K & J-Pop Fans: Looking for Strong, Big-Voiced Female Pop Stars, Aretha & Janis Style

that's an xpost to dayo

people in America expect J-Pop stars to literally be anime characters?

not exactly gospel or soul but...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/22/korean-hip-hop-k-hop-goes-global.html#comments

yeah, this begins to tilt slightly in the direction of the music i'm imagining (which may not really exist). i wouldn't call it a terribly strong combination of high-octane vocals and self-assertion, and there's more than a little irony in the message, but i liked the song quite a bit. probably helps that they made it easy for me by singing the chorus in english.

people in America expect J-Pop stars to literally be anime characters?

no, but i think there's often an expectation that they will satisfy some of the same demands that hatsune miku plays to: cheerful and attractive girl-women in chastely sexy outfits, a romantic ideal of youth and "cuteness". same things that many/most american teenpop stars appeal to.

hate to break it to you but hatsune miku is not a real person, dude. it doesn't exist.

i know that. not sure what you're getting at? cartoon characters can appeal to the same basic desires that real people do.

...

"when people think of sexy and alluring american movie stars, they think of... the cartoon character jasmine from aladdin"

A friend of mine asked me once if I knew of any Japanese singers with really great voices and was kind of surprised to realize that I could hardly think of one. I can think of a lot of charming ones or a lot of very distinctive voices but "great" vocalists from Japan seem pretty sparse. Jun Togawa strikes me as the one diva-type personality whose voice can really command a song, but it's still got that typical Japanese high-pitched shrillness to it that puts it miles away from Tina Turner

america doesn't seem to have as strongly established a tradition of animated or cartoon teengirls as pop fantasy objects. like i said, i'm looking for alternatives to "passive teengirl-as-Japanese-fantasy-object stuff." using a cartoon character as an example draws attention to the "fantasy" aspect, but i'm not super-attached to the example. it just happened to be one that came up earlier this morning.

like, i might use winx club as an example of the way images of idealized femininity are marketed to tween girls in america, but they're not really comparable to hatsune miku because they seem to appeal exclusively to a young female audience.

again, xp to dayo

again, try Jun Togawa

contie, the basic assumption you have is that liking japanese anime/manga = liking j-pop. hatsune miku happens to be the one area where the two genres intersect. you're being sloppy with your reasoning here, contie, by using it as a stand-in for some weird notions you have about Japan or America's expectations about Japan.

oh, and my earlier response to curmudgeon concerned 2NE1's "ugly" song & video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGe0hHvAGkc&ob=av2e

you're being sloppy with your reasoning here, contie, by using it as a stand-in for some weird notions you have about Japan or America's expectations about Japan.

that may be, but like i said, it was a casually chosen example, based mostly on the fact that you'd just linked to it in another thread

fwiw, there aren't many examples of the iconic J/K-pop girl group or artist that i can think to reach for in speaking to an american audience. the audience for such stuff over here is still very much a niche market.

frogs: watching a live clip of jun togawa's "punk mushi no onna". is great! just what i was looking for. ironic in that she seems to be directly subverting the "cute, pretty, passive" ideal in the performance.

as for whatever "weird notions" may be in play, i won't try and pretend that my thinking here is totally coherent and without stain. nevertheless, my intent is not to critique J/K pop, but to expand my own understanding of it. and to the extent that i'm discussing stereotypes, i'm trying to get at the way that japanese pop culture is conventionally understood and marketed in america.

that jun togawa clip, if anyone's interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dMrYZQ8TUU

listened to several other JT songs, from various stages in her (surprisingly varied) career. most were pretty great, but none as raw and challenging as the live "punk mushi no onna". moar!

