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Ongaku Magazine is a teen-run music magazine, an independent collective of writers, critics, musicians, and producers under twenty. Explore below to find our original teen-written content, curated-playlists, charts, resonate with various topics surrounding the music industry.
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Ongaku Magazine publishes two curated ranking charts: a Top 25 Songs chart and a Top 20 Artists chart. Unlike sales-driven lists, our charts prioritize artistry — the compositional craft, emotional depth, innovation, and lasting resonance of a track or artist — over immediate commercial performance. We hold that true artistry shouldn’t be reduced to first-week streaming numbers or chart-topping ad buys; the most meaningful music often proves its value over time.
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How Music Shaped the Knicks’ Title Run
The Knicks might’ve just won a title, but alongside music, they created a rare sense of collective experience in a city where millions of people move at different speeds.
Analyzing City Pop in Japan, and How It's Been Glamorized in Today's Social Media
The most prevalent songs within the City Pop discography all contemplate the feelings of transition between past and present and express the imagery of fleeting time in a very specific way. “Remember Summer Days”, for example, says this very literally: “Remember Summer Days | 夏が消えていくわ (The summer is starting to fade).”
The Revival of Cigarettes in Gen-Z Music Brands
From selfies on Dua Lipa’s Instagram, to being the main attraction in Charli xcx’s visual brand, having features on Malcolm Todd’s bedside, a grand contributor to Lana Del Rey’s “cool girl” aesthetic, cigarettes have been making a comeback in the pop culture scene and it’s raising some eyebrows. Why is it resurfacing now? How did it come about?
Joni Mitchell, Phoebe Bridgers, and the evolution of the confessional songwriter
The idea of the singer-songwriter as we know it today–someone who writes, performs, and produces profoundly personal music–didn’t always exist in its current form. For much of popular music history, songwriting and performance were separate jobs. Songs were written to be performed by others, and the commercial identity of the writer wasn’t essential to how the music was received.
The Return of Indie Sleaze and the Power of Nostalgia
Indie sleaze is back, and this time, people actually know what to call it. What used to just feel like a messy overlap of music, nightlife, and internet culture is now being recognized as something worth revisiting.
The Overlooked Importance of Opening Acts
Over the past year, I have attended countless concerts, and somewhere along the way, there’s one belief I’ve come to stand by: never skip the opening act. Skipping the opening band may be one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a live music fan.
Blades & Crescendos: The Sound of the 2026 Olympics
Music may seem like just the backdrop to any successful program in Figure Skating, but this is far from the truth. In light of the 2026 Winter Olympics, read how music shapes the ice.
Most songs explore romance, but Type O Negative does not merely explore it, it wallows in it. The four-member band that started in 1989 has a plethora of songs within their discography that explores this phenomenon. The clearest example is “October Rust” (1996): an album both provocative and poetic, horny and sincere, and most importantly, an album built on contradictions.