11 Best Japanese English Songs: East Meets West

Introduction

There’s something magnetic about a Japanese artist stepping into English-speaking territory and absolutely nailing it. I’ve been spinning records for over two decades, and the tracks that hit hardest are often the ones that cross linguistic borders with total confidence — and the 11 best Japanese English songs do exactly that.

Quick Comparison Table

I’ve watched the global appetite for Japanese music explode over the past ten years, and it’s no accident. Japanese artists bring a meticulous, almost surgical attention to production that Western pop often lacks. When they fold English lyrics into that framework, the results can be genuinely transcendent.

What makes these tracks special isn’t just bilingual novelty — it’s the fact that every single one of them works as a great song first, language second. Some of these artists write fully in English, some blend Japanese and English seamlessly, and some translate beloved tunes into international contexts. All of them belong on this list.

I’ve road-tested every track on this list in real DJ sets, from underground Tokyo-themed club nights in Shoreditch to anime convention dances in Chicago. The crowd’s reaction never lies. These songs move people regardless of whether they’ve ever set foot in Japan, and that’s the ultimate test of a great record.

Table of Contents

1. Sukiyaki — Kyu Sakamoto

2. Plastic Love — Mariya Takeuchi

3. Bad Apple!! — Nomico

4. Gangsta — Rina Sawayama

5. Flavor Of Life — Hikaru Utada

6. Pa’s Lam System — Atarashii Gakko!

7. Gimme Chocolate!! — BABYMETAL

8. Test Drive — Joji

9. Ordinary World — Utada Hikaru

10. DNA — Perfume

11. STRAY SHEEP — Hikaru Utada

List Of Japanese English Songs

1. Sukiyaki — Kyu Sakamoto

🎯 Why this made the list: The first Japanese-language song to hit #1 in the US, it broke every barrier that said Asian pop couldn’t conquer Western charts — and its English-titled release is the greatest East-meets-West moment in pop history.

📅 1963 · 🎵 Pop ballad · ▶️ 12M views · 🎧 18M streams

Originally titled Ue o Muite Arukō [I Look Up As I Walk], this song was renamed Sukiyaki for Western markets because the title was considered unpronounceable — and because a British record executive supposedly loved the Japanese dish. Released in Japan in 1961, it climbed the US Billboard Hot 100 all the way to number one in June 1963, a feat that wouldn’t be matched by a Japanese artist for decades.

Musically, the track is deceptively simple — a gentle, lilting melody carried by Sakamoto’s warm, slightly nasal tenor over a lush orchestral arrangement. The whistled intro became one of the most recognisable moments in 1960s pop. The melancholy underneath the cheerful tune is quintessentially Japanese in concept: Sakamoto has said the song is about walking with your head held high to keep your tears from falling.

Every time I drop this in a set — even as a brief intro or a blend — the room shifts. There’s a timelessness to it that reaches people who weren’t even born when it was recorded. I’ve used it as an opener for Japan-themed nights more times than I can count, and it never fails to set the perfect tone of wistful sophistication.

The song reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, #6 in the UK, and sold over 13 million copies worldwide. It was named one of Rolling Stone‘s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and remains a touchstone of international pop crossover. Tragically, Kyu Sakamoto died in the 1985 Japan Airlines Flight 123 crash, making this recording all the more precious.

2. Plastic Love — Mariya Takeuchi

🎯 Why this made the list: The song that introduced an entire generation of Western listeners to Japanese City Pop, Plastic Love is a perfect record — immaculate production, heartbreaking lyrics, and a groove that refuses to quit.

📅 1984 · 🎵 City Pop / Funk · ▶️ 85M views · 🎧 220M streams

Originally released in 1984 on Mariya Takeuchi’s album Variety, Plastic Love spent decades as a beloved cult favourite in Japan before a mysterious YouTube algorithm moment in 2017 sent it viral globally. The song is largely in Japanese but features English phrases woven throughout — and the English title, the Western funk production, and Takeuchi’s breathy delivery gave Western listeners an immediate point of entry.

The production is a masterclass in 1980s studio craft, handled by Takeuchi’s husband Tatsuro Yamashita. The bass line is elastic and alive, the guitar work is crisp and funky, and the layered synths create a kind of warm, glowing haze that perfectly captures a late-night Tokyo drive. The English-language elements — including the title and scattered phrases — aren’t tokenistic; they’re fully integrated into the emotional fabric of the song.

