Enjoy!
Yugioh (Original Japanese openings)
My first brush with music was when my younger sister bought original Japanese yugioh to watch on TV. i thought the intro songs were super catchy and not super duper lame like the English dub. so i decided to buy their soundtrack in Chinatown. holy crap all their opening music was super amazing! i guess that's when i fell in love with jrock.
Gackt
I was first introduced to Gackt in grade nine by a fellow anime geek. The majority of my playlist consists of Gackt now that i think about it. he was the main guy i listened to throughout high school, and post high school. funny thing was, that same year i met Steven and he also listened to gackt... we bonded over gackt :P i listened to him even more after we met.
I kept listening to him because his music ranges from pop to rock to visual kei to electronica, to acoustic... and he is an expert in nearly all classical European instruments AND traditional Japanese instruments, and he often combines a bunch together so that they were super unique. they were super enjoyable to listen to. not to mention his music videos were like MASTERPIECES, including his live shows. it wasn't just another performance or a video for him.. he gave his 100000% in all that he did. so much that during his live shows he would faint from exhaustion backstage. that's dedication. and even though he ONLY sang in Japanese you could still hear the emotion he puts into singing his pieces. oh BTW he writes all of his songs. did i also mention he's a freaking fitness geek? he can do the splits, mixed martial arts, and has ABS OF STEEL. and in the movie Bunraku he does all his own stunts even though he wasn't supposed to... but the director caved in.
About a few years ago i stopped listening to him because he's unfortunately run out of ideas, and all of his newer music is beginning to sound the same, with recycled tunes. and he also basically made all us Canadians false promises that he would come to perform for us. I hope he realises that YFC in Europe was because we got him more international recognition at the TIFF :|
Hyde
About the same time i picked up Gackt, i also picked up Hyde because he sang the opening for FULL METAL ALCHEMIST :P he also worked with Gackt in a movie and even sang a piece with him. i shipped gackt and Hyde so much lol. he also sings in near fluent, not perfect, English because he actually studied in London for a bit. but i stopped because... well actually i dunno why i stopped. i guess i was too focused on Gackt to pay any real attention to him :|
Olivia Luftkin
This was when I fell in love with a certain someone... while also falling in love with the NANA anime. it was for a very very minor time but i remember going back to it throughout high school. she sings a lot of Japanese and well as English... BECAUSE SHE'S MIXED BRITISH. Hence the perfect English lines in her songs. She has a bunch of English songs on Youtube as well, so do take a look.
Evanescence
I started listening to Evanescence back in grade 10 after i found a CD of them in my older sister's room. And it was the second exposure to any "real" English Rock. this was during the time i began cutting so i guess it seemed appropriate why i started listening to them in the first place since it felt like they were the only ones that understood what i was going through. In grade 11 As of late I stopped listening to them because I realised the lyrics were acting as a catalyst for my two year emo behaviour (note to future bands, do not sing about committing suicide or attempted suicide). Nowadays I only listen to 3 of their songs because they sound mermaidy :|
Tokio Hotel
In grade twelve i was introduced to them through an old friend of mine. she said they were good so i gave them a shot. my first songs i listened to that night was 'monsoon', 'ready set go', and 'don't jump'.
I distinctly remember crying at the music video for 'don't jump' because that night i realised my suicidal behaviour may have been hurting Steven. i listened and followed them up until ... actually the following year when a friend of mine died and she actually was the admin of the Toronto tokio hotel street team. i met her through my younger sister and we bonded over bill. that year i also had a full blown drawing of bill kaulitz that she really loved. it never occurred to me to actually give it to her.. but now that she's gone i feel like i should have because my art made her really happy.
i stopped listening to them when they started playing tokio hotel on the PA system every morning for that whole month to honour her... because whenever i heard them, i thought of this friend and i couldn't stop crying. she was just so young and full of life and really lived every second. it got to a point where i would quickly skip tokio hotel when playing Rock Band at my friend's house because i would break into silent tears at the slightest sound of their song. It's been 5 years now since i last listened to them. And just recently they've also released new music. Maybe a sign I should start listening to them again?
The Letter Black, Skillet, and Flyleaf.
The last months of high school, I discovered Christian metal. I was still trying to find the meaning of life, especially after after a death of someone i had a connection with, and i was looking for healing. I picked them up because... well why not? i first saw all three of them on channel 9 (the christian channel) while i was flipping through channels. I thought they were pretty good. Skillet was already pretty big because their most known song "Hero" is used for wrestling. Steven would know, he's a huge wrestling geek. Flyleaf was also pretty big seeing as though they had their version of "What's this?" on the Nightmare Before Christmas album. the letter black however was super new.
Shortly after, i stopped listening to them because i wasn't religious.. and while they still sound great now as they did before, i felt like i couldn't (and i still can't) make a connection with their music.
We are the fallen
Steven introduced me to them just after the old Evanescence members recruited a member who sings and looks almost like Amy lee. they only released one album when their record company dropped them :(
Miyavi
I began picking them up jrock and visual kei again... because my friend introduced me to Miyavi. I'd never heard of him before so i said OK sure I'll go to his concert in Toronto. sure enough i fell in LOVE with his awesome guitar skills. king of slap guitar, I'm just saying. just.. just look at this, he's like a one man band:
I SAW THIS LIVE BY THE WAY IN TORONTO. HE ACTUALLY DOES HAVE MAD SKILLS.
But i stopped listening to him. not sure why :|
Kerli
I began listening to her during my first year of college. I came across her when i discovered a duet with her and Bill Kaulitz (Tokio Hotel lead singer) for the Alice in Wonderland Soundtrack. So i figured "ok well why not give new music a try." and i fell in love with her as a human being because she is so freaking spiritual and she's ALWAYS in contact with her fans online whether it was through google chat, replying to facebook messages, displaying fan art on her buzzfeed blog, and she's actually super good friends with Traci Hines, the ORIGINAL hipster Ariel! I don't listen to her old stuff anymore, i mainly listen to her newer stuff which is more electronica and pop. her older stuff was much more darker because she was originally from Estonia and her first album reflected a lot of her sadness and anger about not being able to express yourself freely because Estonia was originally part of the soviets so any form of expression was forbidden.
They're not anymore, and since then she's moved to America where she's been happier and it shows in her recent albums. tracks sound lighter and happier, and it's music you could dance to. she basically introduced me to pop music and showed me that people deserve happiness, and that it's ok to express that happiness by creating pure dance tracks, because when you're happy all you feel like doing is dancing. After listening to her i decided to give more English music a try.
That's when I also picked up Lady Gaga, Lights, Owl City, Late Night Alumni, and Kaskade.
Cold Rain
This was post high school when my brother from another mother introduced me to this anime called Rainbow. They are a Japanese band who sang the opening credits and end credits for the show. But the thing was... the lead singer is half Japanese half American and he ONLY SINGS IN ENGLISH. so I think this was the third exposure I've had to English rock. but after a short while i also stopped listening to them because only a select few of their songs were actually good.
Then i picked up everything else that i listened to now :P hope you enjoyed!
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