OK, so the exact years may be up to personal interpretation and preference, but generally speaking I feel like the mid/late-90's to mid-2000's was the Golden Age of J-POP. Music made a lot of money, even less popular acts could sell 300K+ copies of things, and there were so many good acts in the market.
I was going through some old hard-drives and listening to various music I had saved over the years and it struck me how much of it is probably relatively unknown to younger fans or newer fans of J-POP, even songs from what were relatively big acts at the time. So it had me inspired to share some of my favorites from the vault from time to time.
So without further ado, here is my first offering:
Misia - BACK BLOCKS
I feel like Misia has had so many great, popular songs - but in my mind she's always lumped into a more ballad-y space - probably because of the monster success of Everything. Released in 2002, BACK BLOCKS was on the cusp of the emerging urban sounds in J-POP. She has such powerful vocals in this song, and at the same time it's so catchy and uplifting.
I'll try to add songs as often as possible, but I hope others contribute some of their favorites too! I've been feeling super nostalgic for all the good options we had during that time period.