1.
Single (music)
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In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a song recording of fewer tracks than an LP record, an album or an EP record. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats, in most cases, a single is a song that is released separately from an album, although it usually also appears on an album. Typically, these are the songs from albums that are released separately for promotional uses such as digital download or commercial radio airplay and are expected to be the most popular, in other cases a recording released as a single may not appear on an album. As digital downloading and audio streaming have become prevalent, it is often possible for every track on an album to also be available separately. Nevertheless, the concept of a single for an album has been retained as an identification of a heavily promoted or more popular song within an album collection. Despite being referred to as a single, singles can include up to as many as three tracks on them. The biggest digital music distributor, iTunes, accepts as many as three tracks less than ten minutes each as a single, as well as popular music player Spotify also following in this trend. Any more than three tracks on a release or longer than thirty minutes in total running time is either an Extended Play or if over six tracks long. The basic specifications of the single were made in the late 19th century. Gramophone discs were manufactured with a range of speeds and in several sizes. By about 1910, however, the 10-inch,78 rpm shellac disc had become the most commonly used format, the inherent technical limitations of the gramophone disc defined the standard format for commercial recordings in the early 20th century.26 rpm. With these factors applied to the 10-inch format, songwriters and performers increasingly tailored their output to fit the new medium, the breakthrough came with Bob Dylans Like a Rolling Stone. Singles have been issued in various formats, including 7-inch, 10-inch, other, less common, formats include singles on digital compact cassette, DVD, and LD, as well as many non-standard sizes of vinyl disc. Some artist release singles on records, a more common in musical subcultures. The most common form of the single is the 45 or 7-inch. The names are derived from its speed,45 rpm. The 7-inch 45 rpm record was released 31 March 1949 by RCA Victor as a smaller, more durable, the first 45 rpm records were monaural, with recordings on both sides of the disc. As stereo recordings became popular in the 1960s, almost all 45 rpm records were produced in stereo by the early 1970s
2.
Koda Kumi
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Kumiko Kōda, known professionally as Koda Kumi, is a Japanese singer from Kyoto, known for her urban and R&B songs. Having debuted in 2000 with the single Take Back, Koda gained fame for her single, Real Emotion/1000 no Kotoba. Though her early releases presented a conservative, quiet image, since as early as 2003 Koda has adopted a sexier, because of this image, she has become a fashion leader among young women, setting trends such as the ero-kakkoii style. She has also won many awards such as, the Best Jeanist Award. Since the rise in her popularity, Koda has lent her face, in 2006 and 2007, Oricon named Koda as the top selling artist of the year. Jonathan Ross has called her the Christina Aguilera of Japan, while many also compare her career to that of Britney Spears, Koda has sold more than 15 million physical records in Japan alone, making her the 18th best selling solo Japanese female artist of all-time. Koda was born into a family of musicians and her grandfather was a Shakuhachi master and her mother was a Koto teacher, she is the older sister of Misono, current solo artist and former lead singer of Day After Tomorrow. Inspired by her mother, who performed in bars, Koda. During her second year of high school Koda auditioned in Avex’s Dream Audition and she was then signed onto the Avex sub-label Rhythm Zone. Kodas first semi-biographical book, Koda-shiki was officially described as a story about a girl who was filled with inferiority complex pursuing her way. Koda debuted on December 6,2000, with the single Take Back, it was followed by Trust Your Love, Color of Soul, and So into You. Trust Your Love and Color of Soul were both Top 30 singles, the reached number 18 on the chart and became Kodas first Top Twenty single. Using the stage name Koda, Koda recorded Take Back and Trust Your Love in English, Take Back peaked at number 18 on the Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales chart, Trust Your Love had more success, reaching the top spot on the Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales chart. The single also charted on the Hot Singles Sales chart and Hot Dance Club Play chart, at #19 and #35, respectively. After the September 11,2001 attacks, Koda recorded the charity single The Meaning of Peace with Korean singer BoA as part of Avexs Song+Nation project to raise funds for charity. In March 2002, Koda released her debut album Affection under Rhythm Zone, after the release of Affection, Koda released three singles. Love Across the Ocean, Maze, and real Emotion/1000 no Kotoba, Love Across the Ocean and Maze peaked at the number 19 and 25 positions. Koda achieved minor success with real Emotion/1000 no Kotoba, which peaked at number 3 after three weeks on the charts and she released her second album, Grow into One in March 2003
3.
