Why English Song Titles?

[Antonio Ruiz]

Why do you think Ayumi uses English song titles when the lyrics are 99% Japanese? I've noticed this is the standard, not only for her but for every other Japanese singer or group. I think it is strange considering their music is not even promoted outside Japan (in most cases). I'd prefer everything to be in Japanese but that's just my humble opinion.

[Aditmi Krisnasaki ~II~]

because it will be more exciting if we understand the title in English. I mean, people outside Japan will understand more what's the point of the song's referring even if it's not promoted outside Japan
and I'm people can imagine how the songs will sound like by looking at the title~~

sorry 4 my bad english..

[AyuWorld]

good question

yeah,it'll be more difficult for us if the title is in japanese,i cant understand it and even cant read it and of course the feeling would be different.

but for Ayu, when i'm talking with my japanese friend,which is a fan of Ayu too,she said that Avex do that for her song because they had expected from the beginning that she would be popular outside Japan too.well, that's what she said to me

[NintendoHTF1242]

Maybe it's her personal preference? Maybe she just likes the look of English words better than Japanese words? Meh we'll never know.

[zyoeru]

Most of the artists I listen to don't use English titles that often... so it isn't a standard. Artists do what they feel like~.

[Nukaru]

Japanese like to take english words and make them their own. They're fascinated by the english language, so most artists take english words as song titles. It's the IN-Thing, right now.

[ayuPanda]

maybe cause it's JPOP not Enka o.o
if you hear Enka, the titles are in japanese^^
and Ayu is the JPOP Queen *-*
this is my explain but it's a good question @ all ^^

[AngelSenshi]

A foreign language is always cool; English is pretty foreign to the Japanese, thus titles in English are appealing to them. This is in a lot of cases; there are even pure English songs with French, Italian, Spanish or even Russian titles. This is because foreign languages can be really attractive.

A lot of Japanese artists use loads of English titles; even a ton of jrock bands.

[Picaflor 7/4]

I asked this question once lol and all I got in return was "she can do whatever she wants why do you care?" I think by truehappiness actually.

Probably because she likes to sum up the feeling/meaning of the song in english. To give it a twist or something. Maybe she feels she can convey it better in english than in japanese. I don't really think she does it cause it's appealing. Utada has a song with a spanish title "Me Muero". Namie has a song title in french "toi et moi". but the fact that every single song ayu has is with an english title seems kind of unusual. Even the japanese titled songs are written in romaji/english "hanabi, kanariya, hana". The only song not fitting this description is "sotsugyo shashin". and that's not even her song, it's a cover. I think the only way we'll know is to ask her herself.

[Andrenekoi]

Japanese find English cool... Know when western people tatoo kanjis without really knowing what they mean just cuz they find it cool? This works the same with western languages for japanese people

[JackieRos]

Originally Posted by Picaflor 7/4

Maybe she feels she can convey it better in english than in japanese.

this

I remember when someone said that there are different meanings to kanji
Like one word can mean something and mean another

and maybe she's using english to let people know clearly what she's talking about

[Crystal_Ageha]

^ That's what I was gonna say. There are so many words in English compared to any other language. It really is wonderful when put to good use (though, people don't usually take advantage of our amazing possibilities, myself included, hah).
In Japanese, there are a lot of things you can do that you can't do in English... But like Jackie said, the fact that there are many words that mean many different things, or even kanji that can mean different things, it can get in the way. It's easier to just try to present it all in English.


But also, another thing I noticed is, almost all pop bands have pretty much all English titles; when they do use Japanese, it's usually something very simple (like "Ai no Uta" or something). This is probably because they want to prepare ahead, in case they get popular outside of Japan (which is definitely very likely, to at least some degree).
Artists who, on the other hand, aren't necessarily trying to fit into mainstream or don't have 'typical' music are more likely to go for many more Japanese titles.

For example, people like Ayu and Namie Amuro use English titles, because they both are pop stars who were both going for the pop star career, simple as that. On the other hand, somebody like Ringo Shiina - somebody who may technically be a "pop star" to some, but who definitely always went off to do her own thing in her music - uses pretty much all Japanese.
However, this shouldn't be used as a rule. Because, for example, somebody like Ai Otsuka - who really can't get any more pop star, hah - uses plenty of Japanese titles, or at least often originally writes them in katakana when they are English. And then, there's Dir en Grey. They are not mainstream, but I've seen more English from them than Japanese.


Another thing to consider is that, as the years go by, it's become much more common to use fully English titles, and to use more English in your songs. You can see that by just looking at the titles of older covers people do: even the most popular songs were often in Japanese, from what I've seen. (Not that there weren't English titles, but I've seen more Japanese, with the exception of anime themes.)

[*Petit*]

Allthough there surely are more reasons than avex and ayu herself trying to make a cool image, seeing how many westerners that appeared in the PVs (compared to number of japanese) of both ayu and Namie in addition to the main purpose of avex when it started (popularizing western modern dance music) I think it's safe to assume that it is to a certain extent because they're going for an edgy/ modern / cool style that they're adding the latin caracters.

[nanakopy87]

i remember there is an article explained why she use english titles instead of japanese but i forget its from which mag/interviews

[Cherry Dynamite]

I think it's her choice with the reasons that's posted here.
I don't really care if she uses English or whatever but Ayu mostly uses English titles that are somehow related to the song one way or another.

[love in music]

I dunno, but I LOVE that her song names are always in English, I really dislike the way those Kanji/Hiragana characters look.

[PoetGirl]

I always wonder about that also. I know that I'm always annoyed when title is in english while song is in my own language (which is Croatian). It's not that cool from my point of view, but I guess I can understand how is cool for japanese.

It sure is more easy to remember all the song titles when they are in english and not in japanese when you are western jpop fan.

[Antonio Ruiz]

Originally Posted by *Petit*

Allthough there surely are more reasons than avex and ayu herself trying to make a cool image, seeing how many westerners that appeared in the PVs (compared to number of japanese) of both ayu and Namie in addition to the main purpose of avex when it started (popularizing western modern dance music) I think it's safe to assume that it is to a certain extent because they're going for an edgy/ modern / cool style that they're adding the latin caracters.

Thanks for pointing out the presence of so many westerners in her videos, I forgot to mention that.

Maybe it's because everything western is considered "cool" in Japan, although as a westerner myself I consider Japanese more appealing and also believe their language and characters are more beautiful, simply because of their complexity.

We do have words with more than 1 meaning in English too. The way I see it, with so many characters in Japanese, you can be more specific if you choose the right one.

To me, her music and videos would be even better if they were more "Japanese" but again this is under a non-Japanese perspective.

[Cherry Dynamite]

I don't really get more "Japanese" titles are titles and as mention above her titles are somehow closely related to her lyrics.
if you can express what you want in a title it doesn't matter if it's Japanese or English or Gibberish.

[appears]

Originally Posted by BanaCherry

if you can express what you want in a title it doesn't matter if it's Japanese or English or Gibberish.

yep, i.e. siina ringo from zeccyousyuu - Jｪﾁ~ｯじo™ｳ & 喪＠CェNｺ瑠ｦｭWｧ