Pop music

I've been listening to Japanese pop music since I first started learning Japanese--I was an anime fan, so I got to hear the theme songs every time I watched an episode, and it was easy to find lyrics online. After a year of self-studying, I talked to a teacher to see if I could place out of Japanese 1, and she said my pronunciation was quite good for someone who'd been self-studying--I can only credit that to singing "Cruel Angel's Thesis" at the top of my lungs more times than I'd care to mention.

The thing about language tapes is that you can only listen to them for so long. They're kind of boring and don't have much variety. But music, ah... if there's a song I like I can listen to it time and time again. I'm lucky enough to have an iPod, so I've loaded a lot of foreign music onto it, and I listen to it while I'm at work. I find it really good for getting down the sounds of the language in my head.

It does have to be pop music at first, I think. It's harder to make out the lyrics when you're listening to rap or rock. Pop tends to have very simplistic lyrics, but at first, that's a good thing. It's nice to be able to catch phrases and verses and know what they mean.

Some language-specific recommendations:
In French I like Patricia Kaas, Les Nubians, Serge Gainsbourg, Edith Piaf. (Okay, I know these are WAY obvious, but I learned most of my French before I got interested in music at all).
In Spanish, La Ley, Enanitos Verdes, and maybe Mana--Mana's kind of cheesy, but it IS fun to sing "Eres tu ma religion."
In Japanese, Megumi HAYASHIBARA, Maaya SAKAMOTO, anime theme music. I like Luna Sea as well. Shiina RINGO writes fantastic lyrics, but she often uses obscure words and archaic grammar, so I wouldn't recommend her to beginners.