On December 30 at 5:30 PM JST, The 56th Japan Record Award will take place. The show will be airing on TBS but we also have links so that you can live stream the show. The live streams can be found here and here. The list of nominees and winners for certain categories can be found here. The big category of the night, The Japan Record Award, is a battle between Yuzu, AAA, Nishino Kana, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, Sandaime J Soul Brothers, AKB48, SEKAI NO OWARI, Hikawa Kiyoshi, Southern All Stars, and Ikimonogakari. Enjoy the show and feel free to chat with your fellow AramaJapan readers as you watch in the comments below!
The 25th Annual Independent Critics List of the 100 Most Beautiful Faces of 2014 has been released! If you’re not familiar with it, this list has been published in various formats every year since 1990 and has been seen by over 60 million people from around the world in recent years.
This list is significant because it’s not just a popularity contest of Hollywood’s top celebrities and is celebrated for its worldwide scope and coverage of female celebrities. This year, four Japanese celebrities have made the cut to this list and one has even broken the top 10.
TC Candler, whose site website is dedicated to film aficionados, hopeless romantics, admirers of artistic beauty & the intellectually curious, writes:
Unlike many other annual publications, The Independent Critics List is not a popularity contest. It is not about the sexiest or the most famous. Rather, it aims to be a very international list and one that is inclusive of many cultures, lifestyles, professions and degrees of fame. The Independent Critics List intends to inform public opinion rather than reflect it. This list searches far and wide, listening to the tens of thousands of suggestions submitted every year, and tries to put together a list representative of the modern ideal of beauty. Aesthetic perfection is only one of the criteria. Grace, elegance, class, poise, joy, promise, hope… they are all embodied in a beautiful face.
Check them out below.
The finalized tracklist for Namie Amuro‘s upcoming Live Style 2014 concert DVD/Blu-ray has finally been revealed! The veteran songstress embarked on the nationwide tour in August, and concluded the tour just before Christmas on December 23rd at the “KYODO FACTORY”.
Namie’s original “Live Style” tour in 2006 was created to showcase her rare songs, mainly b-sides and album tracks. Unfortunately her team seemed to have dropped that idea, but the latest Live Style does offer a few rare gems. These include performances of “Whisper” from her 3rd studio album “Concentration 20”, and her single “Dreaming I was dreaming”. The rest of the tracklist consists of her many hits from various eras.
The concert video will also have a special deluxe edition, which includes an extra disc with special performances from her latest best album “Ballada”. Each day on the tour she performed one of the select eleven songs included on the disc.
Check out the tracklist and covers for Live Style 2014 below!
Kaela Kimura – Real Life Real Heart / sonic manic / happiness!!!
Electronic dance unit CAPSULE (Yasutaka Nakata, Toshiko Koshijima) recently followed their appearance at COUNTDOWN JAPAN with news pertaining to their upcoming album WAVE RUNNER, slated for release on February 18th next year. The track “Feel Again”, which previously served as music for a Christmas light show in the shopping complex Canal City Hakata, will be released in 111 iTunes stores worldwide as a promotional digital single for the album alongside its extended mix. Additionally, WAVE RUNNER has gone up for digital preorder in the same 111 iTunes stores.
In a surprise move, a special video showcasing a “mega-mix” of four tracks off the new album was released. The video features footage from CAPSULE’s club performance at the ASOBINITE!!! HALLOWEEN event held at ageHa. Check it out below!
Following the completion of his end of the year concert last night, renowned rock soloist Yoshii Kazuya has announced that he’ll be releasing his 7th studio album on March 18th of 2015. This will be Yoshii’s first original album since “The Apples” was released back in March of 2011, and will have the details concerning its contents and title announced shortly.
In addition, Yoshii will also be releasing a new single on January 28th; titled “Clear”, the release will be his first since his return to his original record label TRIAD. As a result, the single will include a set of 10 live tracks as part of a “Welcome back to TRIAD” campaign being pushed by the label, many of the songs from Yoshii’s time with his band THE YELLOW MONKEY.
Check out the audio for “Clear” and the full track list for the single right after the cut!
On December 27, the new music/ variety program Samaazu no Utafuri! aired on NTV (10pm-11:24pm). The program involves location filming in collaboration with comedians aside from performances from the guests. Guests for the first broadcast are KAT-TUN, Perfume, and aiko. Perfume and Harisenbon went shopping at a hardware store, KAT-TUN and Black Mayonnaise went ‘to see the world of women’, to see and experience unusual popular things with women not quite understood by men, and aiko and Samaazu went to enjoy Universal Studios Japan.
Before the first broadcast, a “Samaazu Special Just Before the Broadcast” was aired on the same day from 3:15pm – 4pm featuring more of the location filming, to be continued in the broadcast proper together with the performances. The line up are as follows:
- KAT-TUN – Dead or Alive
- Perfume – Cling Cling
- aiko – Atashi no Mukou (Beyond Myself)
Ikimonogakari – GOLDEN GIRL
E-girls – Mr.Snowman
Miyuki Watanabe – Yasashiku Suru Yori Kiss wo Shite
SCANDAL – Image
U-Kiss – Sweetie