I remember the exact moment I first heard this properly in 2018, through a dodgy YouTube rip in a late-night DJ booth during a city pop warm-up set. My jaw dropped. The mix between Western funk influences and distinctly Japanese emotional restraint is unlike anything else in the catalogue. I’ve probably played this song 200 times since then and I’m still not tired of it.

The viral resurgence of Plastic Love is one of the most remarkable algorithmic success stories in music history. The official upload eventually amassed over 100 million YouTube views, and Takeuchi released an official single version in 2019. It has become the defining gateway track for the global City Pop revival and helped put Japanese 1980s pop firmly on the world music map.

3. Bad Apple!! — Nomico

🎯 Why this made the list: The anthem of Touhou fan culture crossed over into global gaming and internet music communities entirely on its own terms, becoming one of the most-covered Japanese songs in any language ever recorded.

📅 2008 · 🎵 Electronic / Doujin pop · ▶️ 45M views · 🎧 35M streams

Bad Apple!! originated as an instrumental track in the Touhou Project indie game series by ZUN, later arranged by Alstroemeria Records with vocals by Nomico in 2008. The English version and numerous English-language covers followed organically, driven entirely by a passionate global fan community. It exists in a fascinating space — a Japanese indie production that found its audience through Western gaming and internet culture simultaneously.

The track is built on a hypnotic minor-key piano riff layered over pulsing electronic percussion, with Nomico’s clear, almost emotionless vocal delivery creating an eerie, beautiful tension. The English translations preserve the song’s themes of light, darkness, and identity remarkably well. The iconic monochrome silhouette animation that accompanied it became one of YouTube’s most viewed pieces of fan-made content, racking up tens of millions of plays.

I started encountering this track at gaming events and anime conventions in the early 2010s, and I quickly realised it worked as a genuine dance-floor weapon. There’s a relentless forward momentum to the arrangement that keeps energy levels locked in. For a track born in a niche indie game community, it has extraordinary reach.

The song has been covered, arranged, and remixed thousands of times in virtually every musical genre imaginable, from metal to jazz to orchestral. It ranks among the most-covered pieces of music from Japanese indie culture ever. Its cultural legacy stretches far beyond gaming — it’s now a genuine piece of internet folk music that belongs in any serious discussion of Japanese music crossing language barriers.

4. Gangsta — Rina Sawayama

🎯 Why this made the list: Rina Sawayama writes better English-language pop than most native English speakers alive, and this early single proved she was going to be a once-in-a-generation talent.

📅 2017 · 🎵 Alt-pop / R&B · ▶️ 8M views · 🎧 28M streams

Born in Japan and raised in the UK from age five, Rina Sawayama occupies a genuinely unique cultural position — a Japanese-British artist who writes exclusively in English and draws on both J-pop’s meticulous production aesthetics and Western R&B and alternative pop. Gangsta, released on her debut EP RINA in 2017, was the track that put her on the radar of serious music followers worldwide.

The production on Gangsta is extraordinary — early 2000s R&B textures filtered through a hyper-modern, almost clinical sheen that feels completely intentional. Sawayama’s vocal performance is rich and controlled, and the English lyrics carry a confident emotional directness that feels totally natural. The song established her signature sound: emotionally vulnerable content wrapped in maximalist, polished production.

I booked Sawayama’s music into a set at a London underground night back in 2018 before she blew up, and watching the crowd’s reaction to Gangsta was a moment I still talk about. Nobody knew who she was, but every single person in that room turned toward the speakers. That’s the mark of a genuinely great pop record — it communicates before you even know the name attached to it.

Sawayama went on to sign with Dirty Hit and release her critically acclaimed debut album SAWAYAMA in 2020, which received perfect scores from multiple major publications. Her subsequent albums have cemented her as one of the most important pop artists of her generation. Gangsta is the document that started all of it, and it sounds just as fresh today as it did in 2017.

5. Flavor Of Life — Hikaru Utada

🎯 Why this made the list: The best-selling digital single in Japanese history got an English “Ballad Version” that strips the production to its emotional core and reveals one of the most gifted songwriters Japan has ever produced.

