The first installment of the "Diva's of the Far East" rate series looks into the discographies of Japan's finest - the four main J-POP divas - Ayumi Hamasaki, Kumi Koda, Namie Amuro & Hikaru Utada. Each respective artist will have 5 songs sampled from the beginning, middle, and later portions of their careers. Thus, in total, each artist will have 15 songs taken from each of their illustrious careers.

The tracks selected are a combination of Japanese classics and western fan-favorites in order to easily introduce new listeners to four amazing artists and, possibly, an entirely new genre. In addition to this, I welcome long-time fans to revisit past favorites and key-cuts.

Within the PM Friendly List tag all song titles are hyper linked to their respective video courtesy of jpopsuki.tv or YouTube (remember you're only rating the song, though).

(note: jpopsuki.tv slays but the server can be slow at times, but they're the best streaming site for J-Pop videos so please bear with it!)

Rules & Guidelines:

1. Assign each track a score between 1 and 10; decimal point scores are accepted,
   but only those to the tenth place (i.e 9.5, 8.3). If you assign a score of 0, it will be
   rounded up to a 1.
2. Send your rates to me via private message and do not post them in the thread!
3. PLEASE use the PM friendly list at the end of this post, I beg of you!!
4. Rates will be due August 31st, 2014 by midnight / 12:00 AM EST.

PM FRIENDLY LIST


PARTICIPANTS



Special thank you to Ace Reject for allowing me to host this rate and to everyone in the
J-Pop Discussion Thread for helping select the songs!

You know, after this rate, we should have subsidiaries for each of their genres…

Ayumi's Pop-Rock: Nami Tamaki, Kavka Shishido, alan
Namie's Electro: Meisa Kuroki, Tommy february6, MADEMOISELLE YULIA
Kumi's Urban: Aoyama Thelma, Miliyah Kato, BENI

And for Utada, the perfect English speakers: Rie fu, MiChi, Angela Aki

The graphics slayed

Great OP, I'm in



Namie's choices are amazing Some of my favorite Ayu tracks are missing (indeed) tho #momentum

Originally posted by Nait Phoenix You know, after this rate, we should have subsidiaries for each of their genres… Ayumi's Pop-Rock: Nami Tamaki, Kavka Shishido, alan Namie's Electro: Meisa Kuroki, Tommy february6, MADEMOISELLE YULIA Kumi's Urban: Aoyama Thelma, Miliyah Kato, BENI And for Utada, the perfect English speakers: Rie fu, MiChi, Angela Aki

Originally posted by D.D.D. how many of them are relevant nowadays?

Originally posted by Antidote. Hi baby girl *muah* I'm in! Gonna go listen to them now. I already know all of Kumi's.

Originally posted by conseeded Beautiful World, Addicted To You, and Real Emotion have to be top 5. BW also has to win.

Originally posted by Britneyfan09 Amazing graphics as usual! Will send in my rates soon.

Originally posted by Black Pearl Awesome graphics! I'm only unfamiliar with a few of Kuu's, lemme get on this

Originally posted by D.D.D. I will send mine after re-listening some ayu's and Utada's

Originally posted by BlueTimberwolf Namie's choices......

Originally posted by Nait Phoenix You know, after this rate, we should have subsidiaries for each of their genres… Ayumi's Pop-Rock: Nami Tamaki, Kavka Shishido, alan Namie's Electro: Meisa Kuroki, Tommy february6, MADEMOISELLE YULIA Kumi's Urban: Aoyama Thelma, Miliyah Kato, BENI And for Utada, the perfect English speakers: Rie fu, MiChi, Angela Aki

Originally posted by RafaelBuzz The graphics slayed

Originally posted by MonsterPaw Great OP, I'm in

Originally posted by MonsterPaw Namie's choices are amazing Some of my favorite Ayu tracks are missing (indeed) tho #momentum

Originally posted by Nait Phoenix I just noticed a lot of really good Ayu tracks are missing… like at least one from A or H… I mean, July 1st is literally one of my favorite Ayu tracks… and no "Depend on You", "Monochrome" or "Fly High"…?

Originally posted by Kyle-x Thank you! Some really great ones are, It was pretty hard drawing up songs. I kept writing and revising and going back again. She just has so many singles! From the first half of her career she has ~30 songs that were singles and so many are very ~classic ayu~ so it was tough.

Totally doing this!