Simplified Speech #240 – Japanese music
Culips Everyday English Podcast
Culips English Podcast
4.8 • 979 Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Join Andrew and Indiana for a conversation about their love for J-Pop. In this episode, the hosts discuss how they originally found this genre and why it has become so famous globally. They talk about the “City Pop” trend, the unexpected ways they stumbled upon their favorite bands, and why listening to 90s Japanese music makes them feel nostalgic. Finally, they share a list of albums and songs to help you start listening, too. Press play to practice your English and find some great new music!
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Here are the listening recommendations made by Andrew and Indiana:
- Spacy – Tatsuro Yamashita: Click here
- Wet Land – Hiroshi Yoshimura: Click here
- Sugar Babe – Songs: Click here
- Happy End – Kazamachi Roman: Click here
- Haruomi Hosono – Hosono House: Click here
- PONPONPON – Kyary Pamyu Pamyu: Click here
Fun Fact
Andrew mentions that listening to Japanese electronic music makes him nostalgic for old video games. This is no coincidence! Haruomi Hosono (recommended by both hosts in this episode) was a founder of Yellow Magic Orchestra, a band that pioneered using arcade sounds in pop music. Their 1978 hit “Computer Game” actually sampled sounds from Space Invaders!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Joining me now to talk all about J-pop is my co-host, Indiana. |
| 0:05.9 | Hey there, Indiana. How's it going? |
| 0:08.5 | Hey, Andrew. I'm doing really well. I'm so excited to talk about this topic today. |
| 0:12.5 | As you know, and as listeners know, we are both big fans of Japanese music, so this should be a good one. |
| 0:19.1 | Yeah, and the reason why we are recording this episode is because of a user on our Discord |
| 0:25.8 | community. |
| 0:26.4 | I have to give a shout out and a thanks to this user for the great suggestion. |
| 0:33.0 | So I think I'm pronouncing this correctly. |
| 0:35.4 | The username is Tristan 7777.7. |
| 0:39.7 | So Tristan 777 wrote on Discord, I'd love to hear Andrew and Indiana talk about J-pop. |
| 0:47.1 | And so here we are. |
| 0:48.2 | That's what we're doing right now. |
| 0:49.4 | So thank you, Tristan, for that amazing suggestion. |
| 0:52.2 | And everyone, if you would like to hear us talk about a specific topic or a specific idea, |
| 0:58.8 | then we're always welcoming your topic suggestions and ideas. |
| 1:04.4 | Just go over to our Discord and make a post about that. |
| 1:08.0 | We even have a specific channel for episode suggestions. If you leave a |
| 1:12.8 | message there, then we'll see it and we'll do our best to try and make that become a reality. |
| 1:19.2 | Okay, so J-pop, Indiana, I think this is a pretty fun topic. And, you know, I think it's really interesting that you are into Japanese music because |
| 1:31.2 | I didn't know this about you. It was just something that I kind of randomly discovered as we were |
| 1:36.8 | talking and as we've been recording together. And yeah, we do have that in common. So I think |
| 1:42.3 | it'll be fun to get into it a little bit and to talk about our pathway into |
... |
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