PART II : "no one regrets a ballad"

-- ALWAYS is a song about ... Is love of a man and a woman the theme of this song?

It's the theme song for the movie "Sayonara Itsuka", when I first read the lyrics, I loved that strong picture of love.
However, I didn't limit those feelings of love while reading it, I read them a few times and came accross the idea that those lyrics are expressing feelings to an important person.
For example, family. When you pilled up people in lyrics, you tend to tell yourself "ah, I overlaped".
I noticed it was like singing for my own important people.
Even when I was recording, I entered with my cellphone in the studio, and I sang while seeing pictures of my important people.
DIO and Hazure (cats) are part of my important people too.

-- Your singing voice is like a small light (lamp), waveringly swinging, it is very impressive. Your ballads tends to gradually slowly swing, vocal wise.

This time, the way the flow of feelings gradually change was concidered.
I wanted to express well the flow of emotions here.
That's why I prefer recording the whole song from the beginning to the end directly. Said like that, it kind of sounds like a live recording.
Even if I missed a note during the singing, I will sing till the last minute of the song. During a typical recording, I would normaly stop and sing again when I make a mistake, but this time everything was sung in one single time.

-- Was it the first time you used such a recording method?

Until now, it was the first time I was being so persistant.
When I entered in the studio, I said to the director "I'll keep on singing even if I make some mistakes, I could try to sing it directly in one recording when the timing is good.".
"Your throat will decide, when you think that it is unreasonable to keep singing, please stop, even if you want to sing and finish in one shot" he said.
It might be a little bit selfish, but I only thought about the recording, let's just say it was decided in an instant, a bit selfishly.
I want to praise myself, but there are not a lot of things that I can compliment about myself. I can say I was able to sing one of my best songs. Since I know more about myself than anyone else, I see more in my songs than others will see.
But "ALWAYS" does not have that feeling of regret in it.

-- "Mika Nakashima's new ballad" listeners' high expectation increased because of this particular line. Did you feel any additional pressure in regard to this?

Not really. In other words, everyone is requesting a ballad from me, but I also seek for ballads myself. But, I think Mika Nakashima would not exist without any ballad.
When I sang the tune "Koe" live, somehow, I was showing my feelings proudly because I thought I renewed myself with this song.
At that time, I thought it felt like a classic Mika Nakashima ballad.
I wanted to use my pride and express it while recording. It also gives sense to the title "ALWAYS".
I often heard "If you don't see Mika Nakashima perform live, you can't understand her." It was touching, and I was glad and I always tried to honor that.
"If you don't see Mika Nakashima perform live, you can't understand her", I think you get that feeling in 'ALWAYS' pretty much.



Translation by Utena


edit : I'm currently working on the part III, as well as Excite Music interview and some other surprises to come soon! :)

2 Comments

by ray @ 08 Mar 2010 11:09 pm

Mika's performance of 'Koe' during the 2009 concert is probably my favourite part. She gave so much emotion during the song, and her vocal performance was mesmerising. It is also nice to hear that Mika wanted to complete the recording of a song in one take.

Thank you for the translation, Utena.

by Ana @ 13 Mar 2010 05:29 pm

Interesting that Mika recorded 'Always' in one take; she usually needed a few tries to get a song right when she made a mistake. She must have rehearsed it enough times to get 'Always' right on the first time.