Asian music VS. Western music (in terms of creativity)

[*Petit*]

Originally Posted by tokyoxjapanxfan

depends on what music you mean.

do i find music like Hello Project, Johnny's, SM creative? Well, unless you mean creative in the sense that they "create" super groups, not so much. Mass produced songs, mass produced images even, given to pretty people to attract buyers isn't what I'd call musically creative. And that goes for girl and boy bands all over the world--it just happens that Asia seems to be the only one with hugely popular groups like this anymore.

Artists that take control of their image and know who they are and create moving music, art even, are creative. If all they do is sit their and sing a song that's handed to them over and over again, that isn't creative no matter what part of the world you're in. People may enjoy that music, but please don't claim that it's creative--or at least say you think the writer of the song is creative.

I don't agree with this notion that the music of a singer who's only singing and beautiful isen't creative. There are producers and song writers and many other creative people contributing along the way and such a view is disregarding all of their effort.

With that in mind, one clearly sees the possibility that a hugely commercialized girl group or boy group releases creative music, or at least pop music with new aspects (which is creative in one way or another. Pop music usually isen't completely reinvented all at once no matter which genre you speak of). The sound invented by max martin for a whole lot of pop artists including britney spears and Backstreet boys had many new aspects at the time, but it was copied and not developed a lot untill it fell out of favour with the public.

The same is true for some of the music released by Morning Musume, especially when viewed within the context of girl/boy band music (esp songs like renai revolution 21).

Is asian music more creative? Probably not, but neither is western pop music. It would be more interesting to point out the differences between the two markets.

I think it's safe to say that the japanese pop music works at a much higher pace than its western counterpart simply due to the release scheduals. Also fans of a certain artist is much more likely to be exposed to more genres of (pop) music due to the faster pace and also because fans are more loyal to the artist more buying the songs "no matter what" leaving the artist with more creative space (to try out new things musically). However I think that japanese mainstream music follows a formula more stricly, a formula that was abandoned somewhat when rap music and also instrumental trance and techno became very popular in europe US no matter what kind of instrumentation/style is adopted for the song.
US pop music in particular has been influenced by what is ultimately african (american) or south american/including the caribbean) music, and as the US is physically much closert those areas than japan, any influence will reach the US before going anywhere else including europe (Actually, when speaking of "western" pop music, one disregards the rather big differences between europe and the US and also within the european nations. French pop music in general is very different from german and so is UK music market from the US). The examples are endless as most of the big changes in popular music in modern times have in some way originated from those areas (latin america afro american music + the caribean) or from the developement in technology/use of new technology.