ひとりの夜もそばにいようぜ　君と僕の歌を歌う

So I've been checking out a lot of new Japanese bands on this app/website called Eggs.

It's such a stupid name and I've seen it around before but I ignored it coz of the stupid name.

But anyway, it's a great app coz basically it's an artist self-uploading Spotify-like app. It has daily and weekly ranking of most popular songs and artists. And you can just cloud stream the songs. (i wonder if the artists get paid!).

But anyway...

checking out the bands.......

I'm pretty disappointed. Every song and every band sounds like a replica of every other band and almost just variant copy of some famous/popular indie band.

I think Japanese indie has reached a point like what emo became in 2004, when every new band that kept popping out of the woodworks on absolutepunk.net back then just sounded like a boring unimaginative replica of every other fucking band that's already out there.

And Japanese music is like that.

Worse yet, my brother was right- Japanese music doesn't evolve.

So what this also means is that the 20-year-olds in bands today are playing songs that sound EXACTY the same as songs made by bands 6-7 years ago (when I first came to Japan), bands which have been very popular these days.


Also, the other maybe problematic thing which I have noticed in the Japanese indie music scene is that Japanese rock music has become so fucking insular- all the songs these days are SO FUCKING JAPANESE.

You see band that are my age (late 20s into late 30s), I think these bands were HEAVILY influenced by both Japanese music (Laruku/Yellow Monkeys/ Mr Children/Spitz/etc) AND ALSO western bands, grunge, Brit Rock, Heavy Metal: Nirvana, Oasis, Metallica, Radiohead, Blur and even more like Bowie, New Order, etc.

But most kids these days coming out of high school bands barely listen to these foreign band nor any foreign bands (and I blame this too for the lack of fucking really fucking innovative and influential rock bands from the west seeping into foreign music and culture).

So.... I feel most Japanese indie band these days are soooooooo fucking boring, repetitive and unimaginative.

I have to say though, that the only variety rising out of this mass of uninspired junk are actually FEMALE bands and vocalists.

You go girls!