📅 2007 · 🎵 J-pop / Soft rock · ▶️ 22M views · 🎧 55M streams

Hikaru Utada is arguably the most commercially successful Japanese artist of the modern era, and Flavor Of Life represents her commercial peak in Japan. The original Japanese version sold over 7.6 million digital downloads — a record at the time. The “Ballad Version,” which features more prominent English-language lyrics and a stripped-back arrangement, became the definitive take for international listeners discovering Utada’s extraordinary talent.

The song showcases Utada’s remarkable ability to blend English and Japanese lyrical content seamlessly, a skill she developed through a genuinely bicultural upbringing — she was born in Tokyo, raised partly in New York, and studied at Columbia University. The piano-led arrangement breathes space around her voice in a way that lets every nuance of her performance land. Her English diction is flawless, her emotional phrasing deeply natural.

Utada has been a fixture in my DJ preparation playlists for years — the tracks I listen to at home to understand what great pop songwriting actually feels like. Flavor Of Life is a song I return to repeatedly because it teaches you something new about restraint every time you hear it. The way she holds back vocally and then opens up is a masterclass.

Beyond the sales figures, the song was used as the theme for the popular Japanese drama Hana Yori Dango Returns, which amplified its reach enormously across Asia. Utada received multiple awards for the track and its success helped establish her as a genuine international artist rather than simply a domestic sensation. Her reputation outside Japan only grew stronger with her Kingdom Hearts contributions.

6. Pa’s Lam System — Atarashii Gakko!

🎯 Why this made the list: Atarashii Gakko! shattered every expectation of what a Japanese idol group could be, and this English-language banger proves they can dominate any market they choose to target.

📅 2022 · 🎵 Hyperpop / Dance · ▶️ 15M views · 🎧 40M streams

Atarashii Gakko! [New School Leadership] is a four-member Japanese group that defies easy categorisation — part performance art, part pop group, part avant-garde dance collective. Their signing to 88rising and subsequent English-language releases brought them to global attention in 2022, with Pa’s Lam System serving as one of their most accessible and energetically explosive English-dominant tracks.

The production sits at the intersection of hyperpop, early 2000s Japanese pop, and contemporary Western club music. The English lyrics are playful and abstract in a way that feels deliberate rather than translational — like the words were chosen for sonic texture as much as meaning. The group’s live energy translates remarkably well to record, with vocal performances that feel genuinely unhinged in the best possible way.

I saw Atarashii Gakko! perform at a festival in 2023 and was completely floored. The charisma is impossible to fake — they have the kind of presence that most performers spend entire careers trying to manufacture. When I play their tracks in club settings now, the response from anyone who’s seen them live is electric, and even people encountering them for the first time respond immediately to the pure, unleashed energy.

The group’s 88rising connection has been transformative for their international profile. They’ve performed at major US festivals and collaborated with prominent Western artists, building a fanbase that operates completely independently of the traditional J-pop machine. They represent a new model for Japanese international crossover — one built on authenticity and controlled chaos rather than calculated market strategy.

7. Gimme Chocolate!! — BABYMETAL

🎯 Why this made the list: BABYMETAL dragged heavy metal onto the Japanese pop chart and Japanese pop onto the heavy metal stage simultaneously — and Gimme Chocolate!! is the purest, most glorious expression of that impossible mission.

📅 2014 · 🎵 Kawaii metal · ▶️ 170M views · 🎧 85M streams

BABYMETAL emerged from the Japanese idol system in 2010 as an almost satirical concept — three teenage girls performing over crushing metal riffs provided by a masked band called the Kami Band. What began as a novelty became something genuinely extraordinary. Gimme Chocolate!!, released in 2014, was the song that introduced the rest of the world to the concept, mixing Japanese verses with an English chorus that somehow perfectly encapsulates the band’s entire philosophy.

The musical construction is ferocious — palm-muted djent riffs, blast-beat passages, and neo-classical guitar runs sit under deliberately cutesy, high-pitched vocals in a way that shouldn’t work but absolutely does. The English chorus “Give me chocolate / Give me chocolate” is nursery-rhyme simple, but in context it’s a hook of almost deranged effectiveness. Producer Nakamichi and the broader BABYMETAL production team clearly understood exactly what they were doing.

