J-Pop Turning Japanese

[Mulboyne]

Kyodo via Japan Today: Some singers opt to use fewer foreign words in songs
Miyuki Nakajima and Yumi Matsutoya, two popular female singers and songwriters in Japan, have been using less foreign words in their lyrics, indicating a trend of "regression to Japanese" in popular songs, a researcher said Monday. Masamitsu Ito, a senior researcher at the National Institute for Japanese Language, categorized the lyrics of 321 songs of Nakajima and 347 ones by Matsutoya into Japanese words and foreign ones since their debuts in the 1970s. While Nakajima did not include foreign words in her songs in the 1970s, the rate of non-Japanese words in her songs reached 5.9% in the late 1990s. Since 2000, the rate declined and has remained around 2% in her recently released songs, according to Ito. The rate for Matsutoya stood at 13.9% in the late 1990s, but it has fallen to 2.8% since 2000, the research showed. "The two songwriters produced many hit tunes by getting ahead of the times by featuring foreign words in their lyrics," Ito said. "But the freshness symbolized by foreign words seems to be declining, bringing about a regression to Japanese."

Nakajima is 55 and Yuming is 53. While they are still popular, they are not really representative of most J-Pop output today. Love Psychedelico alone probably raised the recent average.

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[Jack]

I have many of Nakajima's albums and can hardly hear any foreign words. There may be a song or two "Headlight & Taillight" might be one but I'm surprised at the percentage they found.

Too many Japanese singers use too many English words in their songs. The best combination of English and Japanese that I have found is by Hirai Ken in the song Rakuen. I find the English words go well in that song.