Filed under: YUI, j-pop | Tags: 3rd album, i loved yesterday, j-pop, J-rock, laugh away, third album, YUI
“YUI’s long-awaited 3rd Album “I Love Yesterday” has been confirmed!
I Loved Yesterday/ YUI
Lyrics/Music by YUI
SRCL 6766~7 3,750 yen (including tax)
SRCL 6738 3,059 yen (including tax)
Out on 2008/04/09(Wed)
For the limited edition,
The Music Videos of Good-bye days, I remember you, Rolling star, CHE.R.RY, as well as the Special Live Video of her first Budokan Concert (19 Nov 2007) will be included.
Regarding the details of the other songs (in the CD), it will be announced in time to come!
Please look forward to YUI’s greatest 3rd Album!
And from 5th May (Monday) onwards, her 3rd tour which starts in Fukuoka, has been officially named:
[YUI 3rd Tour "oui"~I LOVED YESTERDAY~]
Please bring along your album for the tour!”
Credit to depyon from YUI-lover forums for the translation. This announcement was posted on YUI’s official website earlier yesterday. The title of the album is a reference to The Beatles’ song ‘Yesterday’, obviously, as YUI admits to being a huge fan of them. And now, for the grand unveiling of covers! Drum roooolll…
She is sitting in a box! In horrible, horrible make-up that can be seen in the picture way above. The boxes apparently signify the ‘layers’ of safety around YUI, how she had always been sheltered, but now she’s stepping out of it so she can become more independent! Or maybe it’s a pictorisation of the expression ‘thinking out of the box’ or so, I wouldn’t know really.
Credit for the large covers to cLam of YUI-lover forums. And thanks to shuzzack from Jpopmusic forums for the even larger covers! And now for the tracklist!!
Tracklist:
1. Laugh away
2. My Generation
3. Find me
4. No way
5. Namidairo
6. Daydreamer
7. Love is all
8. I will love you
9. We will go
10. OH YEAH
11. My friend
12. LOVE & TRUTH
13. Am I wrong?
DVD Tracklist:
Good-bye days (PV)
I remember you (PV)
Rolling star (PV)
CHE.R.RY (PV)
Live clips from YUI’s live at Budokan on 2007.11.19
HALLELUJAH! NO ‘UNDERSTAND’!
I was really, really looking forward to this album… until Laugh Away showed up. Yes, it was catchy in the beginning, but now it’s growing old on me very quickly. And now that picture with horribly un-YUIish make-up. Why is Sony Records commercialising YUI so much? She was never meant to be like those super-fake-looking diva-come-singers out there, so why this ‘change’? Do. Not. Want.
I don’t know if I want to hear this album so much anymore. Bah, I’m so possessive it’s almost scary lol.
Somehow my last post regarding this PV and its rather long and thought-out review simply vanished into thin air. I hate it when that happens. Most of the time it’s the staff itself that does things like this, and worst that they don’t even leave a message to give you a heads up or anything. But that’s even good in a way because their messages are even more aggravating:
“We are pigs. We like to destroy others’ work.
End.”
Ugh, anyway, here it is again.
Filed under: alan, j-pop | Tags: alan, chinese, download, hitotsu, j-pop, review, single
alan – Hitotsu
Tracklist:
01. Hitotsu
02. Kimi Omou Sora
03. Tokyo Mimei
04. sign
05. Hitotsu (Instrumental)
06. Kimi Omou Sora (Instrumental)
07. Tokyo Mimei (Instrumental)
I nothing much to say besides that I like alan’s voice (that’s ah-lahn, not aey-lan) and I believe she might have a little potential to do something interesting in near future. Alan is a Tibetan/Chinese singer who made her debut in Japan last November, for those who did not know. She has a small back-catalog in her home-country, but she was practically a nobody until she came to Japan! Actually, she’s still a nobody, but who cares as long as she has a nice voice.
And here is her second single, Hitotsu, released only a day before on 5th March, 2008.
Hitotsu starts out with a gentle piano arrangement, quickly followed by an excellent vocal performance. I was really, very impressed with this track because I was expecting it to be a slow humdrum like the B-side on her last single, but Hitotsu is a very emotional track. Alan’s nasally voice is finally gone and she sounds amazing.
My favourite part is the chorus where her voice gets all freakishly high and what I love about it is that she does it without slipping into falsetto. I’d probably break a nerve or something if I try to sing that high, but goodness Alan manages to pull it off. I love how it’s also backed with bagpipes, they give the song such a nice feel! Especially the bridge, the bagpipes are a very nice touch. I really love the composition of this track, though it’s a bit sad that Alan didn’t compose this herself.
Annnd the nasal voice comes back again in Kimi Omou Sora, though it doesn’t bother me too much this time. I think it’s just her Chinese accent which is causing her to sing so nasally because Chinese languages itself have really nasal phonetics. Anyway, Kimi Omou Sora is a very nice pop-ballad, though nothing too impressive. I like the flute and the feel-good environment of the song, but the back-up vocals are a bit too much. And the awfully misfit jazzy bridge which doesn’t suit the rest of the song at all.
In my humble opinion, the reason this track doesn’t work too well is because Alan doesn’t have a very pop-ballad-y voice, or at least she’s purposely limiting herself to singing only slower paced songs with high-notes to dazzle everyone.
The third track is, again, not too impressive but not too shabby either. Tokyo Mimei is a slow-ish ballad with R&B undertones. I don’t understand what the deal with new artistes and R&B ballads is, but apparently almost everyone sings them once. I do not think this track is quite on the same standard as Hitotsu, not even close, but it’s an improvement over her last single. Her Chinese accent really gets to her in this track, sadly, and at one point I thought she was singing in Chinese, but that’s not true of course.
