Why the english titles?
 

Hi there, I was listening to Rainbow a couple of days ago (which by the way I think is Ayu's best album it is very consistent from the beginning to end) Anyway and it just struck me that all her album titles and song titles are in english except the last track A Ballads. Anyone know why she does this?

Thanks!

English is an international language
so no wonder she did that..

not only her did the that..
most of japanese artists

A number of Japanese artists does indeed use English titles, but by far from the same extent as Ayu has been doing it.

The only one song that did not have an English title was Sotsogyou Shashin, and it's a cover.

I think it might have a lot to do with her love for the US, and that she simply decided about it some time long ago.

There must be a reason to why she has been keeping it up, and I do think it is because of her having simply decided to do so in the past.

No one really knows :).

Lots of Japanese artists do it, as do other nationalities. English is considered fashionable in Japan and in pop culture, which I atribute it to.

Hanabi is japanese too. :)

I think she should have official english site too. (or at least I haven't seen it?) :P

But tis in romanji, not kanji soo ...


And she did have an english site, its last update was about ayu-mi-x 2

Oh, that way. Of course :)

Ayu-mi-x 2 Wow.. Long time ago. :D
I think nowadays it would have more visitors than before. :P

I think also because it`s international language. Do you think she will have more japanese song titles? I would like that..

Cool, I actually never thought about that. Thanks for setting me right.

Like micster said they stopped updating around ayu-mi-x 2, but the page was still up until... not very long ago, a year back?

its so cute how the girls from MS calls the songs "staturingu" lol

Yeeeah, im quite sure it was around christmas time 2005

HANABI is a Japanese word, but not only is the title is written in Roman letters, but it is a proper noun (the name of a place). You don't translate proper nouns, so technically "Hanabi" is both English and Japanese in this case.

The title of the song Hana is also Japanese (again, written in Roman characters instead of Japanese). Although, it is not known if Hana, too, is a proper name; rather, it seems to come from the lyrics of the song.

End roll is the re-Anglicized form of the Japanese word エンドロール endorooru. The term "end roll", as far as I know, is not an actual term used in English; we simply say "[film] credits". I suppose you could also say End roll is a Japanese title.

Humming 7/4 is partially Japanese. The Humming part is spoken as in English, but the 7/4 is spoken as Japanese: 四分七 yon bun nana, as opposed to スリークォーター suriikwootaa

kanariya is Japanese, as well. It is a Japanese word for "canary", instead of the Japanese pronunciation of the English word (which would be キャナリ kyanari)

I think she just likes the way English titles sound and look. Plus, they offer much more artistic freedom than selecting the hook line as the title (which is what record companies usually want you to do).

Dang.. you beat me to explaining the other songs xD

If I remember correctly, someone asked this to ayu during an interview. I really don't remember her exact words, but her reply went something like "I want my songs to appeal to everyone worldwide, even if they don't speak Japanese they will still know what the song is about and relate to it."

I always wondered what Humming 7/4 was supposed to mean

7/4 is a musical notation, a time signature. It simply means that there are 7 beats in every phrase, each phrase being one beat (crotchet) long. So that'll be a 4-beat bar followed by a 3-beat bar. Listen closely to the non-singing part of the song (esp the ending), and you'll hear it, though it's really quite hard to catch :D

Here's wikipedia's take on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_signature

Quite hard to understand if you don't take music though, esp for the signature 7/4, which is quite rare ;)

^ On a side note, Ayu has quite a few songs with uncommon time signatures for pop music. I love her for that very much. :shimmy

haha thanks for the definitions
even though i should know it, since i take music XD

I have often wondered the same thing about the English.

Ooh, but there are 7/4s in it ;) Listen carefully!

There are 2 sets of 7/4 (or was it 6/4, 4/4, 4/4?) directly before the first chorus.
Another 6/4, 7/4, 6/4 before Yo-chan's solo.
The ending is hard to catch, but it's 4/4, 4/4, 7/4 repeated. And since 7/4 is basically 4/4, 3/4, the simplified sequence is 4/4, 4/4, 4/4, 3/4. ^^

We've had a discussion about this before (about 7/4). The song IS in 7/4, but uses different patterns of 7/4 throughout it (as Misa-chan points out, too).

may express the meaning of the songs better...for example the titel for one song is "Real me" and its only said in the end....may it expresses much better whats going on in the song...just an suggest

That's true, although Real me does have the title in the lyrics (other than the vocoder effected line at the very, very end)

Many, if not most, of Ayu's songs have the English title expressed in Japanese within the lyrics.

i second that. english is really modern in japan culture. of course it has something to do with the western style and of course with the closeness to america and austrlia.