Japanese Pop: Catchy Oceans Away

When most of us think about pop music, what comes to mind almost always tends to be american. Even if we can think of music produced outside of the United States, it is still sung in the English language. This is primarily due to the fact that English is the third most spoken language in the world. We may be biased as English is the most spoken language in the United States by far, yet what we normally consider as pop music is also considered pop in many other countries around the world. On my first trip to Germany, I was surprised to find that all of the songs I had been hearing on FM radio stations in the states were the same songs on radio stations in Europe. But for a few exceptions, american pop music is huge all over the world. However, it is not the only pop music in the world...

Pop music is an abbreviation for popular music, and very simply gets its name from being the most popular music of our time. Most pop music is a part of western culture, but I would like to discuss Japanese pop, or as it is more commonly referred to as: "J-Pop". Pop music is extremely difficult to define as it is very eclectic. However, we can say that pop music is generally very catchy, repetitive, and up-beat. Pop music is geared towards a very large audience, so the pop music that is most successful is the music that easily gets stuck in a persons head. This is true for western pop, Japanese pop, and every other variant we could come up with.

I would like to discuss the song "Crossing Field" by LiSA (pictured above). LiSA is a relatively new Japanese pop singer, entering the music scene just in 2011. In just one year she managed to become popular enough in Japan to produce the song (or as I like to call "piece") "Crossing Field" for the extremely popular anime Sword Art Online.

Like the majority pop music typical today, the piece follows a very strict structure. It has an introduction, a verse, a chorus, a verse, a chorus, a bridge, and a final chorus. The piece starts out with a suppressed electronic harmony that develops into the main background for the singer very early in the piece, gradually fading in from nothing. These first ten seconds serve as the introduction. LiSA then begins singing her first verse within the first 15 seconds of the song, and it does not take long at all for the chorus to be introduced at 0:43. She then writes different lyrics for another verse (1:26), and returns to the chorus once again (2:00). In order to not bore the listener, a bridge is necessary (2:32). A bridge is a unique portion of a piece designed to give the listener a break from the chorus as to prevent the song from getting tired. After a very refreshing bridge the listener is once again ready to hear the chorus for one last time. As this is the final repetition, it must serve as the climax of the entire piece. In order to do this LiSA gradually gains intensity from (3:00) to around (3:12) and inserts a pause right at (3:12) so that when the chorus comes back it is an explosion of built up energy, suitable to end the piece. At the end of the final chorus, the music fades out to nothing just as it had faded in at the beginning. This structure maximizes the catchiness of the piece, and is thus very popular in all pop music.

Popular music can come in a wide variety of different approaches, but is generally marketed to a large audience and needs a structure to maximize the catchiness of the piece. Although we mainly think of western pop music, the same principles hold true for other kinds of popular music in other cultures as well.