Next is sign, which is a non-lyrical track with a beat that’s a cross between hip-hop, trance, and traditional Chinese folk music. Ah, this track is guilty pleasure! It’s so catchy to listen to, and yet sounds so incredibly odd in front of others. Alan does sing in this track though, but it’s almost a back-drop, and so light that it’s impossibly to make out what she’s saying exactly. Actually, I believe she is singing in her native language, but I’m not too sure. A rather catchy track, but nothing beats Hitotsu!
Hitotsu is an amazing improvement over Alan’s last single. Her vocal performance when she’s not hitting her “mountain notes” has improved drastically, and her music is a lot more interesting now in general. I wish she would write her songs herself because then I would have a lot more respect for her because right now, she’s just a singer and nothing else. I really hope she isn’t groomed out to be the next Ayumi Hamasaki, even though they both have similar voices. I doubt the Japanese audience would accept her so easily even then though, because of where she comes from.
Overall grade: A-
Filed under: Ken Hirai, j-pop | Tags: canvas, download, j-pop, Ken Hirai, kimi wa su.te.ki, review, single
Ken Hirai – Canvas / Kimi wa Su.te.ki♡
Tracklist:
01. Canvas
02. Kimi wa Su.te.ki♡
03. Cry&Smile!!
04. Canvas (piano version)
05. Canvas (Instrumental)
06. Kimi wa Su.te.ki♡ (Instrumental)
I would never understand why is Ken is considered to be gay. Apart from his falsetto voice, he’s looks as straight as anyone would want him to be. I never really cared anyway. I don’t listen to him religiously not because people think he’s gay, but because I just don’t like his voice. That, and the fact that he’s horribly overrated. K is a much better singer than Ken will ever be, and yet his popularity is less than half of what Ken’s is. Anyway, here’s his latest single Canvas / Kimi wa Su.te.ki.
This is Ken Hirai’s 28th single, released on 20th February, 2008. It charted on #6 in its first week on the Oricon Weekly Charts. The title track was used as the ending theme song for drama Hachimitsu to Clover, and the B-side was used as the theme song for a Knorr ad.
I tried. I tried really hard to like Canvas, but in the end it just comes off as a generic ballad with rather mediocre vocals. If there was one song I would compare this to, it would be Ai Otsuka’s LOVE MUSiC, another song I thought was just too generic to function, but even that had better vocals than Ken’s awfully muffled voice. So, again, I might be too harsh on this one, but I don’t care. When something is hyped out to be so amazing it would blow me off of my socks, it better be that or I just despise it with fiery passion. Sure, I don’t despise Canvas, but I still don’t think it’s a very interesting song. Sorry.
I was expecting the other A-side to be a mellow pop-ballad with a title like that, but my goodness did Kimi wa Su.te.ki♡ made me question all that is good and intact in this world or what. The track starts out with synthetic beats quickly followed by frighteningly high-pitched vocals from Ken that make you cringe each time you listen to them – and that not in a bad way. I’m still in shock of how unique this track is to properly decide whether I like it or not, but I know that I do prefer it much better than Canvas.
After the strangeness that was Kimi wa Su.te.ki♡, I was expecting a cutesy pop song or something that doesn’t bloody make me want to throw up but grrr… Cry&Smile!! is not that. Because, it indeed does make me want to throw up. I’m sorry if this offends anyone, but I’m not a huge fan of gospels, and that’s exactly where this track draws its inspirations from. Just when I thought there wouldn’t be anything more disappointing than Canvas, here’s Cry&Smile!!, proving my judgments wrong.
The piano version of Canvas is strangely a huuuge improvement over the original. I don’t know why I like this version better, but Ken’s vocal performance is much, much better in this one. Perhaps, it’s because the lack of instruments accentuate Ken’s vocals more, but at any rate, the original should have been like this because clearly this version is a lot better. Ken becomes a lot more emotional in this by the end, too, and it just feels a lot ‘warmer’ in general.
To review an artiste you do not really like is a huge task – one that I’m going through at this moment. Yes, it is my own decision to do so, and perhaps a righteous one to give Ken another chance. And even stating that I’m a little disappointed wouldn’t be too big an understatement. But all prejudice aside, Canvas / Kimi wa Su.te.ki is a single barely above average. If the piano version of Canvas had not appeared in it, this would be a terrible single, but that single song redeems it all. And alas, there is so much to say, but this being a single review I need to keep my word count limited.
Consensus: a highly mediocre single with nothing special to keep me interested – and if listened to for more than an hour, could be downright hazardous to health.
Overall grade: B-
Earlier today, I noticed something so utterly cool I just had to post about it. Not too long ago, Rie Fu made a small blog entry in English. Well, everyone (or at least her fans) know about her amazing grasp at linguistics, but that’s not what I’m getting at anyway. Here’s a small excerpt from her blog entry:
“(…) Just to keep you up to date with how i am doing, i am currently living and working in japan, starting to get fed up with the Japanese music market selling shit. (don’t translate this..)”
Wow LOL.
She addresses to her fans in a very friendly manner though, and also has asked them to support her by buying her CDs (particularly her upcoming 4th album), if they reside in the US or UK. I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but I’m afraid she most probably won’t be able to sell much. With mild popularity in her homeland, and almost zero promotion worldwide, there’s very little chance her new album would be a success. Ah well, I wish her the best of luck!
In related news, Rie Fu’s 4th album has been postponed in Japan – but that’s too old a news, so never mind.
