ARTICLES Morning Musume. '21 Single on Sale 12/8 "Teenage Solution" Tsunku♂ Liner Notes

[Lurkette]

Morning Musume. '21 Single on Sale 12/8 "Teenage Solution" Tsunku♂ Liner Notes​

2021.10.30 20:01

A scene of the recording for this single was shown briefly in the Nihon TV show "Jinsei ga kawaru ippunkan no fuka ii hanashi" on September 13, which showed the recording for the dialogue in this song.

As you might get from the title, they're singing about "teenage" things, so I wrote this while thinking of the faces of the members who are still teenagers!

So, first, the song as a whole. It's in minor key, but it's a very strong song. I don't think of it as gloomy, rather quite bright. It's like the reflections of headlights from cars on a rainy night.

You can imagine that, right?

Let's move on to the message of the song.

When I look back, I was the same way.
And my own children, too...

When I was in middle school, I felt like I could do anything, and the only things I couldn't do were because my circumstances wouldn't allow me. That's what we think.

Right?! That mindset.

But isn't that 100% the enthusiasm of youth? I think that's at least half of it, honestly.

It's important to think you can do anything; I honestly think that's what makes people successful. (It's that groundless belief you can do anything that's so precious. It's something adults are honestly a little jealous of...)

However, we stop saying it because the adults around us usually say things like, "No," "You can't," "It costs too much money," "Not now," and so on.

I wanted to tell my own children that they could do anything they wanted, but in reality, when they come to me and say, "I want to do this" or "I want to go here," I inadvertently say things like, "Not today~," "Maybe next time," or "When you're more capable."

People say it's puberty or a rebellious phase, but I kind of think that it's because adults do this sort of thing...

Amidst all of that, my kids were all over me this summer that we spent in Japan, and then the 15th gen members came to speak with me, which made me feel a lot of things. The end result I experienced was this song flowing out of me.

Thinking about it, the three 15th gen members spoke with me bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but I wonder what they were like going home? I think they have many different faces, those they show their parents, those they show their seniors, those they show their teachers at school, and so on.

Also, although people call them new members, they've been in Morning Musume. for almost 2 years already, but they can't do concerts with the call and response like they did before the present situation. So I wondered how much stress they were actually under.

Those were the gloomy feelings I was having, which became the essence of this song.

By the way, the dialogue in the interlude belongs to three different personalities.

The first person is a girl soliloquizing indifferently while looking a mirror.
The second person is a girl desperate trying to express herself to someone specific.
The third person is a girl giving a passionate speech in front of her class or school.

The protagonist could be saying the same thing, but depending on the circumstances, the way it is said will change, and that's the direction I gave them during recording.

All three of them start at different points, but they end together.

It kind of feels good to have the start be so disconnected, but by the end everything comes neatly together.

I tried directing the song that way.

Because of this, the whole speed of the song went up, I think.

The members sing in chorus over the strings in the intro, and it already has an air of extreme tension but I didn't feel like there is any real "solution" to being a teenager (there is no resolution), so I felt like that thrill was appropriate for this musical phrase.

Going back to the lyrics, of course, the people around you worry about you and we are grateful for that concern, so you have to figure out how to handle that. You understand it. You also understand the parts of you that aren't useful, the things you need to change. But those moments manifest into feeling hopeless.

When you understand it, all of it, you feel hopeless.

There's nothing more to it than that, so there may be no conclusion in the song, but I hope you can still understand that feeling~.

This single will be Sato's last, as well. She's 22 already, but I hope she can find her own "solution" at Nippon Budokan on December 13~.

​

 

[MedicationHelps87]

Genuine feeling and lovely interpretation of the songs meaning.
Love you Japan!