Kingdom (album)
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Kingdom is the sixth studio album by Japanese singer-songwriter Kumi Koda. It was released on January 30,2008, a week after her single anytime, the album debuted at #1 on the Oricon Weekly Charts with sales of 421,302. It remained on the charts for thirty-three weeks, the album was released in four editions, CD, CD+DVD, CD+2DVD and CD+2DVD+Poster, with limited editions of all versions carrying the bonus track Black Cherry. Kingdom has been certified platinum by RIAJ for shipment of 750,000 copies in Japan. Kingdom is Kumi Kodas sixth studio album and tenth album overall and it was released on January 30,2008, a little over a year after her previous studio album Black Cherry. The album was her fourth album to claim the #1 spot on the Oricon charts, continuing her streak. It contained new material and was her first album to have music videos for every song – including the introduction and she would later do this again for her 2012 album Japonesque. The album was available in four versions, CD, CD+DVD, CD+2DVD, the first DVD featured sixteen music videos for each song on the album, including the music video for the non-album song Run For Your Life. The second DVD was of her Premium Live In Hall In Yokohama Arena concert, the CD+2DVD edition contained a slip cover, three stickers of the different album covers and a booklet, which contained photos of the concert. The albums artwork was to symbolize Kumis popularity in the Japanese music industry at the time, with Kumi donning a crown, Kingdom was available in four editions, CD, contains fourteen musical tracks. CD+DVD, contains fourteen tracks, fifteen music videos and the live video for Black Cherry. The limited editions of all versions contained the bonus track Black Cherry on the CD, on January 31, an inflammatory statement by Kumi made on the talk show All Night Nippon created controversy, causing Avex Entertainment to cancel all promotions for Kingdom on February 2. Her website was shut down with a letter from Kumi posted on the page, the statement caused backlash due to Japans low birth rates and the sensitivity of the subject. Due to the statement, she lost promotions for GemCerey, the KOSÉ Visée line, Kumi made an appearance on FNN Supernews to apologize for the remark, saying how she deeply regretted hurting thousands of Japanese women and mothers. She also made public apologies and apologized during hertour for Kingdom. Despite the backlash, the album still reached #1 on Oricon, I must not pretend like it never happened. The moment I thought, My dream has come true. I realized how immature and unprofessional I was, I stand and speak in front of so many people
4.
J-pop
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J-pop, natively also known simply as pops, is a musical genre that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1990s. J-pop was further defined by new groups in the late 1970s, particularly electronic synthpop band Yellow Magic Orchestra. Eventually, J-pop replaced kayōkyoku in the Japanese music scene, the term was coined by the Japanese media to distinguish Japanese music from foreign music, and now refers to most Japanese popular music. The origin of modern J-pop is said to be Japanese-language rock music inspired by the likes of The Beatles, unlike the Japanese music genre called kayōkyoku, J-pop uses a special kind of pronunciation, which is similar to that of English. One notable singer to do so is Keisuke Kuwata, who pronounced the Japanese word karada as kyerada, additionally, unlike Western music, the major second was usually not used in Japanese music, except art music, before rock music became popular in Japan. At first, the term J-pop was used only for Western-style musicians in Japan, such as Pizzicato Five and Flippers Guitar, on the other hand, Mitsuhiro Hidaka of AAA from Avex Trax said that J-pop was originally derived from the Eurobeat genre. However, the became a blanket term, covering other music genres—such as the majority of Japanese rock music of the 1990s. O. A. Because the band did not want to perform J-pop music, their album featured the 1980s Pop of MTV, according to his fellow band member Toru Hidaka, the 1990s music that influenced him was not listened to by fans of other music in Japan at that time. Hide of Greeeen openly described their genre as J-pop. He said, I also love rock, hip hop and breakbeats, for example, hip hop musicians learn the culture of hip hop when they begin their career. We are not like those musicians and we love the music as very much. Those professional people may say What are you doing, but I think that our musical style is cool after all. By the Taishō period, Western musical techniques and instruments, which had introduced to Japan in the Meiji period, were widely used. Influenced by Western genres such as jazz and blues, ryūkōka incorporated Western instruments such as the violin, harmonica, however, the melodies were often written according to the traditional Japanese pentatonic scale. In the 1930s, Ichiro Fujiyama released popular songs with his tenor voice, Fujiyama sang songs with a lower volume than opera through the microphone. Jazz musician Ryoichi Hattori attempted to produce Japanese native music which had a flavor of blues and he composed Noriko Awayas hit song Wakare no Blues. Awaya became a popular singer and was called Queen of Blues in Japan. Due to pressure from the Imperial Army during the war, the performance of music was temporarily halted in Japan
5.
