Despite the size of its music industry, Japanese music feels like the forgotten kid on the block. It has always been a niche topic in the Western society that not many people truly talks about. However, anyone who has had any exposure to Japanese music might immediately recognise them as soon as they are played. Like... this.
So, why do they sound so different to our music?
In this series, we will explore various aspects that make Japanese music unique. Each post will cover a specific aspect of the music. It is designed to be easily digestible and each of them come with a few examples that hopefully will illustrate our points.
As a start, we will look into something called musical form, which is just a fancy term that refers to how a piece of music is constructed.
How the West does it
Western popular music is often written in verse-chorus form:
(Intro) – Verse – Chorus – Bridge – (Verse &) Chorus – (Outro)
This type of music usually starts with the verse, which is typically calmer. This is contrasted by the chorus, which repeats a few times over the song and tends to be the bit that sticks to our mind. A full song is usually formed by repetitions between verse and chorus, occasionally with one or couple of bridge (the part that is used to prepare for the return of verse and chorus) thrown in. Popular variations include AABA and AABB.
Fifth Harmony’s Work from Home ft. Ty Dolla $ign is a prime example of this musical form. The verse is the bit that starts with ‘I ain't worried 'bout nothin'’, the chorus is all those works and finally, the bridge corresponds to Ty Dolla $ign’s part. The complete breakdown is shown as follows:
0:48 Chorus 2:56 Verse & Outro
1:15 Verse
Sometimes a song can have many more chorus than verse. Pharrell Williams’ ‘Happy’ has its chorus repeated at least three times (1 2 3 4), and this is one of the major reasons why this tune is so catchy and memorable.
How Japan does it
For the better or worse, Japanese music tends to be a little bit more complicated in this regard. A typical song structure looks like this:
(Intro) – Verse – Chorus – Bridge –
Verse – Chorus – Bridge –
Chorus – (Chorus) – (Outro)
Japanese music tends to have various lengthy patterns to craft the storytelling and School Food Punishment's ‘Beer Trip’ briefly falls into this structure:
1:00 Pre-chorus 3:25 Pre-chorus
Gesu No Kiwami Otome’s ‘Killer Ball’ is an example that features Chopin’s ‘Fantaisie-Impromptu’ in its bridge section. See if you can distinguish between each parts?
Sometimes the last chorus (Osabi or 大サビ in Japanese) is modulated (tl;dr: changed key) to give a more excited feeling to the song. While it’s more popular in the East like Mr. Children’s 'Tomorrow never knows', it’s certainly not uncommon in the West either. For example: Woah, we're half way there.
Conclusion
Western popular songs generally follow a much simpler structure and rely more on repetition, while Japanese popular songs focus on storytelling. This is also reflected in the lyrics which will be covered in the following parts. These structural differences are not elements that will giveaway immediately it's a Japanese song – so how can we tell about this? Have you noticed that some songs that were mentioned, in particular, ‘Beer Trip’ and ‘Killer Ball’ sound a bit jazzy? In the next part we will describe why the use of these jazzy chords makes all the difference.
This article only attempts to paint the general picture of the main differences between Western and Japanese popular music. It goes without saying that there are plenty of counter-examples in each case. There are many Japanese songs that follow the verse-chorus structure, and there are also Western compositions that are equally, if not more interesting so there is no need for us to think that one is superior against the other.
See you next time!
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Great read 初雪さん, will be sure to follow more of your read. I am studying Japanese by the way, so, very much interested in it from a Music perspective. And as it seems rock/acoustic music is still very much alive in Japan.
Hi Kanarelo! To be honest, I wasn't quite sure if anyone would be interested in reading this and your comment really encouraged me a lot in carrying on - so thank you very much for it.
There were a lot of interesting bands (Say... Suchmos, BRADIO, 嘘とカメレオン, パスピエ, ポルカドットスティングレイ) that came out in the last couple of years and I would argue that now is probably the best time for the Japanese music market in a long time.
Look forward to seeing your around!
Looking to see you around! I followed you btw.