what I like about how karaoke culture being so embedded in japanese life is that i think there’s a public familiarity with pop song structure

not only do people go into lyric appreciation when they talk about why they like a song, they can also identify which exact section they like and articulate what it’s doing in the song for them to feel that way

it’s often in roadside interviews in music shows where the interviewee will talk about their favorite lyric but also say like “when it gets from b melo to sabi...” describing the progression of the song like choreography and hitting on the whys from an emotional standpoint

they can articulate it like this because they’ve sang it a lot but also because pop songwriters made it so they’d want to sing it a lot, with clear form so the diff parts are obvious enough to foresee it coming—the structure is so strictly followed it’s like muscle memory

karaoke itself have educated the public enough but I think the other products of the culture, mainly the karaoke competitions on variety shows or music-breakdown shows like kanjam, also provide great supplementary material

lyrics being close captioned on music performance shows is known but i like also how karaoke variety shows identify the song structure on the lyric sheet for audiences to follow like a map

music-breakdown do this too as a given but the geinojin on the mc panel are also providing examples on how to talk about them

this is all partly a byproduct of pop songwriters adapting to the market of such a culture where they have to follow a strictly established pop structure so these can be so easily identified when sung in karaoke if not by sight then by instinct

this can be creatively limiting to some extent (that’s another discussion) but as an exchange I think there’s a deeper appreciation of the craft with an audience who can articulate the technical aspect of it