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Originally Posted by SunshineSlayer
No its not.(past its expiration date) Eurodance and this type of pop are very different. And btw, the peak period for the Euro dance/pop sound in Japan was the early to mid 90s. Aoyama Thelma is turning out to be a one hit wonder (unfortunately). Koda and Namie are both doing the electro pop thing these days and Perfume obviously is huge. A lot of artists are starting to incorporate the Perfumy kind of sound. And an even larger amount of western artists have recently or are currently doing the same type of style. It's certainly not something new or anywhere near revolutionary at all.
And am I the only one that doesn't quite see any similarity between this album and loveappears other than that they both encorporate techno elements? For me, Loveappears is a totally different sound than this.
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Scratch what I said. Eurodance/euro-pop/eurobeat peaked in Japan in the mid to late 90s, and maybe a bit of 2000-2001. I forgot about Super Monkeys. But the early 90s were definitely NOT euro-pop. Maybe shibuya-kei. Euro-pop hit its stride when the Para Para game came out, Avex capitalized on the upcoming trend, and club-going entered the mainstream.
Koda's still pushing the R&B/urban sound mostly, although I doubt Ayu would look to her for inspiration for this album since the girl is on her way down down down. I think Namie still manages to retain her urban sound. Her music's increasingly becoming more dance pop, but there is a world of difference between her urban dance pop and the techno-pop of Sparkle. Too bad about Thelma (she is still part of the R&B trend), but Miliyah Kato's hanging in there for R&B.
The only major Japanese artist close to Ayu's techno sound is, as I said, Perfume, but having just one artist do that kind of music does not constitute a trend.
Music listening is a subjective art after all. Anyway, we don't even know how Next Level will sound like (since the other tracks haven't even been released yet in any form), but speculating on what we have so far, I find many similarities. For instance: Whatever and Sparkle. They don't sound alike exactly, but structurally they are very close and share a lot of musical elements. Next Level (the track) has the upbeat, driving sound of Trauma, Too Late, and Immature, Rule has the heavy bass of PSII and monochrome, Green has the Asian sound of End Roll, and Days is in the same league as Love refrain and Who. The one distinct element in LOVEppears (the relentless, restless techno-like pacing) is apparent in all the Next Level tracks available so far, even Days. But again, it's all subjective.
Madonna isn't doing dance pop anymore (Confessions was so long ago). With Hard Candy, she's doing retro urban. Still, Ayu isn't selling to the Western market, so why take up that trend? It's not even selling or doing that well in Japan, Western-artist wise.
So let me just reiterate my stance: techno-pop is no longer a trend in Japan. Urban dance pop is. The euro-pop of the 90s/00s evolved into the techno-pop trend of the early 00s, the biggest selling representative album being Ayu's LOVEppears. Then R&B/J-urban picked up and evolved into urban dance pop, which is the biggest trend now. And then we have Ayu (with the release of Sparkle) reaching back to her euro-/techno-pop roots and here we have Next Level. Hope I'm clear this time.