Despite the Internet’s love of the form, the list brings with it a few unpleasant side effects. Being completely cliche, for one. More subtly unnerving, though, is the implication of expertise one takes on by making a “best” list. Plenty of comment-box philosophers have shed light on this – “what makes YOU entitled to tell…
A very special edition of Station To Station this week, as my computer is currently making noises usually reserved for a Nine Inch Nails song and I’ll be sending it into the shop for the weekend. So we will be blazin’ through this week’s tunes because my laptop could explode at any moment. Let’s dive…
The fine folks at the Music Station website did something weird this week – they didn’t write what songs this week’s artists would be performing on the show. I usually rely on that info to listen to the songs in advance…but this week, I’m basically just doing some authentic journalistic work (checking websites) to find…
AKB48 “桜の栞” – Rejoice rejoice! We’re only a few figure skating finals away from Winter being over with. That means warmth! And flowers! And, in Japan, cherry blossom season. Which also means it’s time for Japanese artists to release songs about the country’s prettiest part of the calendar year. The small mercenary army of AKB48…
When I first arrived in Japan I spent three days in Tokyo at an orientation for my new teaching gig. I attended a workshop about Japanese pop culture in an effort to become hip to life in Japan. Following an introduction to popular Japanese television, we came to the music portion of the lecture. The…