[TRANS] CUT (Aug 2021): SixTONES
“It’s a genre of song that we haven’t tried before but our journey to this point was forged by our past”
The “current” SixTONES that’s signalled through their collaboration with Tsuneta Daiki. They’ll talk about their latest single “Mascara”!
“Mascara” wouldn’t have been possible if it was written a little earlier, and it might not have been a song that we ourselves saw as “cool” (Jesse)
Unexpectedly, SixTONES’ new single “Mascara” is penned and composed by King Gnu’s Tsuneta Daiki! ¾The first emotion that overcame me was surprise, plus a strange sense of understanding. The collaboration between a young idol group and trailblazers in Japan’s music industry is bound to be unconventional. But I was confident that “it’s possible” if it was SixTONES. It’s said that Tsuneta, upon accepting the offer, carefully went through SixTONES’s previous works and activities. And after getting a firm grasp of the sixes talents and potential, what he produced was “Mascara”, a non-idol-like song; a mixed tune of the highest difficulty that exploded with King Gnu’s signature - this too must be a sign that he “believed” in SixTONES. Listening to the song, you should be able to feel that they answered that expectation and threw open a new door into their future.
The coupling tracks for this single are also the cream of the crop. “Figure” in particular, a killer pop tune produced by Kujira, an artist who’s gaining a lot of attention lately, is a continuation of their vocaloid style from “Uyamuya” in their debut album “1ST”. The 6 colours of each of their voices don’t get buried by the typical overload of information found in vocaloid songs, and instead forces you to recognise the invincibility of when these 6 individual characters come together. SixTONES in their second year of debut; it doesn’t seem like we can keep our eyes off them this year either.
- How did the collaboration with Tsuneta Daiki-san for “Mascara” come about?
Kyomoto: Our debut single “Imitation Rain” was written by YOSHIKI-san and we’ve had the opportunity to have tie-ups with other works after that as well. We wanted someone else to again reinterpret SixTONES and…
Tanaka: We’d always talked about how it’d be interesting if we could ask Tsuneta-san and King Gnu-san [for a collaboration]. That’s why we chose this timing, after debuting for a year, to make the request. Since they are so incredibly busy, we contacted him thinking “it probably won’t work but let’s give it a go”, but he immediately replied “I’ll do it”.
Kouchi: At first, we really only thought “it’ll probably be a no but let’s put something into action”.
Tanaka: Yeah. But he gave us a reply straightaway and we were like “eh? He will?” (laughs)
Kouchi: The ones who made the offer got surprised instead (laughs)
- Did you made a request about what sort of song you wanted it to be?
Kouchi: No, there was none of that. More like, around 2 days after he decided to accept the offer, we were already sent a demo track of the beginning. He asked, “how about something like this?”
Kyomoto: The timing of being told “Tsuneta-san said yes” and listening to the demo track was around the same.
Tanaka: What was sent was just a rough mix, the bare bones of the song, but that was enough to shock us (laughs).
- What was your impression of the rough mix?
Kouchi: It was a song embedded with Tsuneta-san’s colour, King Gnu’s colour, so I couldn’t imagine how it would be when we sing it. I thought it would be difficult to sing. But I also had a bubbling excitement that it’d be able to draw out a new side to SixTONES.
- It really is a vocally difficult song the more I listen to it.
Jesse: I practised quite a lot in the shower (laughs). There’s Tsuneta-san trademark and King Gnu trademark, but also a rap quality and nostalgic tone to it, all against a strong beat… the purposely undefined parts mixing together is really cool and you don’t get sick of listening to it. But for all of that, expressing it as SixTONES was honestly difficult. I listened to it again and again and practised before the recording, and still tried out different approaches during the recording itself.
Morimoto: Talking about what was difficult was the irregular rhythm and tempo: the beat that was following the strong counts would suddenly switch to the weaker ones, and the melody is sung on the strong beats but the music follows the weak beats. It was a challenge to get my body accustomed to that at the beginning. I had to both understand each and every sound Tsuneta-san wrote, whilst incorporating our own emotions and quirks into the song on top of that… It once again made me realise that Iguchi Satoru-san is an amazing singer.
- Wouldn’t it have been difficult for SixTONES to accomplish such a difficult song a year ago?
Tanaka: I don’t think we couldn’t have sung it. I think it’s that now is the timing for us to sing it. It seemed like Tsuneta-san researched about us too.
Morimoto: It seemed like he watched lots of our YouTube videos too. Like the hide-and-seek one (laughs).
Matsumura: (laughs) Since we didn’t request “a song like this please” to Tsuneta-san, I think he looked into our past and composed a song that translated his “this is where I’d take SixTONES” thoughts. In that sense, I think SixTONES’ current identity is “Mascara”. It’s definitely a genre of song that we haven’t tried before, but our journey to this point was forged by our past.
Tanaka: You’re right. “Mascara” is a song that was written for us based on our past history, so it’s not that we wouldn’t have been able to sing it a year ago, but that Tsuneta-san wouldn’t have written such a song one year ago.
