Feature - Back Numbers
The Japan Gold Disc Awards 2005 (2005.03.12)
Most countries have annual music-awards shows to which music fans pay rapt attention and which encourage a healthy sense of competition among artists and labels. In the U.S., it's the Grammys, which are undoubtedly the world's best-known and most influential music awards. The UK has the Brit awards, Canada has the Junos, and France has the grandly titled Victoires de la Musique.
But Japan - which is the world's second-biggest music market after the U.S. - doesn't have an awards show that matches those gong-fests in terms of prestige or credibility.
There's the yearend Record Taisho ceremony, sponsored by TV network TBS, in which winners are chosen by a relatively small group of critics and media people, meaning large sections of the music industry have no vote. While the Record Taisho awards show has a certain amount of glitz and glamour, its less-than-transparent voting procedures make it somewhat credibility-challenged, to put it mildly.
Then there's the Recording Industry Association of Japan's annual Gold Disc Awards, which are awarded strictly on the basis of sales during the preceding calendar year. That means the Gold Disc Awards are completely credible - but there are never any surprises among the list of winners.
One of the reasons Japan doesn't have an annual music-awards ceremony with the kind of impact and pizzazz that the Grammys have, is that in Japan, unlike the United States, there isn't a music-business association like the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), which includes people from a broad cross-section of the industry. The closest thing to NARAS in Japan is the Federation of Music Producers, which, although a worthy body, has too narrow an organizational focus to match what NARAS Does with the Grammys.
The 19th annual Gold Disc Awards show, which was held in Tokyo on March 10, while offering a useful snapshot of the Japanese music scene, was thus - as in past years - a somewhat lackluster affair, despite live performances by acts such as Orange Range, Ayaka Hirahara, BoA, Ai Otsuka, the lovely and leggy Beni Arashiro, Joshi Juni Gakubo (aka Twelve Girls Band), Tata Young and South Korean heartthrob Park Yong Ha.
Among the best live performances during the two-hour event were singer-songwriter Junko Yano doing a very moving, soulful version of her song "Teru Teru" and Yoku Hata's wonderfully manic rendition of his novelty number "Guitar Samurai no Uta (Guitar Samurai's Song)".
Low points included a painfully awful version of "It's Only a Paper Moon" by Coco d'Or, aka Hiro from now-disbanded girl group Speed and - rather surprisingly - BoA's uninspiring rendition of her tune "Shine We Are".
Hirahara's otherwise stellar - ahem - performance of her massive hit "Jupiter" was spoilt by a backdrop showing Saturn. Ooops, wrong planet!
Orange Range won the domestic artist of the year award, while Queen (!) copped the international artist of the year honor, on the strength of total Japanese sales of 1.8 million units. That was mainly due to strong sales of the Japan-only Jewels greatest-hits collection, which were spurred by the use of Queen's song "I Was Born to Love You" as the main theme of the Fuji-TV drama "Pride".
In the best new domestic artist category, the 10 winners included female singers Beni Arashino and Tia and male vocalist Takeshi Kitayama, while the five winning acts in the best new international artist category included Ashlee Simpson and Kevin Lyttle. The RIAJ presents these awards to all the acts that have sold over a certain amount of CDs - in the best new domestic artist category, over 1 million units, for example - but it would obviously give the awards more focus and a little more excitement if there were to be a single winner in each category.
Orange Range had two of the 10 songs in the domestic song of the year category: "Locolotion" and "Hana (Flower)." Two songs by Ayumi Hamasaki were also named song(s) of the year: "Inspire" and "Moments".
Many people put down awards shows for being clichéd and formulaic, but they are a great promotional tool for the music industry. And since the Japanese music biz needs to promote its product more aggressively than ever, given its steadily declining sales, it would be great if there were a music-awards show in Japan that got the kind of media attention that the Grammys command.
(For a complete list of Gold Disc Award winners - in Japanese only - go to www.riaj.or.jp/release/2005/gdlist_19th.html).
But Japan - which is the world's second-biggest music market after the U.S. - doesn't have an awards show that matches those gong-fests in terms of prestige or credibility.
There's the yearend Record Taisho ceremony, sponsored by TV network TBS, in which winners are chosen by a relatively small group of critics and media people, meaning large sections of the music industry have no vote. While the Record Taisho awards show has a certain amount of glitz and glamour, its less-than-transparent voting procedures make it somewhat credibility-challenged, to put it mildly.
Then there's the Recording Industry Association of Japan's annual Gold Disc Awards, which are awarded strictly on the basis of sales during the preceding calendar year. That means the Gold Disc Awards are completely credible - but there are never any surprises among the list of winners.
One of the reasons Japan doesn't have an annual music-awards ceremony with the kind of impact and pizzazz that the Grammys have, is that in Japan, unlike the United States, there isn't a music-business association like the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), which includes people from a broad cross-section of the industry. The closest thing to NARAS in Japan is the Federation of Music Producers, which, although a worthy body, has too narrow an organizational focus to match what NARAS Does with the Grammys.
The 19th annual Gold Disc Awards show, which was held in Tokyo on March 10, while offering a useful snapshot of the Japanese music scene, was thus - as in past years - a somewhat lackluster affair, despite live performances by acts such as Orange Range, Ayaka Hirahara, BoA, Ai Otsuka, the lovely and leggy Beni Arashiro, Joshi Juni Gakubo (aka Twelve Girls Band), Tata Young and South Korean heartthrob Park Yong Ha.
Among the best live performances during the two-hour event were singer-songwriter Junko Yano doing a very moving, soulful version of her song "Teru Teru" and Yoku Hata's wonderfully manic rendition of his novelty number "Guitar Samurai no Uta (Guitar Samurai's Song)".
Low points included a painfully awful version of "It's Only a Paper Moon" by Coco d'Or, aka Hiro from now-disbanded girl group Speed and - rather surprisingly - BoA's uninspiring rendition of her tune "Shine We Are".
Hirahara's otherwise stellar - ahem - performance of her massive hit "Jupiter" was spoilt by a backdrop showing Saturn. Ooops, wrong planet!
Orange Range won the domestic artist of the year award, while Queen (!) copped the international artist of the year honor, on the strength of total Japanese sales of 1.8 million units. That was mainly due to strong sales of the Japan-only Jewels greatest-hits collection, which were spurred by the use of Queen's song "I Was Born to Love You" as the main theme of the Fuji-TV drama "Pride".
In the best new domestic artist category, the 10 winners included female singers Beni Arashino and Tia and male vocalist Takeshi Kitayama, while the five winning acts in the best new international artist category included Ashlee Simpson and Kevin Lyttle. The RIAJ presents these awards to all the acts that have sold over a certain amount of CDs - in the best new domestic artist category, over 1 million units, for example - but it would obviously give the awards more focus and a little more excitement if there were to be a single winner in each category.
Orange Range had two of the 10 songs in the domestic song of the year category: "Locolotion" and "Hana (Flower)." Two songs by Ayumi Hamasaki were also named song(s) of the year: "Inspire" and "Moments".
Many people put down awards shows for being clichéd and formulaic, but they are a great promotional tool for the music industry. And since the Japanese music biz needs to promote its product more aggressively than ever, given its steadily declining sales, it would be great if there were a music-awards show in Japan that got the kind of media attention that the Grammys command.
(For a complete list of Gold Disc Award winners - in Japanese only - go to www.riaj.or.jp/release/2005/gdlist_19th.html).
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Originally submitted by: Steve McClure | See Edit History | Edit Article
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