ARTISAN de la MUSIQUE Jan. 2011 Interview Pt.1

The Japanese website MUSIC SHELF has put up a new interview with Maaya which is divided up into two parts, here is the first. It's quite a nice interview about 'You Can't Catch Me' and worth a read. I'll try to have the second part up as soon as I can. Enjoy!

Original Japanese text by Takayuki Hamada here
ARTISAN de la MUSIQUE 2011-01 - Sakamoto Maaya Interview -Part 01.


As soon as it went on sale your new album ‘You Can’t Catch Me’ went to number one in the charts. How did you feel when the album was finished?

It was like “Finally!” as it took about a year to make.

It’s the sixth wave of your fifteenth anniversary campaign that began last March; looking at the creators listed in the album credits, it’s a very diverse group.

I didn’t want it to be a summary of everything I’ve done in the past fifteen years, I wanted it to be an album that would make not only me, but also my listeners, look forward to how I’ll develop from my sixteenth year onwards. There’s a part of me that wanted to go on the offensive. That’s why I took the initiative to work with new people. However, with that sort of venture, you won’t know how it will work out until you do it, right? The longer your career the more you become afraid of trying something new, so I decided to overcome that by diving straight in.

Because I worked with a lot of different people this time it always comes up as a topic in interviews, and I’ve had a lot of chances to talk about it, but I’m actually really curious to hear how someone who hadn’t seen the credits or read any information about the album beforehand listened to the songs, how they made that person feel, how each song sounded to them.

Did you not have the idea to make a continuation of your previous album ‘Kazeyomi’ (January 2009)?

Not at all, really. Because I was completely satisfied with how that album came out, I guess you could say I’m fine with having just one disc like that, or rather that I’d like everyone to savour listening to [Kazeyomi]. On top of that I think that trying to imitate something just because it went well the first time can backfire. That’s something I experienced while doing extended runs on stage: even if you are saying the same lines and wearing the same costume every day, what you pull out from within yourself is a little different depending on the day. Defying the flow of time and trying to be who you were yesterday is unnatural. A lot of time has passed since ‘Kazeyomi’, and I had a firm belief that ‘what I make now is going to be something different.’

Did you feel you were you able to hold your own when working with the different personalities of the artists you were given music by?

Up until ‘Kazeyomi’ I don’t think I had the confidence to, but after that I felt like I had touched upon what it was to be ‘Maaya Sakamoto-like’, and then when I did my cover single last year I experienced what it was to get to grips with different pieces of music as a singer. So instead of feeling any pressure, I was simply looking forward to making an album with my favourite artists.

Who did you think of first when you were choosing people to work with?

Kirinji’s Takaki Horigome and Suneohair. Then it was Sukima Switch’s Shintaro Tokita, I think. I’ve been a fan of Kirinji and Suneohair since I was a teenager, I have quite a strong emotional attachment to their music and I’ve really wanted to work with them for a long time. On the other hand, I’ve only started to listen to Sukima Switch recently. I listened to their best album first, and I felt quite one-sidedly: ah, the music that Sukima Switch makes somehow has a lot in common with mine. Using a lot of strings, for example, singing a lot of ballads and medium-slow songs, how they take a lot of care over what words they use. More than anything else I like their lyrics. So I thought how great it would be if I someday got to work with them.

So how was it working with Kirinji Takaki Horigome after wanting to for so long?

I remember saying to Mr. Horigome: “ I’d like a ballad. But not some huge-scale thing, a minimalist ballad…” That was right when we started making the album, more than a year ago now, but I said at the time: “the image I have for this album is kind of like a library”. The song [Moonlight –mata wa kimi ga nemuru tame no ongaku-] came out of me going “picture all these different books stuffed onto bookshelves that go riiight up to a really high ceiling.”

Translation note: Tomita Keiichi produced the track

You’ve worked with Kano Kaori, who wrote ‘Mizuumi’, and Suzuki Shoko, who wrote ‘stand up, girls!’ before, haven’t you?

Yes, but this is only the second song that I’ve done with Ms. Kano. However, it feels like we’ve worked together many times because before now she’s come to my concerts and I’ve had the chance to meet her on many other occasions too. Last time we worked together (‘Ame ga furu’) I asked someone else to arrange the track, so this time I thought I’d like to try arranging it together with Ms. Kano.

I always want Shoko to write for me, but for this album I had a very definite ‘this is the type of song I want’ clear vision for what I was after and Shoko was the person I asked to make it a reality.

How did you approach everyone with your requests?

Because I was asking different people to make one track each, the only one who could see the overall balance was me. I ordered the songs while looking at the entire balance, dividing it up into pieces: I’ll ask for a ballad from this person, an up-tempo track from that person… Once the demos came back, I’d be like ‘Oh, it came out like that?’ and then go about fine-tuning it all as we went along.

