music monday: the everything japanese edition

This month was supposed to be relatively quiet on the music front for me, with Dreamcatcher and Monsta X being the only groups that I had my eye on, but then all my favorite Japanese artists decided to put out new music videos within days of each other. Today’s post is going to highlight them all because it’s a lot (and because you should all listen to them).

-Let’s start off with the most surprising, and one of the best Valentine’s gifts ever. There I was, waiting for Spotify to put up the new Monsta X album when I switched to Twitter to see that a good chunk of 2PM’s Japanese mv were released in all their high definition glory. Sorry MX, 2PM trumps you always and thus spent my Thursday night watching them. ‘Higher’ has always been a favorite, but the others are just as good and you can find them on the 2PM Japan YouTube. I love Japanese 2PM so much.

-Band-Maid came out with a music video for their English single, ‘The Dragon Cries’ from their latest album, “Conqueror” and I think it fits the song perfectly.

-King Gnu surprised me and came out with a video for ‘Duron’ which was one of my favorite songs off of their latest album.

-The Oral Cigarettes came out with a new single, ‘Tonight the Silence Kills Me With Your Fire’, which I had technically knew about, but forgot. Here’s the thing with following Japanese artists: there is very little translated content telling you about the new releases before they happen, and thus you aren’t reminded of it if you can’t read Japanese. Does this mean I have to go back to studying Japanese?

-This is a cheat, as Shi Shi is not a Japanese artist, but I wanted to throw in that she just dropped the music video for ‘Come Away’ which is a song used for the Taiwanese drama, Someday or One Day, which also reminded me that it’s the drama is on my to watch list.

-The Winking Owl released a live clip version of their song, ‘Kataomoi’. If my Google translate skills are good enough, I think they have another concert coming up? I don’t think it’s an album. Maybe. I don’t know. This is hard.

-Aimyon also came out with new music (seriously, it was a rollercoaster of a week for Jessie). I know everyone loves Aimyon, but I really do like her a lot.

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