About a week ago I was listening to the latest episode of the J-Pop review podcast, Gaijin Kanpai. This particular episode featured a roundtable between the hosts about “What makes an Artist”. After debating the relative creative merits of many quasi-singers such as PERFUME and vocaloid super star Hatsune Miku as actual musicians, the conversation turned to one of the hosts’ biggest pet peeves: when anime fans only recognize a band for the one theme song they contributed to an anime series. Co-host Zer0 remarked that “not that many people really like music… for most people, it’s just noise. People go to work and turn on the classic rock station, but they don’t actually listen to it- they just let it play in the background.”
