English Songs by Japanese artists

[rainnydaiis]

^ yeah Utada Hikaru's english music wasen't that bad. The Exodus cd which I bought had some pretty decent songs in it. I also listen to a few Korean singers that made remakes of english songs that aren't so bad.

[kk2extreme]

Originally Posted by Paladinoras

And if any of you here watched School Rumble Nigakki, I would say whoever was singing Karen's song was pretty good. The lyrics don't make much sense, but it is still alrite. . .

its by Lia, her other english songs are very good too

[Saki_chan]

There are some really good Japanese covers of English songs, and also some fricking crazy ones. Case in point.

[Xanas]

I like Engrish songs to be honest. I think it's great that they want to try to sing in a foreign language, but then... I like to try (and fail horribly) at singing in Japanese.

As long as I suck at Japanese I have no issues with them sucking at English. As for the lyrics, they are pretty nonsensical (but.. the translated lyrics sound pretty weird too most of the time), and I kind of think you have to weed out the whole grammar/sense of word order in english and just try to grasp the general concepts.

Euphoric Field is one of my favorite songs. I also really liked the English OP to Rental Magica in addition to the Japanese version (Faith I think the english one is called).

I couldn't disagree more with some of those in this thread who I'd very nearly call haters...

[Shadow Kira01]

Although Halko Momoi can sing fluent English, yet her song "Sunday early morning" is hardly understandable.

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=SXv2RsU7z3I

[angelvhen24]

i thought most english by the japanese artists was sung quite well, as well as for chinese, taiwanese and korean. sometimes their english is worded weird but thats because of translating directly from japanese. you could take the mick out of my japanese and chinese pronounciation, even though i've studied both for a while now, i bet my accent is as weird as everyone else's.

[katiemirmo]

Winter Sleep by Olivia Lupfkin (Reira Serizawa) from the anime NaNa is one of the greatest english songs I've heard, I've been trying out singing the english versions but I get off tune..
Utada Hikaru's english version of First Love is quite good too..

[PrincessFrani]

Joe Inoue is possible one of the few singers that you can understand when he's singing in English.
Ex. Closer, Hello!, and Gravity.

[Siegel Clyne]

Japan's Rin Oikawa (及川リン, Oikawa Rin) often sings in English.

及川リンさん（Q;indivi） NEWS リアルタイム インタビュー
Oikawa Rin-san (Q;indivi) NEWS Real Time Interview

Q;indivi Starring Rin Oikawa / Celebration

[firemage098]

gensis of aquarion its in english and jap.you'd never gues its a japanese sing i think akino sings it plus rhe opening the world god only knows

[Cosmic Eagle]

NicoNico

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm14812099

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By Nano and Neko

[Infinite Zenith]

Allow me to add BOOM BOOM SATELLITE and their awesome single for the Gundam Unicorn series, BROKEN MIRROR (I'm not shouting! Their song titles and band name are in all caps )

YouTube

https://youtu.be/K2z-yyjE29U

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[Mjay]

Originally Posted by katiemirmo

Winter Sleep by Olivia Lupfkin (Reira Serizawa) from the anime NaNa is one of the greatest english songs I've heard, I've been trying out singing the english versions but I get off tune..
Utada Hikaru's english version of First Love is quite good too..

One of the reasons I really enjoyed Nana was for the music. All the Olivia songs are awesome.

Utada is favorite of mine as well, I own her exodus and 'This is the one' album. Exodus was a little better IMO.

I don't know if X-Japan was mentioned but that are really good if you like rock ballads from the 90's

[Tsuyoshi Sakamaki]

Why did no one mention Takeshi Hosomi?He is a real GOD.He sings in perfect english.Moreover he writes the english lyrics of his songs himself.

[Tcol]

KOKIA seem to sing english okay too, i know only two 100% English songs from her are "Bridge" and "Everlasting", both give nice and warm feelings <3
"Bridge"

YouTube

https://youtu.be/MKC9RCcSnn0

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"Everlasting"

YouTube

https://youtu.be/6oNVocbw2vE

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[-Antares-]

You know, bad English pronunciation from foreigners really seems to irk a lot of people. It surprised me to see that there are people who find songs bad just because of poor pronunciation... If anything, mispronunciations just make me smile. Guess it's my linguistics background, not to mention listening to doom+death metal a lot as a child and finding the lyrics incomprehensible 70% of the time, and today being a huge fan of Yuki Kajiura and Yoko Kanno songs that have lyrics that aren't even an actual language.

Originally Posted by firemage098

gensis of aquarion its in english and jap.you'd never gues its a japanese sing i think akino sings it plus the opening the world god only knows

Well, to be fair, AKINO and the rest of bless4 were all born in the US and only moved to Japan in the late 90s or so. They're fluent in English.

REBECCA, an old band I'm very fond of, made some English versions of some of their songs. Some of the differences are pretty interesting: there's MOON (Original Japanese, English) and I'll also mention Vanity Angel (Japanese) and One Way or Another (the English version). Also, abingdon boys school (Takanori Nishikawa/TMR is the vocalist here, and he was mentioned earlier in the thread) has a number songs that are all, or half in English. Few examples are Nervous Breakdown (no lyrics on this video unfortunately, but I think he's pretty comprehensible), and Valkyrie.

Moving away from that, there are a suprising number of covers by Japanese artists of English songs. KOKIA and Ayahi Takagaki have enitre albums like this. And then you have exciting things like Atsushi Sakurai (lead vocalist of BUCK-TICK, who did op/ed themes for Shiki, Trinity Blood, and Nightwalker) singing Space Oddity! or JiLL-Decoy association (who have a good deal of English songs as well) covering Take on Me.

[Nachtwandler]

My favorite seiyuu, Ayahi Takagaki, likes to add covers on English songs in her singles. Maybe her pronunciation is not ideal but quite good and much better than most of Japanese singers have:

YouTube

https://youtu.be/Kzge6KATp_s

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[SethOfI]

So I was surprised to see so many of my favorite bands that have done all English songs haven't been mentioned once in the whole topic. Moreover because a lot of them do have ties to anime (though the openings themselves that they write tend to have Japanese in them).

Here are some bands I can think of who have done it and all english songs I recommend by them:

• One Ok Rock
• Abingdon Boys School
• nano
• SiM
• CrossFaith
• Coldrain
• NoisyCell
• SawanoHiryuki[nZk]
• Fear, & Loathing in Las Vegas
• Crystal Lake
• UNIONS
  
  Almost positive there's at least one All English songs by [Alexandros] too, but none come to mind right way.

Also a bunch of great ones that were frequently mentioned like Rie Fu and REBECCA, among others.

[Tsuyoshi Sakamaki]

Speaking about Hiroyuki Sawano here is the new Gundam series opening which was sung fully in english.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DTwP2wMlIE

[Tsuyoshi Sakamaki]

I think that Takeshi Hosomi (ex Ellegarden) has not just good but even PERFECT English.His band "The hiatus" has released the new album recently and it's fully in english(by he way Takeshi-san writes the lyrics himself).
Taka from "ONE OK ROCK" has good english too.
LISA(the singer who sang the first SAO opening ) sang an english version of this very opening and I think this version is quite good not perfect but good.