Jesse: “Mascara” wouldn’t have been possible if it was written a little earlier, and it might not have been a song that we ourselves saw as “cool”. Since our Junior days, SixTONES’ have always been hungry about “doing this type of song!”, and many people have kindly said “SixTONES’ really have lots of types of songs”, “they’re blessed with their music”. In a good way, I think everyone was probably satisfied. But now, arriving at “Mascara”, we realised that “aah, we haven’t done a song like this yet!”. The song is already great without us needing to fight for it, so the rest is the challenge of delivering it perfectly.
Our next target is digging deeper. I want to challenge deeper waters (Tanaka)
- Other than “Mascara”, you have other adult-like songs in this single.
Kouchi: That’s true. It’s a coincidence though. It shows a sense of composure, and it’s there in the MV too.
Jesse: Well, we’re in our second year of debut now.
Kouchi: Yes, I think it’s a second-year-like single. We’ve done many aggressive songs since our Johnnys Juniors days, so moving into our second year of debut, I think it’s one of SixTONES’ strengths that we’re able to portray such a mood.
Matsumura: With choosing the coupling songs, the title track “Mascara” was already decided, so we didn’t want them to be ones that felt inconsistent to that. The reason why there’s a mature flavour to it overall may be because we focused on working on the single as a whole, lest it feel like that we only worked hard on “Mascara”.
Jesse: The single’s CD covers have a rather mature feel to them too.
- The main colour of your previous CD covers have all been different and it’s pink this time. The fans are speculating that all 6 of your member colours will be used in the end.
Matsumura: That’s how it’s turned out so far but…
Kyomoto: I wonder how it’ll be.
Jesse: But that’s one way to enjoy it. There’re more chances for it to spread around when fans find things like that.
Matsumura: Next is “green”… that totally sounds plausible (laughs).
Kyomoto: The rest is the compatibility with the song. A song that doesn’t feel green no matter how you twist it - for example, if it goes “something red” then [green] would definitely not work (laughs).
Matsumura: (laughs) The colours for our previous CD covers were all decided carefully too; we chose the flowers for their meaning, and the colour yellow for “Boku ga boku jyanai mitai da”. I think the next one too will be dependent on the song.
- All the songs other than “Figure” are about heartbreaks.
Tanaka: You’re right (laughs). We didn’t plan for it to be like that but… you know, if you check the Billboard charts for example, all the top songs there are like heartbreak ones at the moment.
Kouchi: I suppose there’s that historical background. Corona happened and the theme of loss has become more common.
Tanaka: This sort of theme is probably fitting to the era.
Kyomoto: SixTONES’ has a lot of heartbreak songs in the first place. “Call Me” in our last single is the same.
Tanaka: With heartbreak songs, it’s easy for us as the singer to imagine that person, or rather, it’s easy to imagine a fictional world.
- Talking about fictional worlds, “Lost City” is exactly like a movie.
Kouchi: That’s true. When the staff-san suggested “Lost City” to us, images of the city’s atmosphere were printed on the lyrics card.
Morimoto: It was easy to come to a mutual understanding. We were able to share the song’s image thanks to those briefing details beforehand.
- The single may feel mature because there were such technicalities as well.
Jesse: Also, we were conscious of popular songs overseas. I think SixTONES’ fans have slowly gotten used to English lyrics and we’re curious about how people other than our fans would feel about that.
- With “Make Up” even, it’s all English.
Jesse: Yes, it’s a foreign song.
Matsumura: The one who wrote the song was a foreigner.
- The song uses falsetto continuously and it’s amazing that you casually do such difficult things.
Jesse: I sing that refrain part. Thank you! (laughs).
- (laughs) Within this unified single, I feel that “Figure” differs from the others. Continuing from “Uyamuya” in “1ST”, it’s a so-called vocaloid number, but why does SixTONES and vocaloid music match so well?
Tanaka: I don’t know, maybe it’s because there are 6 of us? In vocaloid songs, it’s impossible to sing alone since it’s a vocaloid. I think the fact that we can share the parts across the 6 of us is a big factor.
Kyomoto: The qualities of our voices are all distinct and our solo parts don’t blend or mix well in a good way, like, they’re all highlighted in the music so even in a piece where it develops at a head-spinning rate, we’re able to convey that it’s sung by a group no matter how you dissect the parts. We’re a group, but each of our individual presences shine through. I think “Uyamuya” was received well because it was unexpected for SixTONES, but also because the strengths and presence of our 6 voices functioned well.
Matsumura: More like, the fact that we suit vocaloid music - that’s probably the first time we realised that after you mentioned it. We don’t really know ourselves… This is my own opinion, but vocaloid-like, so called sub-culture songs, I don’t know… this puts things on the psychological side, but I think it requires a very strong self-consciousness about negative elements and diversity. Thinking about it like that, we’re actually all that sort of type (laughs). We’re a group who has bright and gloomy characters within that spectrum, so there might be an affinity to that psyche.
