Was RAINBOW the first album Ayu began using English?

[Weslicious]

Originally Posted by Aga-chan

^Well, but "appears" has "Merry Christmas" written in katakana, too.

I think in the case of "Merry Christmas" and "sunglasses" it's something different than with even say "YES". Because Japanese doesn't seem to have its own terms for it, so they took the English ones.

Ahhh yes, my mistake.

In addition to evolusean's post, I just wanted to remind you guys that LOVE~since 1999~ was not written by Ayumi, the lyrics were penned by Tsunku and were included on his own CD simultaneously.

[slowmoth]

Don't forget she says S.O.S. in FRIEND II

[anayufan]

RAINBOW pretty much was the first album she used english in... and i find it funny that TIME's story on her right before ayu-mi-x 4 says that "Many Japanese artists include English lyrics in songs, for instance, but she says she can best express herself in Japanese"... only to see ayu's first album with english lyrics later that year hehe

as others said... merry christmas, sunglasses, and yes don't really count in my opinion. when i think of a japanese artist using english i think of a long phrase like "We'll be wishing on the same star", "You are always gonna be my love", or "A woman could be dangerous" XD...

and i used to think it was cool that ayu didn't use english words because it set her apart. but now i like the fact that when she uses english it's not so overkill that she hops in and out of different languages every other line (Yuna Ito's ENDLESS STORY anyone? although i like that song)

all this over english in RAINBOW? um... i ramble too much... XD

[DerrickRocks]

Ayu sung a few english songs "Someday my prince will come" and somthing on an idol show i forgot. I think Ayu is fluent in english it is still rumored her dad may have been american/japanese

Originally Posted by slowmoth

Don't forget she says S.O.S. in FRIEND II

Kinda the same thing, though. "S.O.S." is used in many languages, so it is incorporated into the Japanese language enough to not be considered English.

[Sommernacht~]

I think it only counts if she uses more than one English word in a song...
I really like her English parts. especially "Real me" is one of my favs!

[Impracticable]

i totally agree with RXS. id love that,

[simonlau]

lol
was " lalalalala" english?
xD

[Diana]

Originally Posted by simonlau

lol
was " lalalalala" english?
xD

XD That`s a good one!

[Nicolas]

Someone said there were English lyics in "Close to you" - that song is entirely in Japanese.

[Aga-chan]

^The English part in "Close to you" is sung by the background singers at the end of the song.
Around half of the songs in "RAINBOW" include English parts. Like the "WE WI~SH" or "eve-ry-where~ nowhere" during the choruses of "WE WISH" and "everywhere nowhere" respectively. But those parts aren't mentioned in the lyrics. (Just like the English part in "forgiveness".)

[Bad Wolf]

Originally Posted by evolusean

Not exactly, though. "Yes" is an English word, but it has been incorporated into the Japanese language for many years as a sort of exclamation. Some people even use it as an affirmative response because it is so common. If a Japanese person hears someone sing "yes" in a song, while they will know the origin of the word, they won't really go: "Hey, they're speaking English!"

The case of monochrome is total Japanese as well. The word is "sangurasu". It is an English loan-word, coming from the word "sunglasses", but it is its own Japanese entity used in everyday speech. It is as Japanese as the word "fakkusu" (fax) or koohii (coffee). (side note: If the word "sunglasses" was directly expressed in Japanese, it would become "sangurasesu" or "sangurasezu".)

As for "MARIA", that is a proper name, and it does not count. It is what the virgin Mary is called in Japanese.

"Merii kurisumasu" is also Japanese for "Merry Christmas". Not quite English.

As far as her self-written, avex material is concerned, RAINBOW was the first album in which actual English appeared.

Thank you for posting this! Very informative and interesting D:

[Nicolas]

Ah, I see. Well if you're going on backing vocals then Kanariya was Ayu's first 'English language' song..
But I don't think they really count in this context.