Scott Murphy sings in Japanese

The Japan Times has an article today about Scott Murphy, a Chicago-based pop-punk musician who had gained fame in Japan after performing cover versions of popular Japanese pop songs. His newest CD, “Guilty Pleasures 2,” is now being sold at music stores across Japan:

While gearing up for the release, Murphy hit the promotion trail, recently recording an appearance on FTV’s popular variety show “Hey! Hey! Hey! Music Champ” hosted by comedy duo Downtown. It was there that Murphy ran into Jero, who has made a name for himself by retooling old Japanese enka folk tunes with imagery and elements of production style taken from hip-hop. Like Murphy, he’s a Japanese-speaking American with a minialbum of cover versions (all Japanese in Jero’s case), but Murphy doesn’t see the comparison with Jero extending further than that. He points out, “We’re doing totally different kinds of music — I mean, he’s doing this Japanese folk thing, but what I’m doing is much more to do with pop music.”

One of the things that Murphy’s case highlights most strongly is the peculiar way that the Japanese music industry classifies artists. Despite the largely Japanese-language content of his record, he still lives in Chicago, where he plays with ex-ALLiSTER member Kyle Lewis in The Get Go, and he is clear that in Japan he is “definitely a foreign artist.” However, when it comes to Japanese CD shops, things aren’t so simple. “They just don’t know where I should go,” he says. “In HMV I’m in the Japanese section, but in Tower I’m in the foreign section.”

Samples of the new album can be found on Universal Music Japan’s website.