We’ve gained the confidence bit by bit as we worked on things one after the other. We aren’t stiff with anxiety and instead able to work with a good degree of nervousness in our second year. (Kyomoto)
- Including that affinity, do you recognise that vocaloid numbers are SixTONES’ strengths?
Kyomoto: For example, we recognised that “Uyamuya” reached more different types of people than we imagined, and we were really happy about that. That’s why we couldn’t ignore that, or rather, we wanted to challenge upskilling ourselves in that area.
Tanaka: Also, we have no strong attachment to a particular genre of music; we’ll do anything - hip hop, jazz, rock. We have such a curiosity, so that’s why I think we enjoy vocaloid songs too. The difficulty with vocaloid songs is that the image changes once a human voice sings it - like there’s the danger of it sounding like an idol song if it’s sung with a human voice. It’s a very fine line so just like Kyomoto said, it’s something that we want to challenge ourselves to.
- “Figure” is also a song that conveys the message of “becoming irreplaceable”.
Kouchi: I believe this too, is thanks to Kujira-san understanding our story to write this song.
Tanaka: There aren’t many songs written in this tone with such a message.
Morimoto: You’re right. The lyrics are jam-packed.
Kyomoto: It’s heterogeneous in that way out of the coupling songs.
- Releasing your first album “1ST” in January and “Boku ga boku jyanai mitai da” in February, is this “Mascara” a release towards getting in gear towards your second album?
Kyomoto: We haven’t thought about preparing for the album yet, but I do think, in a good way, that we’ve relaxed a little coming into our second year. Even though we weren’t conscious of it, there was some part of us that was frantic in the period till our debut and in our first year of debut. We had no experience with being “debut-gumi” [debuted groups], and be it recording our music or performing them on TV, there were lots of things that we still didn’t know yet and we were frantically doing what we could. However, as we acquired the experience bit by bit, we’ve gained confidence about both our music and performances. That’s why we aren’t stiff with anxiety and instead able to work with a good degree of nervousness in our second year. I believe this is a single that demonstrates that.
- And if you had to form a new target, what would be your next step?
Tanaka: I’d say it’s to be focusing on digging deeper. Like challenging deeper waters. For example, in my favourite hip-hop genre, there isn’t only hip-hop music that has a booming bass, but also ones that feature piano and acoustic guitars. I want people to discover such hip-hop music exists and I want that to be recognised as our diversity.
- It’s true that Tanaka-san’s rapping in “Lost City” is softer compared to previous tracks.
Tanaka: Ahh, I was very deliberate about that. Lately, there are more songs that have a more melodious rap where you understand the rhyme after reading the lyrics, rather than freestyle raps off the top of the head.
- Say that you created many pockets of knowledge to draw on through “1ST”, is it something like delving deeper into those pockets?
Tanaka: Yeah, it feels like that.
Kouchi: Personally, I think it’s a huge thing that we were able to have Tsuneta-san write our 5th single. With YOSHIKI-san producing our debut single, fans of rock and hard rock were able to recognise about us, and since Tsuneta-san is from yet another different genre, I think that’s important to us whereby people in a similar creative circle to Tsuneta-san can discover SixTONES. It’s not that we’re breaking boundaries as Johnnys but… through these experiences, I hope many artists will think “I’d like to produce a song for SixTONES”. In order to rise up to those expectations and not disappoint them, I think this a period where we have to put pressure on ourselves to do our best.
Morimoto: For me, the next step isn’t something I’ve really worried about. We’ve been progressing through each stage since “Imitation Rain”, like in a game where each level gets harder. The balance between demand and supply continues to change, so I think we need to understand that clearly and attack each thing separately. SixTONES’ is a group where we’re allowed to do the things we like, in the way we like, but hereafter, when what we want to do doesn’t match what is demanded, I think how flexible our response is will be vital. Progressing forward with that in mind will probably resultantly become the next step.
- You don’t feel discrepancy between what you want to do and what is demanded at the moment?
Morimoto: Let’s see, right now it’s surprisingly… I think songs that we find “this song is cool” and end up recording, are probably ones that the fans too find “cool” and also “like”.
Matsumura: Something that I think personally about our next step… it’s only a small thing though? It’s a small thing but it is to create concerts, albums and singles that have never been seen before in SixTONES’ history.
- That’s not small at all (laughs).
Matsumura: (laughs) Isn’t it? I don’t know… It’s not ideas like “ahh, the evolved form of that” or “I liked that as well so I like this”. I want to create things that are entirely new within SixTONES’ history.
Jesse: Also, I want each of us to continue working solo and grow bigger individually. People might wonder “who’s this guy?” “what other members are there in SixTONES?” and broaden our reach. We’ve come this far with quite established characters, and I think it’s going to be a question of how far we can let people other than our fans recognise that.
Kyomoto: Even as we broaden our activities individually, the musicality and image we all have of SixTONES isn’t that unalike. So even if the direction that we’re each working in are different, our selves as SixTONES and how SixTONES should be is unchanged in a good way.