealed a new angle on it\u2026I always associate Local Visions with upending common ideas of retro, but Reality really shines when revisited against the backdrop of modern J-pop, glummer and more solitary than ever before, sounding every bit as isolated as artists want you to think they are. I appreciate that bend towards a realistic global mood\u2026but Reality reminds you can make sadness sound elegant and alive, too. It\u2019s the prettiest (like a wedding cake) Local Vision\u2019s album, and also maybe the emotionally heaviest (someone enjoyed the open bar too much and threw a chair into the dessert). Listen below.

What I Would Have Written At The End Of 2020: \u201CVocaloid revealed itself to be far and away the most important 21st century artistic development in Japanese pop culture over the course of 2020. It was the year of YOASOBI and Kenshi Yonezu translating the creator-first ethics of the community into a pop movement connecting with the national psyche and hitting on a sonic palette the kids love (and love to get pessimistic with). There\u2019s still plenty of creative juice left in the original Vocaloid software, though, and producer AOTQ reminds of the utility of the instrument on Magical Gadget. Hatsune Miku\u2019s familiar digi delivery, so often played uptempo, becomes meditative. It\u2019s like you are sitting down for a cup of coffee with the aqua-haired character in an off hour, listening to her reflect on the drudgery of daily life while occasionally revealing deeper fears about everything just vanishing. It\u2019s a fresh take on what it can do in the right hands, and reminds of its power at a time when its influence is everywhere.\u201D

What I Am Writing At The End Of 2021: The Vocaloid community remains the most important artistic force in Japanese pop culture, as this year saw all the trends of 2020 carry over thanks to new players like Ado and MAISONdes (with projects like YAMEII showing a broader embrace of it, too). AOTQ\u2019s masterpiece, then, continues reminding of everything possible with Vocaloid if one approaches it with some creative ideas. Magical Gadget is just such a neat idea \u2014 AOTQ creates spacious synth backdrops for Hatsune Miku to basically relay her internal monologue, the songs here lasting upwards of eight minutes and happy to simply float in the air. It works because AOTQ understands how synthesized singing needs to match the music around it, and Magical Gadget gels together right to make for a four-song set that already feels timeless. Listen below.

What I Would Have Written At The End Of 2020: \u201CAnd so we reach installment three of three in \u2018the futility of list season\u2019 series, with the strongest argument against this whole practice and the very notion of time itself. Released at the start of December, Ichiko Aoba\u2019s latest feels immense on even just a few initial listens. It\u2019s an act of world building, Aoba constructing something sprawling out of a handful of musical tools. Way too early, sure, but let\u2019s put it here with the expectation that Windswept Adan will stick around, and possibly deserve to be even higher up.\u201D

No album on this list\u2026and I\u2019m talking the entire 100-entry-deep monstrosity that took nearly a year to come together\u2026has connected with listeners around the world like Windswept Adan has. No Japanese release period managed the critical praise and fan devotion like Aoba\u2019s masterpiece did outside of the country. The denizens of Rate Your Music hold it up as the number two album of the year anywhere, Anthony Fantano was smitten, and she\u2019s just wrapped up a successful European tour behind it. Last week, as I write this, Shy Thompson reviewed it wonderfully over at Pitchfork, showing that time itself really is useless in trying to grapple with this one.

While not my personal fave \u2014 2020, just too good all around! \u2014 Windswept Adan already feels part of a new Japanese canon, at least one forged by a global audience. Huge benefit of that\u2026enough smart words have been written about it I can keep it brief. After years of stripped-down short stories, Aoba went full IMAX on Adan, matching her guitar strums and singing with strings and flutes and chimes that turned her sonic world into a universe. That all of it could still come off so intimate even with a more fleshed out sound was all the more impressive\u2026and it made the moments when Aoba retreated into sparseness equally as affecting. She\u2019s always created her own little escapes, but here, she crafted her most absorbing yet. Listen below.

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