Within all that, only Ms. Shibata Jun’s ‘Himitsu’ was a song originally written for her to sing herself. But I was allowed to hear the demo and I stuck up my hand and said “I want to sing this”, she kindly permitted me to do so. For everyone else, I would meet them in person and had them write for me once they had an idea of what kind of person I am. First we’d have a meeting, then they’d create a demo for me, then there’d be another meeting, and then a meeting to arrange it…and repeat, kind of thing.

Since everyone put their hearts and souls into each track, each song is incredibly powerful; it feels like all of them could have been made to release as a single.

Despite that balancing act, each artist’s individuality clearly comes through, doesn’t it? It seems like they didn’t go easy on you, as if they whacked a straight ball right at you [baseball]. Despite that, I think you melded well with all of them, you turned to face what they threw at you without flinching.

Well, ‘Kimi no sei’ for example, was very interesting because the sound and lyrics were something that I think Suneohair could have just made for himself and it wouldn’t have sounded odd, but I had no idea whether it would be a good match for me until I tried singing it myself with my own voice, and I was surprised at how well we fitted together when I sang it.

When the album was finished did you find yourself at a loss over what order to place the songs in?

I did. The first song ‘eternal return’ and the last song ‘topia’ were decided right away, but I was really perplexed by the songs in the middle. I had a meetings with all the staff as well. By the way, everyone seems to have this impression of Mr. Suemitsu (Atsushi) who wrote ‘eternal return’ being like a butterfly, but I have this image of him bashing away on a piano. So right from the start I asked for a song with that image.

The flow from track ten ‘Moonlight’ to ‘Tegami’ and then on to ‘Topia’ is really nice. I think listening to it in the middle of the night makes this section even resonate even more.

Thank you very much. I think it actually took a lot of courage to put three ballads back-to-back. I found where to put ‘Utsukushii Hito’ and those last three songs the most difficult: ‘is it OK to put these three ballads together?’ I also knew that however you looked at it ‘Utsukushii hito’ really didn’t fit with the album at all (laugh) but I felt certain that I had to put ‘Utsukushii hito’ onto this album. However, I knew that wherever I put it, it would be out of place.
The beginning of the album has songs with a lot of personality coming out; bang, bang, bang! Then inside I felt that there was something about ‘Kimi no sei’ onwards, like ‘…there’s been a lot going on but now here’s the main event!’ kind of thing. At any rate, the first half of the album has a lot of different types of songs crammed in but then it’s ‘now please pay attention to what you’re listening to’.

Honestly, for this album I didn’t really have any overall theme or story to tell, or an idea of the overall flow while I was making it. Even the song order, in the end it’s something that I put together myself, you could say it’s a question of the listener’s tastes, but in other words I had confidence that whatever order the songs were put in it would turn out ok. In fact, I thought it was fine that the song styles were all over the place; I don’t mind if people think it has different patterns or is goes off in different directions when they look at the whole thing. Even if they say I “wandered off course”, I’d like to ask what’s wrong with that? (laugh) This is the beginning of a new journey to the next destination. I guess I’ll part with them like that.

Although saying that, I did worry about the unknown. But because I put everything into making the album, rather than worrying about how it’s received by others or by what people say, I’m looking forward to hearing the reactions of people who are listening for the first time.

Having a lot of different creators is something similar to your album ‘Yuunagi LOOP’, isn’t it?

I’ve also thought myself that the way I went about making this album was a little like when I did ‘Yuunagi LOOP’, but there’s definitely something different between then and now. Because what I gained over the several years between ‘Yuunagi LOOP’ and ‘Kazeyomi’ was huge. And now there’s the joy of being able to watch the new seeds I’ve planted grow.

What are the pros and cons of having such a large number of creators?

There’s quite a few but more than anything the pro is that you feel that you are being improved by the process. There aren’t a lot of opportunities to have that kind of experience, and when you request a song you have to make sure the person you are working with understands who you are, you have to explain everything from the beginning. And while you’re explaining it all, you end up feeling like you also want to know more, so those talks were actually a good chance to look at myself anew. Because of that new encounters and meeting lots of new people also has a sense of going back to the beginning.

Also, well this isn’t a con, but having different engineers each time was difficult. For me, having different engineers was a bigger ordeal than working with different composers and arrangers. I discovered personally that one engineer’s method can make that world inside a song sound completely different [to another’s].

So you must have had a lot of discussions with the engineers.

Yes. The most difficult task was that I would have to explain everything each time if I thought they were interpreted my voice in the wrong way. Because there was only me who could survey the whole project I was the commander and it was hard to always make sure that ‘this part should be like this’. But doing it this way I feel like I was continually being asked ‘who is Maaya Sakamoto as a vocalist?’ and it came out well because of the timing and the style of working. These things make it my fifteenth year anniversary, after all.

Go to part two…