the blog of EVERYTHING JAPANESE!

At last! YUI annonces a new single! After five months in the working, namidairo, YUI’s 12th major single will be released on February 27th, this year. The title song of this single will be the theme-song for the drama Yonshimai Tanteidan.

Download namidairo (YUI LOCKS rip) here

As excited as I am to get my e-mitts on this single, I’m equally disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the preview and YUI looks near damn sexy in that profile pic. I couldn’t seriously ask for any more than that.

But you see, the title of the song is Japanese.

YUI has used English titles for all – I repeat, all - of her songs so far and even a Spanish title for one song, but never a Japanese one. This isn’t tradition. This isn’t only happening with YUI though, Kaggra, just released their new album titled CORE. I suppose I’m being too much of a fan-boy and taking it way too far, but I just wish it was an English title. Sigh.

Moving on~ namidairo is a typical YUI acousitic ballad, as heard from the YUI LOCKS rip. The lyrics are quite poetic and sad, and the melody is rather catchy but trite. If anything, namidairo sounds like a cross between I remember you and TOKYO, and that’s not a bad thing at all. I mean, fans were complaining that YUI was losing her ‘acoustic-ness’ so I suppose everyone should be happy with her returning back to her older music style.

One thing that bothers me though is that even though the melody of the song sounds similar to her previous work, the addition of the violin suggests otherwise. The violin was bad enough in Love & Truth, we don’t need it again. I suppose the plain acoustic version of namidairo in her next single would be much better.

Interesting to note that namidairo literally translates as tear-color 「涙色」. That, obviously, is a metaphor unless tears really do have a color which I don’t know about. Taking the term very loosely namidairo could also somehow in a strange way mean the essence of tears.

Now, my Japanese translation skills are worse than that of a kindergartner, much less with cryptic Japanese poetry, but somehow ‘essence of tears’ works better than tear-color to me. Anyway, looking hugely forward to listening to the b-side called I wanna be…. *coughs* Hannah Montana, anyone? ;p