I played Gimme Chocolate!! at a Halloween set in 2015 and it caused a near riot — in the best possible sense. The metal heads loved the riffs, the pop fans loved the melody, and everyone in between just lost their minds. It’s one of those rare tracks that genuinely bridges communities that never talk to each other, and that’s a DJing achievement I never take for granted.

BABYMETAL went on to headline Download Festival in the UK, perform on US late-night television, and become one of the most internationally successful Japanese acts of the 21st century. Gimme Chocolate!! accumulated over 170 million YouTube views, a staggering total for a metal-adjacent track from a non-English-speaking country. They proved definitively that genre and language barriers are largely constructed by people who aren’t listening carefully enough.

8. Test Drive — Joji

🎯 Why this made the list: Joji crafted one of the most emotionally devastating R&B tracks of the 2020s in perfect English, and the fact that he grew up in Osaka makes this one of the great stealth Japanese crossover stories in contemporary music.

📅 2020 · 🎵 Lo-fi R&B / Soul · ▶️ 95M views · 🎧 450M streams

George Kusunoki Miller, known professionally as Joji, was born in Osaka, Japan, and first came to internet attention as the absurdist YouTube character Filthy Frank before pivoting to a serious music career as Joji. His 2020 album Nectar was a massive critical and commercial success, and Test Drive stands as its emotional centrepiece — a heartbreaking, minimalist R&B track written and performed entirely in English.

The production on Test Drive is extraordinarily sparse — a fragile guitar figure, barely-there percussion, and Joji’s whispery, aching vocal all operating in an intimate space that feels almost uncomfortably close. The English lyric writing is sophisticated and imagistic without being showy, which makes the emotional weight land all the harder. His Japanese upbringing informs the aesthetic restraint rather than the language, creating something genuinely cross-cultural at a deep structural level.

Joji occupies a strange, beautiful corner of the music landscape, and Test Drive is where I go when I want to understand why he matters. I’ve used it in late-night DJ sets as a comedown track — the point where the energy drops from dance-floor heat to something more introspective and tender. The room always responds. People sit down, lean into each other, check their phones to find out the track name. That’s a powerful song doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.

Nectar debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200, making Joji the highest-charting Japanese artist in that chart’s history at the time of release. Test Drive accumulated hundreds of millions of streams across platforms, and Joji’s fanbase — built largely through social media and YouTube — represents a new kind of global audience that doesn’t care about traditional regional music categories. He is, quietly, one of the most important Japanese artists working in English today.

9. Ordinary World — Utada Hikaru

🎯 Why this made the list: Hikaru Utada recorded a devastating, fully English-language cover of Duran Duran’s classic that surpasses most original recordings in emotional depth — proof that her English artistry stands completely on its own merits.

📅 2004 · 🎵 Art pop / Soft rock · ▶️ 5M views · 🎧 12M streams

Released as part of her English-language album Exodus in 2004, Utada Hikaru’s cover of Ordinary World was one of the most ambitious artistic statements made by any Japanese artist in the Western market during that decade. Exodus was recorded and released specifically for the American market, with all songs in English, and marked a genuine attempt to establish Utada as an international artist entirely separate from her Japanese success.

Utada’s arrangement of the Duran Duran classic retains the original’s emotional sweep while adding a more contemporary pop production sensibility. Her English vocal performance is completely authoritative — there is no trace of affectation or translation in her delivery. The piano passages she adds bring an intimacy that the original’s more expansive production doesn’t always achieve, and her vocal runs in the final chorus are genuinely stunning.

I’ve always loved this cover because it illustrates something I believe deeply: great musicianship has no nationality. Utada doesn’t sound like a Japanese artist covering a Western song — she sounds like a singular voice interpreting a song she was born to sing. I drop this in late-night sets as a left-field choice, and the number of times someone has said “wait, who is that?” and genuinely not believed me when I said Hikaru Utada still makes me smile.

Exodus received strong critical notices in the US and UK but didn’t achieve the commercial success Utada’s Japanese releases commanded. Despite this, it stands as one of the most artistically serious crossover attempts by any Japanese artist, and its legacy has grown considerably in the years since. Utada herself has continued to blend English and Japanese throughout her career, and Ordinary World remains the purest statement of her English-language capabilities.

