Welcome to The Avocado’s weekly discussion of Japanese pop culture! 2022 was full of great music, making it extra difficult for me to create a reasonable playlist for this year. It’s still a bit on the long side, but it wasn’t easy to narrow down my favorite songs of the year because I listened to (and loved) so much 1If you’re curious, according to Apple, the top Japanese artist of the year for me was yama, who I listened to for 4,554 minutes! Behind yama was miwa, Queen Bee, Fujii Kaze, and Aimer for my top 5. Kenshi Yonezu won my top spot for the song listened to the most times, with “Pop Song” at 105 plays. Followed by LiSA’s “New Me”, miwa’s “Sparkle”, yama’s “The world is supposed to be beautiful”, and Fujii Kaze’s “Matsuri”. Anyway, I managed to get my list under 50, so I hope some of you find something new to add to your own playlists. If nothing else, I find these playlists to be really fun to return to later to revisit old favorites and to see what I’m still listening to. For example, last year’s playlist featured several songs that I still listen to pretty regularly, and both lists started with a LiSA song. All but three of the artists on 2021’s list appeared on this year’s list, and there were eighteen new (to me) artists this year. I wonder what these lists will sound like to me next year!
I’d love to know what some of your favorite songs of the year were too! I’m always looking for new artists, so please share.
And, as always…
What have you been watching/reading/playing/eating/listening to lately?
Happy Wednesday! 🙂