Me ga Aku Aiiro
| "Me ga Aku Aiiro" | |
|---|---|
| Song by Sakanaction | |
| from the album Kikuuiki | |
| Language | Japanese |
| Released | March 10, 2010 |
| Recorded | 2010 |
| Genre | Progressive rock, rock opera |
| Length | 6:55 |
| Label | Victor Entertainment |
| Songwriter(s) | Ichiro Yamaguchi |
| Producer(s) | Sakanaction |
"Me ga Aku Aiiro" (Japanese: 目が明く藍色, "Eye-Opening Indigo") (Japanese pronunciation: [me ga akɯ aiiɾo]) is a song by Japanese band Sakanaction. It was the leading track from the band's fourth studio album Kikuuiki, released in March 2010.
The song was first written in 2001 by Ichiro Yamaguchi, while he was a member of his high-school band Dutchman. At the time he struggled to create a completed version of the song, feeling that the members of Dutchman could not actualize his vision for the song, and that such a song would make him seem conceited. The phrase me ga aku aiiro came to Yamaguchi in a dream when he was a teenager, where an unknown woman stood in front of him and chanted those words. Yamaguchi created the song as a seven-minute long rock opera suite, something the song had been even in the initial writing stages.
After deciding the theme of their fourth album would be mixing the unmixable, Yamaguchi remembered the song, and felt that this single song could explain the concept of the whole album. He decided that "Me ga Aku Aiiro" should be the leading promotional song off of the album, in order to display parts of Sakanaction the band did not show off on their dance-pop single "Aruku Around", to their new audience who had come to know them through the song. Even though Yamaguchi felt that his band Dutchman could not create the song in 2001, Sakanaction members were skilled enough to be able to complete the song. In particular, he was impressed with the band's bassist Ami Kusakari, who managed to create the vocal chorus section exactly as he imagined, despite him only giving her a rough demo. The string instrument and orchestral instrument recordings were recorded in two different sessions, with the orchestral instruments needing only a single take. Despite this, the song took up much more time than Yamaguchi had intended, with the band members only finishing the song on February 16, 2010, a month before the album's release. Yamaguchi found singing the lower notes of the song difficult, so in his place drummer Keiichi Eshima sings these low notes.
Yamaguchi wrote new lyrics to the song, and felt like the song mixed his past self with his present self. He inserted many lyrical gimmicks into the song's lyrics, such as hiding the album's title Kikuuiki in the lyric kimi no koe o kiku, iki o sutte (君の声を聴く 息を すって, "I hear your voice, you breathing"). This gimmick was the reason that Yamaguchi decided to capitalize the two central letters of the album title (kikUUiki). Yamaguchi felt that the lyrics he wrote were like a first-person novel, using lyrical techniques that he had not personally experimented with before. He wrote the lyrics abstractly, using words that meant a lot to Yamaguchi personally that would not mean anything to outside listeners. He hoped that this technique would move listeners, however without fully understanding why they felt moved.
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