"No One Sleep in Tokyo" was the first Eurobeat song used in an Initial D battle. The famous "Nani! Kansei dorifto?!" That show would have been an empty husk without eurobeat.
I like that you didn't mention Initial D in any of this, as it was just one of the media that made it popular and not a defining feature of it, but still it feels like you intentionaly tried to stay away from any of that before you spawn an entire community outa nowhere
Anyone got any eurobeat songs to reccomend? I love the genre, cars, and initial D. And i like to play eurobeat while i play games, usually fighting games, or Generic Roleplay gaem. I'll reccomend a few myself - GET ME POWER (Mega NRG man) - Crazy Little Love - I won't fall apart (Jager) And my favorite being - Prayer (Ducky Chix)
There are many eurobeat songs who i would neither define "happy" or "melancholic", like "The Fire's On Me", "Pride", "Power" "Wings of Fire" or even "Right Now" (the last one being definitely worth a listen, even if it barely sounds like eurobeat) I think those songs, despite some of them having somewhat melancholic lyrics, are more of an "empowering" or "motivational" type, they aren't sad, but i wouldn't call them happy, they are more of a motivational type, with some being more aggressive than others.
The only downside to eurobeat imo is the amount of aliases one artist would have like T.Stebbins who went to Ken Blast, Motimer, Vandalet, Empress, and right now as of 2023 Odyssey (She V-tubes as-well nowadays)
only leaves one question to me: why is eurobeat then so heavily connected to japan if its basically italian music with broken english? is it really only because of initial D or what?
Not really. Eurobeat was chosen for Initial D as at the time it was already somewhat popular, not the other way around. As for why it became popular in the first place, it's probably one of those things you had to experience back then (or even be a producer) to really understand how Eurobeat (which in mid 80's Japan was just referring generically to EDM from Europe) penetrated the Japanese market. As an Italian I think that broken lyrics surely helped, somehow? In the 80's Italo Disco was hugely popular here, and artists with English aliases were popping left and right, using simple lyrics that could be easily comprehended even by us. (Granted, I was born in 2000 so that's more of my theory) The Japanese I don't think where that different (I mean, look at how Italians and Japanese speak English nowadays lol) and so the catchy, simple (even if broken) lyrics helped I guess. What happened then? Italy (following the rest of continental Europe, Germany especially) moved on to trance music, which would go on to dominate dance clubs in the 90's. Japan, being a much more isolated market (I mean, this was the late 80's, Internet and Spotify weren't a thing) stuck to its own path. In 1990 Max, founder of Avex, decided to travel to Italy (as Eurobeat producers were either German or Italians: German producers basically all moved on to trance music) to release a compilation CD (Avex had been founded only 2 years prior, and at the time were looking to expand their business) in collaboration with Giancarlo Pasquini, bringing back the Super Eurobeat label, which was restarted at the end of 1990... and the rest is history. Granted, I'm not sure how accurate this information is: some is taken from the internet, some has been deduced by me... but I don't think that's terribly far from what happened.
Eurobeat is the best lol, driving down akina always having smth in the backgroup, from odyssey (which is also ken blast or A1) to the more original sounding stuff like dave rodgers. THIS STUFF IS AMAZING (and ik at least one of ya'll got caught speeding with this playing)