Dance-pop
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Dance-pop is a pop and dance subgenre that originated in the early 1980s. It is generally up-tempo music intended for nightclubs with the intention of being danceable, the genre, on the whole, tends to be producer-driven, despite some notable exceptions. Dance-pop borrowed influences from other genres, which varied by producer, artist, such include contemporary R&B, house, trance, techno, new jack swing, funk, synthpop, electropop and some forms of europop. Dance-pop is a mainstream style of music and there have been numerous pop artists. As the term started to go out of fashion by the late 1970s to early 1980s, other terms were commonly used to describe disco-based music, such as post-disco, club. Dance-pop music emerged in the 1980s as a combination of dance and pop, or post-disco, Dance-pop music was usually created, composed and produced by record producers who would then hire singers to perform the songs. In the beginning of the 80s disco was an anathema to the mainstream pop, according to prominent Allmusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Madonna had a huge role in popularizing dance music as mainstream music, utilizing her charisma, chutzpah and sex appeal. Erlewine claimed that Madonna launched dance-pop and set the standard for the genre for the two decades. The staff of Vice magazine stated that her debut album drew the blueprint for future dance-pop, in the 1980s dance-pop was closely aligned to other up-tempo electronic genres, such as Hi-NRG. Prominent producers in the 1980s included Stock, Aitken and Waterman, during the decade, dance-pop borrowed influences from funk, new jack swing, and contemporary R&B. Other prominent dance-pop artists and groups of the 1980s included the Pet Shop Boys, Mel and Kim, Samantha Fox, Debbie Gibson, by the 1990s, dance-pop had become a major genre in popular music. Several dance-pop groups and artists emerged during the 1990s, such as the Spice Girls, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, Backstreet Boys, during the early 1990s, dance-pop borrowed influences from house music, as well as contemporary R&B and new jack swing. Additionally, also in 1998, Cher released a song called Believe which made usage of a technological innovation of the time. An audio processor and a form of pitch modification software, Auto-Tune is commonly used as a way to correct pitch, since the late 1990s, the use of Auto-Tune processing has become a common feature of dance-pop music. Celine Dion also released a dance-pop song Thats the Way It Is by the end of 1999 and it has a moderately slow tempo but an up-beat song. At the beginning of the 2000s, dance-pop music was still prominent, nonetheless, as R&B and hip hop became extremely popular from the early part of the decade onwards, dance-pop often borrowed a lot of its influences from urban music. Dance-pop stars from the 1980s and 1990s such as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Madonna, Janet Jackson, in Madonnas case, her album Music contained elements of Euro disco, especially the successful eponymous lead single. Britney Spears album Blackout contained influences of Euro disco, the mid-to-late 2000s saw the arrival of several new dance-pop artists, including Rihanna, Kesha, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry
6.
Cherry Girl/Unmei
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Cherry Girl / Unmei is Koda Kumis 34th single under the Rhythm Zone label. This was her last single released before the release of her 2006 album, the single charted #2 on the Oricon charts. Cherry Girl/Unmei is Japanese singer-songwriter Kumi Kodas thirty-fourth single and final single in her Black Cherry era and it ranked #2 on the Oricon charts and remained on the charts for ten consecutive weeks. It was released in both CD and CD+DVD editions, with the limited editions carrying the Space Cowboy Remix of Cherry Girl, the limited editions of the CD+DVD version carried a sticker of the singles cover, the remix of Cherry Girl and a trailer of her upcoming film. While Cherry Girl was an upbeat mix, Unmei was a power ballad. Cherry Girl became the song for Koda Kumis debut drama Cherry Girl. Unmei was used as the theme for the movie Oh, Cherry Girl was composed by Kumi along with Curtis A. Richardson, Charlene Gilliam, Andreao Fanatic Heard and Sherrod Barnes. Cherry Girl was composed of scenes from Kumis film of the same name, Kumi had released a music video with a Charlies Angels theme prior to this for her song No Regret. Unmei carried a theme of love, telling the story of two separated by fate, hence the songs title. The imagery and feel of the video would later be the inspiration for other famous artists. The single garnered mixed reviews from North American fans. Cherry Girl received mixed reviews, with fans praising the vocals and overall tone. Japanese fans, however, gave the more positive reviews. They compared Cherry Girl to Koda Kumis earlier music, and that the music was very cool, others said how Unmei was a nice track to come after the bass-heavy Cherry Girl. All lyrics written by Kumi Koda
