Messages

from Tetsuya Komuro

I deeply felt the love for May J. from the entire J-MELO team, including Tsunku♂. I myself was blown away by the energy of Tsunku♂ and the J-MELO staff at this recording. I’m sure May J. felt the same way.

I met with May J. after I wrote the song, and got the impression that she is very wholesome and serious, with a meticulousness in both her vocal ability and her personality. But as we did this recording together, I also noticed that she is searching for a new self, and her true self.

May J. has been fortunate to receive many wonderful songs before this one, but I hope she gets even more of these kinds of opportunities and lots of advice so she can overcome her shyness and reach even greater heights.

from Tshunku

I am delighted with the results of my collaboration with Komuro-san and May J.
First Komuro-san contacted me to tell me, "The song is finished!" and then I started my work. His words to me were, "Go ahead and do as you feel." So I imagined how the whole song would sound as I put together the arrangement.
That's because the overall fullness of a song influences the way I write the lyrics.
Therefore I tried to avoid a "can't see the forest for the trees" or a "can't see the trees for the forest" kind of situation by staying conscious of the whole as I looked at the details.

In doing the arrangement, we stayed conscious of making the most of Komuro-san's melody. May J. is doing the vocal and she always sings beautifully, so I kept the sounds in the backing track to an absolute minimum, and took care to give it the kind of arrangement that lets each and every note in the melody line come to the surface.
After going back and forth a few times the arranger got even more motivated and the track got heavier and more upbeat, so the arranger and I both had to say, "OK, let's hold ourselves back…" and stay calm as we took care to create a cool backing track.

When writing the lyrics, there was one part where I really wanted to build excitement, and that was the block that starts with, "If you can just sing, sing a song…"
At first there were only four measures here, but I wanted to put some passionate lyrics over this melody, so I told Komuro-san, "I'm going to do more repeats!" and decided to put in a refrain.
Doing this allowed me to give more fullness to the lyrics.
Although they would start using the song as the theme in April, my work started from late February or early March, so I had to start writing the lyrics while we were working on the arrangement. Since this would be the theme song for an international program, and since May J. was singing the vocal, I wrote the lyrics in Japanese with the assumption that they would also be sung in English.
So first I came up with Japanese lyrics that perfectly fit the notes and could also be sung just as they were in Japanese.

The next step was to translate the lyrics to English, so in terms of how I fitted the words with the notes, I chose and fitted words that I wouldn't have written if the song were only to be sung in Japanese.
As a result the Japanese lyrics look quite unusual when I read them now. I wrote them but they don't really look like I wrote them, so they ended up really interesting.
Along with the lyrics I wrote the flow and the meanings of words hidden before and after the lyrics, and had the translator look at these when changing them into English. I was a little unsure at first about what to choose for the theme, but I thought about what is always beside the program, and me, and Komuro-san, and May J. – that is dreams. So that's what I decided for the theme.
I believe if we have a dream, we can go on living. That's what I thought back when I was an amateur, and it's what I think today.

I was in the studio during the recording, and May J.'s vocals were wonderful. Her voice is still filled with dreams.
I think that's because even though she has been in the business for a long time, she still has the pure heart of a new artist.
Listening to her sing really refreshed my feelings.
I think that's why we made such a clear-sounding and wonderful song.

I'm looking forward to it making its mark throughout the world!

from May J.

It is an honor for me to take part in this dream collaboration with Tetsuya Komuro and Tsunku♂.
Komuro-san wrote his melody so that "even a child could hum it," with a wonderful blend of warmth and longing that anyone can sing along with. And Tsunku♂'s lyrics speak directly to the listeners and enliven their spirits.
The theme of the lyrics is "dreams," and I hope that everyone, including myself, who is working hard toward their dream, and everyone who is searching for a dream will find it soon, and feel how wonderful having a dream can be.
The message in this song is that you will surely achieve your goals someday as long as you keep on striving and never give up, no matter what happens.
We have recorded both Japanese and English versions, so I hope that listeners both in Japan and throughout the world will sing along.

HAVE DREAMS! Lyrics

song info