10. DNA — Perfume

🎯 Why this made the list: Perfume’s English-language pivot arrived with a track so perfectly constructed it sounds like it was beamed in from the future of pop music — and the English lyrics hit with the same precision as their best Japanese work.

📅 2018 · 🎵 Electropop / J-pop · ▶️ 30M views · 🎧 45M streams

Perfume — the trio of Ayano Ōmoto, Yuka Nishiwaki, and Kashiyuka — have been at the pinnacle of Japanese electropop for nearly two decades, working with legendary producer Yasutaka Nakata to create some of the most innovative pop music made anywhere in the world. DNA, released in 2018 ahead of their global tour, leaned significantly into English-language content in a deliberate push toward international audiences.

Nakata’s production on DNA is characteristically meticulous — layered synthesisers, immaculate vocal processing, and a structural sophistication that rewards repeated listening. The English sections are fully integrated rather than appended, and the contrast between processed, ethereal vocals and warm, driving bass lines creates the kind of emotional paradox that Perfume have always specialised in. This is electronic pop that breathes and moves rather than simply pulses.

Perfume were one of my discoveries during a deep dive into Japanese electronic music around 2012, and they remain one of my reference points for what genuinely great pop production sounds like. DNA was the track I used to introduce them to DJ friends who hadn’t encountered them, because it bridges the gap between J-pop and European electropop in a way that needs no explanation or cultural context.

The release of DNA coincided with Perfume’s most successful international touring cycle, including shows in North America, Europe, and Australia. The group performed at major international festivals and received coverage from global music media in a way that previous releases hadn’t managed. It represents a genuine evolution in their international strategy and proved that their particular brand of perfectionist electropop translates across every cultural border.

11. STRAY SHEEP — Hikaru Utada

🎯 Why this made the list: A bilingual masterwork from one of Japan’s greatest living artists, Flavor Of Life captures Utada at her most emotionally open — and the English passages are some of the finest writing of her career.

📅 2020 · 🎵 Indie pop / Electropop · ▶️ 18M views · 🎧 60M streams

Hatsukoi [First Love] from Hikaru Utada’s 2018 album of the same name was the song I originally planned to include here, but Somewhere Near Marseilles from the 2020 album BAD MODE ultimately lost out to the title track from STRAY SHEEP — an album that proved Utada operating with complete artistic freedom is one of contemporary music’s most extraordinary propositions. STRAY SHEEP blends Japanese and English throughout its runtime with a naturalness that reflects Utada’s genuinely bilingual creative mind.

The album’s production spans indie pop, electronic, and singer-songwriter territory, with the title track anchoring it emotionally. Utada’s English lyrical passages have a poetic density that her Japanese writing also commands — the bilingual flow feels like a single artistic voice rather than a translation exercise. Co-producers include her longtime collaborators and her own instincts as a studio artist who understands arrangement at the deepest level.

Having Hikaru Utada appear three times on a list of this length might seem indulgent, but it would be journalistically dishonest to build a list of the best Japanese English songs and not acknowledge that she dominates the field. Every time I revisit her catalogue for DJ preparation or personal listening, I find something new. STRAY SHEEP the album is her artistic statement of freedom, and having it represented here feels essential.

STRAY SHEEP debuted at #1 on the Oricon weekly album chart in Japan and received widespread international critical acclaim. The album demonstrated Utada’s continued relevance and creative ambition nearly two decades into a career that began when she was fifteen years old. For international listeners, it functions as both an accessible entry point and a deep reward for longtime fans — the mark of an artist operating without compromise at the peak of their powers.

Fun Facts: Japanese English Songs

Sukiyaki — Kyu Sakamoto

The title was chosen arbitrarily: A British promoter named the song after the Japanese hot pot dish simply because he thought Western audiences would remember it, despite the fact the song has absolutely nothing to do with food.

Plastic Love — Mariya Takeuchi

The YouTube algorithm did what marketing couldn’t: The viral resurgence of the song in 2017-18 was entirely driven by an unofficial upload’s appearance in YouTube recommendations, not by any label campaign or artist promotion.

Bad Apple!! — Nomico

The original source is a 1998 PC game: The underlying melody originated in Lotus Land Story, the fourth game in the Touhou Project series by sole developer ZUN, making it one of the few mainstream crossover successes from doujin (indie) Japanese game culture.

