Ayu: Anything Goes [XXVII]

[truehappiness]

Yeah, she went over that a lot in the RAINBOW interviews. Due to traveling around Asia in 2001~ she really wanted to increase the 'accessibility' of her songs.

By the way, starting with this album, you're using English lyrics, what was the thought behind that?
A: I went and did alot of things in Asia this year, and I think it was a big influence in the decision. I felt like the "language barrier" was a big deal at the time. It's meaningless if they can't understand me, and I wanted them to be able to know who I was. As such, I thought that studying English would be necessary, since the language the world uses to communicate to each other = English. For example, if you say "I love you" in English, everyone's more likely to understand than than if you say "(facing a lover) aishiteru."

That seems to be good for interviewers understanding you, but doesn't it make you uncomfortable to sing lyrics in English?
A: Very uncomfortable. How should I explain this... It's like, my "tone" is there, right? But I don't really know (bitter smile), what kind of accent have I been singing with all this time...? Now it's like I've been saying useless things all monotone (laughs). If I say things in Japanese and then suddenly change them to English, the emotions are left behind somewhere else because I don't understand anymore, right? It's kinda like that. When that happened, I thought, is it maybe a mistake to do lyrics in English? and I felt very blue about it, I felt really defeated (bitter smile).


How was it to write the lyrics? And was the singing afterwards difficult?
A: Now that I think about it, I did it pretty quickly. For example, in Japanese 1 kanji symbol for 1 word can take three syllables to say, like "watashi," and if I don't have that much room, that's no good, but in english the same word can be one syllable, "I," and that might be possible to say. And, if I only have two syllables available, I can still say "konya" for "tonight" if that's all I have room for in the phrase "let's be together tonight" or something.

http://ahsforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=95849