One and Only - JMelo English Song from MM'15

[arcobaleno]

Hmm, I actually really like this. I don't care about the English part, but it's a pretty catchy song. I agree it's a bit of word vomit, but I like the beat.

[Meikochi]

This performance makes me like the song even more : girls having fun (in quite nice outfits), with a cool dance on a lively song with lyrics which don't bother me at all (yes it's generic but I'm not listening to Pop music for deep texts).

[Mugi]

Lyrics make everything better.  I hope with this plus Ima sugu Miki can maybe center something by herself eventually.

[Elpis]

I don't like the song much. It's lyrics seem very repetitive and I got bored with it fast. They are catchy though and I do have one part stuck in my head. I'm surprised they didn't do a formation dance but maybe they're finally moving away from that.

[aine]

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Solarblade" data-cid="191974" data-time="1444840363">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEirlTcb7Jk
 
Performance and lyrics!</blockquote>
Please note: this is a literal translation, the translation may not be perfect.

[yuzuriha]

It kind of feels like they took a bunch of parts from past H!P songs, threw them together and added English lyrics.
 
That said it's growing on me.
 
But couldn't Miki have been like um...this part doesn't quite make sense (can't think of the specific examples but you all know what I mean).
 
I liked the dance though, even though I kept expecting ass grabbing to happen for some reason.

[Mugi]

[quote="yuzu"]
It kind of feels like they took a bunch of parts from past H!P songs, threw them together and added English lyrics.
 
That said it's growing on me.
 
But couldn't Miki have been like um...this part doesn't quite make sense (can't think of the specific examples but you all know what I mean).
 
I liked the dance though, even though I kept expecting ass grabbing to happen for some reason.
[/quote]
 
I always wonder this when it comes to K-pop and I think it just comes down to the fact that even though they probably know the language better than the person writing the song they have no say in how the song goes.

[mrsross]

I like it overall. The only problem I have is the lyrics could've been better. The lyrics gets a bit repetitive, but it's just like Perfume's Spending All My Time where they say the same stuff over again so I guess the girls won't have that much trouble memorizing all the English. Other than that, everything else is almost perfect. 

[JPope]

I legit hate this song, lol. Everything about it is uncomfortable and embarrassing. I hope they never try this all-English thing ever again.
 
On the positive side, it seems as if H!P gives me something to remain interested in H!P each time MM loses my interest. First it was Buono!, and now it's Angerme.

[WonderBuono]

You guys act as if you actually expected the lyrics to be good, lolol

[Elpis]

I feel like they should've gotten Miki (or Aika)'s opinion on the lyrics first. Sure they aren't native speakers but they could've at least fixed some of those rough spots with the lyrics. On the plus side, their pronunciation was a lot better than I expected from past H!P songs that use english phrases.

[yuzuriha]

[quote="WonderBuono"]
You guys act as if you actually expected the lyrics to be good, lolol
[/quote]
 
Oh trust me, I didn't.  I just think it's kind of crazy when there's someone there that speaks English at an almost native level they wouldn't at least like...consult her.  I used to think that about Coconuts all the time too haha.

[Purin-chama]

Akane was really cute in the live. She was shown quite a bit, and she looked like she was having the time of her life

[Anderei]

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="yuzu" data-cid="191995" data-time="1444918336"><blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="WonderBuono" data-cid="191989" data-time="1444883551">

You guys act as if you actually expected the lyrics to be good, lolol</blockquote>


Oh trust me, I didn't. I just think it's kind of crazy when there's someone there that speaks English at an almost native level they wouldn't at least like...consult her. I used to think that about Coconuts all the time too haha.</blockquote>


Yeah, but people her age aren't exactly the go-to people for help with grammar.

[ShiroiChanUK]

I actually quite like this song :) The lyrics are very MoMusu and although they're a little "wordy" but I don't think that really ruined the flow of the song :) I also think they're pronunciation was actually very decent, I could understand the majority of the lyrics :) I've heard much worse pronunciation and lyrics in my time BoA's early English songs :) I hope this song gets included on a single :)
 
Some of the outfits worn for the performance were really cute but some of the girls looked like they turned up in their PJ's lol

[Mariko]

The song didn't actually bother me too much. It's a little bland, but it's got a decent beat, and the pronunciation was pleasantly surprising. The dance on the video I saw was really underwhelming, though. The verse parts were kind of cute and then chorus came and it was just a bunch of making-s-shapes-with-your-body-like-they-do-in-like-every-song-they're-trying-to-look-sexy-for. (What do you even call that? Is there a word for it?) Everyone seemed pretty confident, though, which made me quite proud of them! It's so intimidating to sing entirely in another language you're not fluent in, and no one seemed to not have their game face on for the performance c:

[Shoujo Q]

If you listen to American music that's on the radio today, half the songs that they play obsessively over and over again have repetitive lyrics. I hate them. They turn into unwanting earworms. 
 