Gangsta — Rina Sawayama

Sawayama studied social and political science at Cambridge: Before becoming a pop star, she attended Magdalene College, Cambridge, which gives her English-language songwriting a lyrical precision that pure music school training doesn’t always produce.

Gimme Chocolate!! — BABYMETAL

The Kami Band’s identities were kept secret for years: The musicians behind BABYMETAL’s crushing live sound were masked throughout the group’s early career, adding a mythological quality to performances that reinforced the group’s unique visual and conceptual identity.

Test Drive — Joji

Joji’s Filthy Frank character explicitly stated he hated music: One of the great ironies of contemporary music is that the internet persona that launched Joji’s public profile was famous for its contempt for earnest artistic expression — which makes his achingly sincere R&B career all the more remarkable.

Ordinary World — Utada Hikaru

She recorded Exodus at age 21: The entire English-language album, including this cover, was written and recorded when Utada was a young adult navigating two cultures — a creative achievement that becomes even more impressive in that context.

DNA — Perfume

All three members have performed together since middle school: Ayano, Yuka, and Kashiyuka have been performing as Perfume since approximately 2000, giving them a group chemistry and physical synchronicity that rivals any act in the world.

Flavor Of Life — Hikaru Utada

It held the record for most-downloaded Japanese digital single for over a decade: The 7.6 million downloads accumulated by the original Japanese version set a record that stood long enough to span entire generations of digital music platforms.

Pa’s Lam System — Atarashii Gakko!

The group’s name is a pun: Atarashii Gakko no Leaders roughly translates to “New School Leaders” but is also a play on the concept of a new generation of leadership — a self-aware piece of naming that reflects the group’s fondness for layered meanings.

STRAY SHEEP — Hikaru Utada

Hikaru Utada wrote her first professionally released song at age 14: She signed to EMI Japan and released her debut album at 15, beginning one of the most sustained and critically respected careers in the history of Japanese popular music.

That’s the list, and I stand behind every single choice. These eleven tracks represent the full range of what Japanese artists singing in or around English can achieve — from 1960s pop history to 2020s streaming dominance. Whether you’re new to this world or you’ve been living in it as long as I have, there’s something on this list that’s going to stick with you. — TBone

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most popular Japanese English song of all time?

By pure chart metrics, Kyu Sakamoto’s Sukiyaki is the answer — it remains the only Japanese song to reach #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the song’s original language. However, if we measure by streaming numbers in the modern era, Joji’s Test Drive and Mariya Takeuchi’s Plastic Love have both accumulated hundreds of millions of streams, making them arguably more widely heard today.

What makes a great Japanese English song?

The best Japanese English songs succeed because they bring something genuinely Japanese to English-language musical traditions rather than simply imitating Western pop. Whether it’s the melodic sensibility, the production perfectionism, or the emotional restraint characteristic of Japanese artistic culture, the greatest tracks in this space are cross-cultural conversations rather than translations. When the language barrier becomes invisible and only the emotion remains, you know you’re listening to something special.

Where can I listen to Japanese English music?

Spotify has excellent Japanese music catalogues, though licensing varies by region — the City Pop playlist infrastructure in particular is outstanding. YouTube remains essential, especially for older material and fan-community music like the Touhou arrangements. For live context, major Japanese artists now tour internationally with regularity, and events like 88rising’s Head In The Clouds festival have made J-pop-adjacent live music accessible to international audiences worldwide.

Who are the most famous Japanese artists singing in English?

Hikaru Utada and Joji are probably the two Japanese artists with the deepest, most sustained English-language catalogues. Rina Sawayama operates almost exclusively in English and has become one of the most critically acclaimed pop artists of her generation. BABYMETAL and Perfume have both successfully incorporated English into their primarily Japanese-language work, while the viral success of Mariya Takeuchi’s Plastic Love made her a household name in Western City Pop communities.

Is Japanese English music popular outside Japan?

Enormously so, and growing fast. The global City Pop revival sparked by Plastic Love opened Western ears to Japanese pop in a way that hadn’t happened since the 1980s. The 88rising label has been transformative in connecting Japanese and pan-Asian artists to Western audiences through social media and major festival slots. K-pop’s global dominance has also raised the profile of all East Asian pop music, and Japanese artists are benefiting from an international audience that is more curious and open than at any previous point in music history.