In the Aliee vein:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my1TUuprnog

In the "Tina Turner" vein:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc6lNBoHSIY

I keep misreading this thread and thinking its about some duet that k-lo and j-lo have just released

damn, thanks forapper! there's the gospel/r&b influence i was talking about earlier.

listened to several other JT songs, from various stages in her (surprisingly varied) career. most were pretty great, but none as raw and challenging as the live "punk mushi no onna". moar!

she was also in Guernica and Yapoos (plus several one-off projects) - the audio from the video above sounds like a crappy version of her live album. here's something more typical:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kns4dsNDndY&context=C4545e7bADvjVQa1PpcFP6JcV6h53HLiOO42FbuGujs8nNSUF-2d0=

another "punk music no onna", no regards for her vocal chords at all (much higher quality too)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9GrFx_Ucr0&context=C4e2fbf4ADvjVQa1PpcFP6JcV6h53HLuZdziRjGznJxuTS8xI90BU=

great song off the first yapoos album
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBtxNBEC6LY

I'm going to hate myself for posting this, my one answer to all Japanese music questions. Shiina Ringo doesn't have the vocal chops of the artists you mention (certainly not Aretha!).

The second song here comes to mind (starts around 3:35):

Season Sayonara

and this song spends some time in an area I think might be close to what you're looking for but maybe not:

Jusui Negai

(Obviously SR spends a lot of time doing what you aren't looking for as well.)

Blackout

not a star, but the title reminded me of her
http://youtu.be/8_IAMVW7RQA?t=3m17s

also there's always one singer per idol group who has a strong voice. they don't get to use it too much.

try UA. she prob has a more cool & restrained approach to vocals in some breeezy sade/corinne drewery kinda way but can also rip the shit out of her chords sometimes

an earlier tune from mid 90s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE5jYNMfGyI

and this one is a great collab w/ yamp kolt from last year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTETiRhdTGw

Yr welcome!

Insooni's father was African-American military personnel, like (recently eliminated) kpopstar Lee Michelle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_IAMVW7RQA

And rapper T(Tasha):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fAKvA7uIL8

Whale from W and Whale grew up outside Korea, I believe. There are some 100% Korean idol group members who are US-influenced, though... the ones I'm thinking of at the moment are guys but I'm sure there are some girls are well... aside from the 2NE1 girls (CL/Bom/Minji), Taeyeon from SNSD can pull off RnB vocals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDgr9AI2TEo

Wanna thanks everybody for contributing to this thread, despite the weird tone of the opening posts. Will check out these tubes this evening. <3<3<3 to all

According to marxy at neojaponisme, African-American "soul" vocals are more familiar in Japan due to the influence of the Japanese version of <i>Hair</i>:

http://neojaponisme.com/2007/12/18/easy-to-be-haado/

Here's a recording from Hair (African-American singers brought in for backing vocals on the chorus):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGocpJ70Pgc

Superfly? although singer Shiho Ochi is a bit more Joss Stone than Aretha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izOOizwXfnY

http://mbmelodies.tumblr.com/post/22681848230/a-little-on-that-marty-friedman-what-is-j-pop

the basic assumption you have is that liking japanese anime/manga = liking j-pop.

Yeah, this is maybe an easy mistake to make but very wrongheaded. I generally don't care much for the former but love the latter.

Yuki isn't exactly what contenderizer's talking about here, but she definitely has one of the more distinctive voices in j-pop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd1ggCENFto

Utada Hikaru is another good one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR-IIj4YClI

I have a lot of other favorites, but I can't think of many that stray from that general high-pitched range.

woah, timely revive. was thinking of this thread last night, sorry that i'd let it die. anyway, a bunch of great recommendations from two weeks ago. lee michelle is amazing, and i fucking LOVE that superfly track. it's exactly the kind of singing i was hoping to find when starting his thread, and i'm a sucker for 70s metal. also, been hearing about shiina ringo & tokyo jihen for years on ILM, but had never checked her/them out. great stuff. thanks again to all who responded.

the basic assumption you have is that liking japanese anime/manga = liking j-pop.

again, not to mutilate a dead horse, but hatsune miku was an example chosen for specific reasons and wasn't meant as a general exemplar of all j/k-pop. i do think she's an instructive example when talking about the way japanese & korean pop culture is often marketed and (mis-)understood in the US, but i don't wanna get distracted by an argument about that.

also like that yuki song a hell of a lot, and it does help answer my initial question, cuz she's got a bit of that joan jett, punk style, "fuck you" rasp and swagger (lol, despite the fact that she's basically offering herself to the listener, check the video)