IF they do attempt this again, they shouldn't rely on Tsunku, as much as I know he thought this was going to turn out good. If he had a better understanding of the English language, this probably would have gone better. 
 
Overall this song is meh and so is the other new song they are playing during the concert. If they both end up as part of the 60th single I'll be very sad. This is just album worthy stuff at best. 
 
 

[Zoe]

Using Tsunku for the original lyrics was fine. It's their translator who needs to work on it more.

[aine]

Maybe they should have asked Hotzmic to translate.

Here's a song originally written in Japanese that turned out well

[Shoujo Q]

As far as I'm aware, Tsunku was the one that wrote (and composed) the english so you can't blame anyone but him for the mess he created. He may have got "help" but this is still his baby and the one time you can actually "blame Tsunku". xD 

[ShiroiChanUK]

Since this is the new theme for J-MELO maybe Tsunku could've asked May J for help? She's not a songwriter but she's still a singer who's fluent in English.

[Zoe]

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Shoujo Q" data-cid="192056" data-time="1445180326">
As far as I'm aware, Tsunku was the one that wrote (and composed) the english so you can't blame anyone but him for the mess he created. He may have got "help" but this is still his baby and the one time you can actually "blame Tsunku". xD</blockquote>


No, it was definitely translated by someone named Alisa (mentioned on Tsunku's blog), and there's a person on Hello Online who claims to know someone who worked on the song.

[showraniy]

I'm late to the party, but whoa, was that Masaki in the middle during the dance break? If so, I'm really proud of her because she kept up with Riho well, and exuded a nice maturity that I didn't think she was capable of before.


The lyrics are only kind of weird in two places that I could see, but everything was grammatically correct. Also, I think there's too little appreciation of how well the girls are pronouncing everything! From Japanese where there's no emphasis on syllables to English where emphasis on syllables makes all the difference and is in nearly every word, they did a fantastic job of knowing exactly how to pronounce the words.


I'm sure Miki helped a lot there, but it's still highly impressive. I'm just remembering Yossie in hangry & angry mentioning how hard it was to memorize how to correctly sing an entirely English chorus in one of their songs, so I can only imagine the difficulty of a whole song.

[Kalle]

I'm not complaining about the English but I do think the melody is lacking.

[Farrah]

People kept saying the lyrics were nonsensical, so I was expecting total visual kei esque word vomit English (seriously, those visual kei guys have some of the worst English I've ever heard LOL) but other than one particular phrase ("We can be so happy in life" which, while not totally incomprehensible, is veeeery Japanese phrasing) it made perfect sense to me.  There are two real issues here - Japanese is a very syballic language, so having a shit ton of syllables per line is not uncommon.  This makes writing English adaptations of Japanese songs really, really difficult in terms of "Okay, I have xyz number of beats here but it takes so fewer words than that to express the concept in English." It just sounds very unnatural, you're having to either throw in some redundant (but grammatically correct) words or maybe do some drag beats on certain syllables. 
 
Another thing is that these lyrics are really no more inane or stupid than 99.9% of Tsunku lyrics, you're just not used to being confronted with it so aggressively if you don't speak very much Japanese LOL.  And then reading stupid or silly lyrics in a translation, your brain sort of goes "Oh, well it must just be a phrase or concept that translates stupidly!" to compensate for it, but when you're actually hearing it being sung, it's aggressively stupid.  Imagine how much you'd probably hate Nanchatte Renai if you had to hear, on a sad break up song, Takahashi Ai singing in English about sitting down to eat a hamburger LOL.  If you don't speak much Japanese, you can just ignore how incredibly shitty those lyrics are.  99.9% of H!P songs are this exact pointless "Oh, I love you so much, let's go into the future together!" drivel.
 
To make matters worse, I can feel strongly that whoever this woman is that assisted with these lyrics - she is a translator.  She is not a lyricist.  There is no poetry here, not artistic deeper meaning or even just a basic sense of how to make words flow in a way that makes them feel significant.  It is really obvious that the process was very much "Well, this line has enough beats to fit and mostly expresses the Japanese so we'll go with that, I guess." more than "How can I take this and adapt it in a way that has flow and feel."  So, essentially, I don't really think these lyrics are that bad in terms of coherency - they're just lacking in a sort of expertise that you really need when it comes to lyrics.
 
All of that said, I was marvelously impressed with their pronunciation!  I've gotten pretty solid at deciphering Japanese accents over the years so that probably lends an advantage, but I was able to listen from beginning to end and understand every single word without even thinking about it.  Super impressive.