Tuesday, Aug 22, 2023 update and Love me, Love me, Love me by Kikuo Review

First of all, I'd like to announce that my sleep schedule is fucked. It's not really as bad as some people's during the summer, but it's bad in my book. Like, I wake up at 10, which is super late in my book, and that means I go to sleep past 1, which is super late in my book. Thankfully, my flight to Boston is going to be overnight, which means I'll be getting near zero sleep that night and that should serve as a good reset to my circadian rhythm.

Anyways, I was up last night watching Vocaloid music videos because I think I'm in my Vocaloid stage at the moment. Honestly, I love watching music videos. I remember passing time in grade school by watching the music videos play on MTV (this was before I started reading chapter books). I think music videos really really enhance the music, and especially so for J-pop videos. A lot of Japanese music videos are animated and it's soooo nice because the artist (who are always very talented) pays special attention to syncing things with the music and it produces such a marvelous effect.

Also, another thing that I appreciate about foreign music in general is that I don't understand the lyrics. There's something very liberating about having the meaning of the song be disjoint from the lyrical line. I actually utilize this a lot when I'm performing on my clarinet. Oftentimes, you'll find yourself playing a very lyrical line, of which you'd like to attach some meaning. I just imagine that someone's singing that line (because I can't sing) in a foreign language, and then pretend that those lyrics translate to exactly what I want the emotions of the line to be. It's very cool.

Anyways, I was watching the music video to Love Me, Love Me, Love Me by Kikuo (https://youtu.be/NTrm_idbhUk). Kikuo has such amazing songs, and I listen to them a lot on Spotify. I discovered them entirely on Spotify, which means that not only do I not know what the lyrics mean, I also don't know what the songs are called because their names are entirely in Japanese. Boy was I in shock when I started going through Kikuo's YouTube channel.

I digress. Back to Love Me, which I know by the name Aishite. I was shown a cover by Nerissa Ravencroft (https://youtu.be/RWU3o_kDixc). Great cover, really, I get chills. It's great except whoever made the music video used it's instead of its (it's not that hard to tell them apart. Ask yourself whether replace it's with it is makes sense in the context. If not, then you're using the wrong one). I like how she translated the song to English, and I don't usually like English translations. Watching this coupled with the original with English subtitles painted a picture of the song. Yes, each of Kikuo's songs is a really well-told story. Each story is very dark. I think Aishite is perhaps the least dark among them.

Wait, I want to go on another quick digression. YouTube subtitles are crazy. You can do crazy things with them. If you've never watched a Japanese music video, you're missing out. Most of the time (and this is true in the case of Aishite), the lyrics are on the screen. The subtitler is able to format the subtitles and give it effects like the lyrics on the screen. So, in the case of Aishite, the words sometimes shake. It's very cool.

Okay, let's talk about the song for real. It's about people pleasing. It uses the metaphor of a necklace and I think it really fits. It's a vice that tightens around your neck and won't go away no matter what! Only praise gives temporary relief. That's why the speaker in this song is the top of her (I'm assuming the gender) class. She wants everyone to look at her and praise her so that she can feel some relief. The whole chorus is a plea for others to "love me, love me, love me, more and more."

This is unsustainable, says the necklace. "It's not enough" gets repeated over and over again throughout the song (along with "it hurts"). I think this is where the girl gets the idea of confessing to a boy so that he can give her more love. What's even more interesting is the line, "I like you, you who are so filthy." I guess she got a superiority complex from being the top of her class.

And then, the coolest part. "I'll have you bear everything for me. You're not enough. I won't let go." She's becoming the necklace for the boy. At the beginning of the song, she was lonely, and there was a necklace that called out for love. She put it on and became cursed by it. What does this mean? People pleasing passes on? Hmm, I've never thought about it that way. I've never really studied people pleasing behavior but I thought it came from family and upbringing rather than your peers, which I assume this other person that the singer confesses her love to is a peer rather than a child.

This is going back to what I said in my Airhead review. I like the original more than Nerissa's cover. I think Kikuo uses Hatsune Miku very well. I'm not usually a fan of Hatsune Miku as a Vocaloid because she's too expressionless and machine-like, but Kikuo knows how to manipulate this Vocaloid well. Nerissa's cover portrays the speaker as a megalomaniac-like person. It's just the way she sings. She doesn't really put pain when she sings "it hurts." In the original, "Aishite" sounds more like a plea rather than a demand, as Nerissa translates it in her song: "Give me your love."

I relate to the song as a people pleaser myself and I think that's why I get what it means. It's weird for me, though. I don't like being praised at all. I'm very bad at receiving compliment. However, I do want people to like me in general. Well, maybe I don't relate to the song as much as some other people could. (and props to Kikuo for making these songs that speak very loudly to very specific people. If you look at the YouTube comments to the music videos, you can read people's testimonies about how the songs help them.)

Okay, I want to end this with a quick note on Kikuo's other songs, because this song is the mildest out of all of them. If you go to Kikuo's YouTube channel and sort videos by popular, you'll see "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." If you are of the faint of heart, don't click on it. I mean, the thumbnail itself is grotesque enough. The lyrics are just as bad as the image. It's about relationship abuse, most likely sexual, and most likely from a family member, so trigger warning here. I don't think I can stress enough how dark it is.

It's a catchy song though! I listen to it a fair bit on Spotify, where I try to forget what the lyrics mean. Here's a link to my Vocaloid playlist, and you can take a listen at all the Kikuo songs to hear them and not see what they mean: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1CeyeeOL7MBMRJhSogg1Ms?si=cef2ac64c159418a

Writing this blog post was just the most happy and upbeat start to my day, so yeah, what the hell, me, for liking songs that are so dark. Hey guys, I promise I'm generally a very smiley and upbeat and happy person. I'm seriously not kidding. It's just that the lyrics to some songs that I listen to are crazy dark. I mean, most of the songs I listen to are very upbeat and they make me dance in my seat whenever I listen to them. (I've been recently obsessed with Tokyo Shandy Rendezvous, of which I'll leave the Spotify link because I haven't read the lyrics and I do hope that song isn't dark: https://open.spotify.com/track/2MmgGuQzr0kkiA04lMdPXW?si=2049a680559a40df).

100Days: 10