Asian Addicts Anonymous

So…I’m going to skip a lot of questions from the first 30 day Asian music challenge and pick one from a different challenge. Just a heads up.

Day 01: What is the song that introduced you to KPop/Cpop/Jpop?

I have to say that my foray into Asian music goes hand in hand with Asian dramas (and anime).

My introduction to kpop would have to be will the drama Full House. I remember just adoring Byul’s “I think I…” but I really got into kpop thanks to Boys Over Flowers which led me to discover SS501 and the song “Snow Prince” with its blatant rip off of Backstreet Boys’ “As Long as You Love Me” video. Ah…how nostalgic. I started collecting drama OSTs and then moved on to slowly following kpop groups. SuJu was my firs after SS501 and then and then maybe SHINee and Infinite.

My introduction to jpop would have to be via anime. Now, most of the time American series have instrumentals or US versions of songs (i.e. Escaflowne and Sailor Moon and Ronin Warriors), but for some reason…when I watched Inu Yasha for the first time in high school, the opening and endings were both in Japanese! Thus I was introduced to Johnny’s group V-6 who did the opening theme for one season (it was “Change the World” or something like that). But I didn’t really get into jpop until 2007-08 with my discovery of HanDan which led me to discover more dramas with themes by the prolific Utada Hikaru. My foray into visual kei love all began thanks to Alice Nine’s cameo in Aquarian Age (that is sadly the best part of that movie). The song was “Mirror Ball” and was the main theme of the movie written by bassist Saga.

Cpop…was all thanks to Taiwanese dramas. In particularly, Rainie Yang’s songs she did for her dramas – especially “Ai Mei” from Devil Beside You. But I think it was Angela Zhang in the drug out drama A Promise of Love at the Dolphin Bay which really hooked me on Chinese/Taiwanese music. Oh…and then there was Alan Kuo’s “Ling” (aka “Zero”) which was the theme for Mars that song is epically awesome! Yeah…not as big on this branch of Asian music, but my collection keeps growing slowly.

And thanks to watching Thai dramas…I now love Thai music. Go figure. My gateway song to this branch of Asian music is actually from my second Thai drama–Ruk Patiharn. The one theme song “Kwam rak mai mee tee hai kam wa glua” by Instinct was phenomenal so much so that I immediately found the single album and purchased it.

I think I answered the questions, lol.