[Koda Kumi] The 195th Thread - ANⱭDNA

[lovethatkuu&ayu]

Thanks Corvina, for posting the translation.

I always enjoy Kumi explaining her process. Even though I still have mixed feelings about AND, but I can understand her point of view now. She doesn't want to play it safe and pander. I can respect that, especially when dealing with Japanese audience that resists change as much as possible.

Her work with YKBX is so vivid and cool. I really appreciate the concepts they come up with. I hope they'll do another video again at some point. Her honesty about love ballads is refreshing.

@gustavopc, I think there is a good chance we may get an actual single again before the year ends. A BEST+album hybrid would be great. She is actually long overdue for a BEST. If it focused on everything from Dejavu to DNA, that would be perfect for her 20th.

[jiarongisme]

Jesus it's been 7 years with Kenji? Nice.

[Gustavopc]

Originally Posted by lovethatkuu&ayu

@gustavopc, I think there is a good chance we may get an actual single again before the year ends. A BEST+album hybrid would be great. She is actually long overdue for a BEST. If it focused on everything from Dejavu to DNA, that would be perfect for her 20th.

Indeed, it's long overdue, third universe was for her 10th anniv and there was nothing after it. I'm afraid she'll put out an ~all time favorite tracks~ spanning all her career and ignore lots of great singles that came up after third universe, choping off parts of her career like Namie did with her early 2000s songs in Finally. Most of her post 2010 work deserve to be featured properly imo.

If that compilation were to include album tracks I'd be okay with it though, cause songs like show girl and UNIVERSE deserve a lot more to be in a comemorative compilation than many single tracks out there. And it'd make sense cause in the last few years we haven't had a lot of singles but still got lots of albums.

[thinkingoutloud89]

^I think Summer/Winter kinda served as new best ofs

[lovethatkuu&ayu]

Her website profile refers to the Seasons of Love albums as "collection albums". Using that kind of terminology seems to imply that her last true BEST to her and her staff was Third Universe.

@gustavopc I'm not sure how a complete BEST would be possible at this point. Unless they did something like the LDH groups and used a luxury deluxe 5 CD box. I would hate for songs like Love Me Back, Go To The Top, and WALK OF MY LIFE to be ignored if they did a "selection" kind of release.

[KarenPang]

If Kuu put out a best album to celebrate her 20th anniversary , she should do a good proper 1 that's worth buying

Kuu can do something like what Kuraki Mai did for MAI KURAKI BEST 151A -LOVE & HOPE- where the regular edition cover has the same pose , colour scheme as her debut album cover

It will be nice to see an updated affection cover although I don't know if that might work

[Corvina]

Ok, so here are the essentials of what she's talking about in the FC interview
I rather don't translate word-by-word, at least not in English as it's not my native language, so that's why I'm usually just summarizing.

Spoiler:

DNA is overall described as an power album, consisting of Kuu's core sound, staying independently from those ever-changing times (meaning trends, I guess).
She says the album even consists to 200% of the person she currently is.
She tried to focus on the music and its details and declined most of other activities not being connected to music for it.
She acknowledges, that AND included songs, that are probably difficult for fans, who like J-Pop, but she wanted those to go to the concerts, cause that might have changed their perception of them. DNA now has more of her "core" sounds, which consists of different genres, Western and others.
When the interviewer says, that it's easy to listen to, she's happy about that, cause she recorded in between AND Tour dates and even though she knew already how to put the album together in general from the demo stage, the image changed when she was done recording and she knew how to put the setlist for the tour together at the same time. It was quite hard.
She's producing lives for more than 10 years now and in the last 8 years she also produced her music for performing live. She imagines stuff like choreos and costumes and so on while doing so, but as she also knows from her tour questionnaires that "catchy" songs like the ones from the "old" Kuu and easy-to-sing-songs (at karaoke) are popular with her fans as well, she also included songs from her husband and the writer of "you" (people, who already did popular songs among her fanbase).
So in that sense AND is for her fans and DNA more catchy and for everybody.

HUSH
Contains the lyric part "つま先から頭まで遊び、仕事、、get burned", meaning it's bad if you do something halfheartedly. Kuu personally thinks, that life should be fun nevertheless and if she's missing that e.g. in work, she's going to get burned out.
She usually doesn't put single songs as the album openers, but she felt it would be fitting here. She didn't put HUSH on AND, cause she thinks due to its tension it doesn't fit live house venues and is more fitting for a hall tour. And it has a catchy hook.

Dangerous
She wanted to update live songs like POP DIVA and UNIVERSE, cause time has passed since they were released, so she composed Dangerous with her husband. She says she feels like she rather rearranged what her husband presented her with that than producing herself from scratch, but things like the melody are done by her. In detail she says she took the song from her husband and said to him "I want that part to change", went to the studio, erased parts and composed new melodies being in front of the microphone and kept those her husband agreed to.

WATCH OUT ~DNA~
WATCH OUT was originally for another artist, but Kuu wanted it for herself .
The world now is overflowing with information and she's wondering how you go through the world distinguishing between the good and bad things (for yourself) without being mislead.
She wrote the song in the perspective of a strong woman, who's finding her "own groove" to pull through.
The interviewer then asks about what she personally thinks about all the social media and the current society of excessive information.
Kuu anwers she's not looking at social media (except her own), but it's alright if people who want to do. With her own accounts like on Insta and LINE she says it's always a borderline situation, but she tries to show the real person she is.

