poptimists | Eurobeat!

greatest of genres! A pounding beat, a hyperactive synth or string sample, and the biggest hook you can find, and you too can achieve eurobeat greatness! Popular in Japan as nowhere else, it's the official and unofficial soundtrack to everything that involves cars that go very very fast. The genre is practically owned by the Avex Trax label, who run the Super Eurobeat series of compilations, which has been running since the eighties and will keep running forever on a steady rate of three or four compilations a year. There are probably several people in Japan who own every Super Eurobeat compilation ever released, all the way up to SEB 161, which came out in September.

Nearly all Eurobeat is made by Italians, who adopt a whole series of Anglophone pseudonyms - Giancarlo Pasquini, for example, prefers to be known as Dave Rodgers. It's basically an offshoot of italodisco that got faster and shinier and hi-NRG'er and generally... more special.

king kong & the djungle girls - boom boom dollar (1989; from the now-defunct 'that's eurobeat!' series)

namie amuro - try me ~watashi o shinjite~ (1995; japanese-language version of song originally released by 'lolita', aka Ann Lee; started Amuro's career.)

norma sheffield - maybe tonite (1997; real name francesca contini obviously not glamorous enough)

edo boys - no-one sleep in tokyo (1998; from the anime series 'initial d' that revived eurobeat's popularity in the late nineties)

every little thing - sure (eurolovers remix) (2001; ELT tend to soft-rock ballads but have both a eurobeat remix album and a trance remix album)

kevin johnson - never gonna give you up (2004; okay it is just a straight cover but!)

o-zone - dragostea din tei (eurobeat remix) (2005; we've all seen maiahi.com, right?)