BALLAD BATTLE: Ai vs. Mika
Time for the third round in my Ballad Battle series, this time between two artists who have extended into various styles of music and quite frankly, with two completely different personalities.
Also, three new contestants have been added into the battle: Angela Aki, ayaka and Onitsuka Chihiro. I just couldn’t exclude any of them since they make such extraordinary ballads. Think another artist should be on here? Go ahead and request them in the comments~
THE CONTESTANTS
- Hamasaki Ayumi
- Amuro Namie
- Utada Hikaru
- KOKIA
- Koda Kumi
- alan
- Otsuka Ai
- Nakashima Mika
- Angela Aki
- ayaka
- Onitsuka Chihiro
ROUND 3
For our third round we have the every charismatic Otsuka Ai with her varied style of ballads versus the Dark Queen Mika and her army of dark, serious ballads.
The Ballads~
Otsuka Ai: Cherish | Planetarium | Daisuki da yo. | Kingyo Hanabi | Friends | LOVE LETTER | Kurage, Nagareboshi | Ningyou | Pocket | Ai | Kumuriuta | Renai Shashin | Amaenbo | etc…
Nakashima Mika: ALWAYS | Oborozukiyo ~ Inori | Hitori | Nagareboshi | SAKURA ~Hanagasumi~ | ORION | Anata ga Iru Kara | Koe | etc…
Bold tracks are my top 3 favorite ballads from the artist.
Otsuka Ai’s discography is filled with a wide variety of ballads so it was easy to pick them out and choose a few, however I’m not as into Mika as I am with other artists, thus I only have a small amount of her discography available so I chose more recent stuff that I am aware of.
Analysis~
For Otsuka Ai, I immediately think of her”fireworks/night time” ballads to be her hardest hitters. Sure, the longer acoustic stuff like Ai are also very well made, but songs like Planetarium and Kingyo Hanabi are just that much more impressive and awing. I give you Planetarium~
When it comes to Mika, her ballads are very different than Ai’s. While hers tend to include more typical ballad arrangements with more natural arrangements, she does release the random more synthetic song. I chose Oborozukiyo ~ Inori because of it’s atypical arrangement featuring traditional instruments and because it’s beautifully crafted.
Now as you can tell, there’s a HUGE difference in their vocals; Ai has a higher pitched, brighter toned voice while Mika has a darker, lower pitch with spine-tingling notes.
Musically, Ai has all types of ballads from ethereal, piano driven songs like Cherish and Kingyo Hanabi, organic pieces such as Ai and LOVE LETTER to epic stuff that builds up like Planetarium and Kurage, Nagareboshi.
Mika on the other hand uses more generic ballad arrangements as seen in Nagareboshi and ORION (but they bounce back with her long notes and unique voice) and lots of piano heavy songs like Koe and SAKURA ~Hanagasumi~.
Again, it’s hard to pick a winner out of the two because they are so different, but I have to take into consideration what a typical J-Pop lover would prefer to have as their sole ballad artist in their music library.
The Winner~
They say that nice guys finish last, but in this case she flew past her competition and came out on top because of her spine-tingling selection of ballads and HUGE variety. The winner is…
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OTSUKA AI!
You a fan of these J-Pop veterans? Which is your favorite ballad from these classy women?
Well I’m a huge fan of Mika’s early work, she’s one of the few japanese artist I listen to… She really have a unique voice.
I agree with you that for someone getting into j-pop, the cute Ai Otsuka might be abetter choice though… I’ll give a listen to all the tracks you listed and see if it changed my opinion.
Well I gave ever a try to your favorites songs by both and I have to say that Mika’s really a favorite of mine with her sultry voice… I don’t really like Ai Ostuka’s voice. As you stated, I find it a little too high-pitched.
Well, she can’t please everyone I guess, but at least you tried her out so you know what she has to offer~ Thanks for reading!
You think Ai has the better ballads? Ugh. No. I’ll take Mika anyday.
Nothing touches Planetarium bb~ NOTHING.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jin, Jin. Jin said: BALLAD BATTLE: Ai vs. Mika http://dlvr.it/3KFvt [...]
With Kingyo Hanabi and Planetarium being my favorite and second favorite songs of all time respectively, I can see how Ai took the gold. ^_^
I think it’s interesting that you pitted Ai against Mika because their ballads are totally different. Ai’s have that genuine and almost childlike emotional quality while Mika’s are more sultry and mature. Very cool article!
Ai tops everyone. No exceptions.
I’m only slightly familiar with Mika and not at all with Ai so I need to check her stuff out but I wanted to add an artists to the roster: Miliyah Kato.
Planetarium would have to be my favorite song by Ai Otsuka. I also like Mika but something about her freaks me out.
You should include AI on the list. Her ballads are amazing.
As much as I love both of these women, Otsuka was obviously the best choice to win, because Mika’s best songs are her Jazzy ones, not her Ballads. IMO, anyway.
Also, I think you should add Saori, bb. :3 *SHOT*
@keyinjpop & Mr. Dynamite I’d like to include more artists, but I’m afraid that if I added them both, I wouldn’t be able to give them a fair evaluation since I’m not familiar with AI’s music AT ALL and I only have Miliyah Kato’s recent stuff.
@Selryam L0L bb u so funny
I’ve never heard of their ballads or this Mika girl well. But I do like Otsuka Ai.
No Ai Otsuka song can beat Mika’s FAKE. At least not in my world.
But I wanted to mention another aritst I would like to see in this battle especially since it appears that she has no other songs than ballads. Ayaka Hirahara^^
Oh right, Hirahara! o: I was actually going to include her in this post, but I needed one more artist to add to make it even. Either way, she’ll be in here next time. ;3
Not sure if you know of her or not but she has a lot of ballads: MISIA.
Yea, MISIA could be another choice, but like I said before, I’m not into her music, so I couldn’t judge her fairly. :\
MISIA is the Queen of Ballads in Japan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorific_nicknames_in_popular_music)
With 5-octave voice, she is the best on ballads.
You should include her :x
i’m not sure if you know her, but i’ve listened to some of AZU’s songs and they’re really good. particularly, “For You”, “Tashika Na Koto”, and “Jikan yo Tomare”.
[...] Otsuka Ai [...]
Mika’s songs depend more on her voice while I feel like Ai’s is good, she depends more on the music. If you only listen to each of their voices, Mika’s voice is definitely more unique and she has better control. So Mika Nakashima wins. Her voice is very rare — Ai’s voice I’ve heard everywhere else.
I have the same thought, Mika’s voice is very rare, But Ai’s music is brilliant, & her voice kinda pure, childlike, like many jpop singers, but Ai’s voice is better than them all.
Anyway, their voices are so different, i cant imagine Mika sing Planetarium or Ai sing Stars how it’ll sound like :)