ScREaM
The interviewer says he feels like ScREaM is also a song for social media and Kuu agrees (in the sense of bullies and slanders). There's the expression of "high risk - high return" , cause there's always the possibility of a negative response, but it's better to pull through with it and not to dodge away, to understand it as a chance. (in general the song is about - the Japanese - society and fighting against obstacles in it every day)

CHANCES ALL
There's always a song on every album with a strong message Kuu wants her fans to receive. This time it's CHANCES ALL.
It bascially sumps up her own feelings from the songs before - that everybody should have the same chances in life and take their chances, face their obstacles like women, who are constantly judged by appearance, sometimes even just because they are women, just like Kuu is for example as a 派手なアーティスト, a "flashy" artist.
She wants to encourage here and give love and understanding.

会えなくなるくらいなら
A ballad about the tricky feeling of an unrequited love.
Here she's considering she's in her 7th year of marriage, asking herself if she should sing about love (sexual love). She says she noticed she still is very much in love with her husband, but she can remember how it was before, how she fell in love with him, so she decided to do it.

HAIRCUT
It was the first song done and the producer, who did the Dance In The Rain PV - YKBX - already imagined the PV for the song at the time she recorded it. She says cause the song has a western influence, it was easier to convey the metaphor of separation to her fans with her actually cutting her hair with scissors. The interviewer mentions that for him HAIRCUT also is like the rebound of the heart-broken individual from 会えなくなるくらいなら and Kuu is answering laughing, that it also has the meaning of restart, so you can see it like that. She says she likes the tension of rising again after dropping down in the flow of the album.

Guess Who Is Back
It's a new sound for Kuu and she says she always liked artists like Limp Bizkit, Evanescence and Pink and for this song she tried to do a similar sound like Evanescence as Black Clover asked for a rock song. While being aware of the dance (sound) within her, this is a song with a "high tone" she never did in the past and she wants it to be a call-and-response song with her fans.

HOT HOT
It was a popular song from the start and represents her core pretty well. The recording went smoothly. The interviewer says he find it to be the most fitting to the sexy and amusing Kuu and Kuu answers her fans were saying the same and she was surprised by that strong reaction.

心からi love u
This was the most popular song at the pre-release viewing and Kuu says that's probably because this is the typical grand Kuu ballad, but it does sound fresh within the album.
She has many songs with English titles, so she mixed it here to make it stand out.

Work That
The cute song of the album. It was competing with WHO and HUSH to be the 61st single, but as it has a summer feeling and the relase date wasn't in summer, she pushed it back to DNA.
It's a song about men, who act all good on the outside with strangers, but exactly the other way round in private.

Pin Drop
A song about the silence, where you can even hear a pin falling down. It's a live performance song, where she wants to break that pin drop (silence), finally entertaining everyone. She intially wanted to open the album with this song, but she wanted to end the album with a song, that when repeating the album would give a feeling of starting again.
Another meaning is that of "destination" - getting back to the place(s), where "the pin drop was done", breaking that silence.


It's an album full of different songs and songs to be enjoyed live.
And album to mark her ground in the changing times.

Enjoy, I hope I've got everything covered.

[mi|kshake]

Originally Posted by KarenPang

Audio rip of Kuu's a-nation Osaka performance

http://www.mexashare.com/vmx2qkgq1g8...ion18.rar.html

Source

Also , SSTV last Friday aired some of Kuu's PVs as part of a PV special programme



01. Brave
02. ESCALATE
03. So Nice feat. Mr.Blistah
04. LALALALALA
05. Dreaming Now!
06. SHOW ME YOUR HOLLA
07. HOTEL
08. Dance In The Rain
09. WALK OF MY LIFE
10. EX TAPE
11. BRIDGET SONG
12. LIT
13. PARTY
14. HAIRCUT

https://aziophrenia.com/koda-kumi-mu...tv-2018-08-17/

Nice selection of PVs!

[wednesday]

Originally Posted by jiarongisme

Jesus it's been 7 years with Kenji? Nice.

That was also my reaction

[melissalove]

Thanks corvina!!

Now, if hot hot hot and 心からi love u got such postitive feedback why not continue with that. After all kumi will always be known for ero Kakoii and power ballads.

[Corvina]

Originally Posted by melissalove

Thanks corvina!!

Now, if hot hot hot and 心からi love u got such postitive feedback why not continue with that. After all kumi will always be known for ero Kakoii and power ballads.

Do you want to always do the same?
She said last year in her tour MCs, that she's not done yet and still wants to try new things for her.

[KarenPang]

The fake money note that came out of the briefcase during Kuu's a-nation performance when she sung LIT

[freedreamer]

is that the currency for Kuu's Kingdom?!?!?! (pun intended)
please put the MONEY IN THE BAG

(still feeling like DNA was the real deal and AND was just them trying to create a side spinoff because they wanna do some reverse concept)

[KarenPang]

The 2 different fake money notes given away during KODA KUMI FANCLUB TOUR 2018 AND

[Xianghua]

Money was also thrown out at the Walk of My Life tour. What other tours did she do this?

It's interesting that it's always modeled off of American money, lol.



Thanks for the translation Corvina! It was interesting to read.

[KarenPang]

Originally Posted by ilovekodaa

i'd like to watch AND TOUR ): ....

It has been uploaded

http://ahsforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=124271

[Diva_br]

thank you so much, Corvina

[KarenPang]

Still of Kuu from this Sat's MUSIC FAIR



https://natalie.mu/music/news/297575

Kuu will sing Aenaku Naru Kurai Nara while she will perform masquerade with TRF

[Chris_Duvall]

I love Kumi in classy outfits *.* she looks so pretty!

[melissalove]

Originally Posted by Corvina

Do you want to always do the same?
She said last year in her tour MCs, that she's not done yet and still wants to try new things for her.

I had no Idea she said that. In the interview you shared she mentioned the word restart as the meaning of the song HAIRCUT. That's what she meant then, I love that.