[Legacy song post] You Key

 

[Legacy Song Post] [Unknown Hit Songs]

Let me bring you back to “Japan Metal Jesus” era, that was the pinnacle of youth, energy and passion for Imari Tones, when we started playing Christian Metal and touring USA/Japan.

 

This song “You Key” was written to be a hit. And it was a hit among our passionate fans.

Let me show you.

 

“You Key” was a progressive superpop song that has a hard rock sound. It has this polyrhythm thing going on while the melody goes super pop.

 

Once again, our music went over the boundary of music genres. It proves that we are (were) different from ordinary metal bands. That is, we usually play hard punching metal and hard rock songs but once in a while we throw super pop songs like this.

 

Yet we were young and still immature. When we looked back we thought “Oh maybe it was too pop, too cheesy”, especially this “indie style” music video. (Possibly the most ridiculous music video we’ve ever made)(We believe music itself was still good.)

 

We played this song live for a couple of years, around 2011-2013. But it was a difficult song to pull off live, at least back then. (Poly-rhythms, dance grooves, and pop style singing. We believe we can do it much better now.)
And soon we went on to “Jesus Wind” era, and started playing heavier songs such as “Repent” and “Jee-You”. Our youthful “Prog-pop” era ended and we went in a more mature direction. This song hasn’t been played since then.

 

Lyrics wise, this song is very spiritual. It’s about the holy power guiding us all to God. Spiritual yet positive. We didn’t mention Jesus in the lyrics but if you listen carefully, you will see it’s about opening the door for Jesus and coming in the light and eternity.

The song title “You Key” was a wordplay for Japanese word “勇気” (yuuki) that means courage and being brave.

 

This song was recorded at CFNI in Dallas Texas, along with “The Concept”. (We recorded those 2 songs while we stayed in Dallas TX back in 2011.) The recording session was set up by our good friend Ken. We are forever thankful. (She can be heard in the background singing.) It was a good session but we remember the recording engineers were not used to record and mix hard rock songs. (The studios were for church music.) After all, we ended up mixing those songs ourselves. (I still remember they said “Wow, you do know how your music is supposed to sound!”)

 

Even though we never had a resource to make it a hit, it was surely a hit song went unnoticed.

This is a “Spiritual progressive pop song” by Imari Tones.
(I mean, musically progressive – such as progressive rock – because some people don’t like the word progressive in the Christian music context😅)

 

Come and taste it.
Who knows? Maybe we will be playing this song on a big stage in the near future!! 😉

 

– Yes, this song is on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and other places.

Spotify link
https://open.spotify.com/intl-ja/track/3n7DQeOqcpiCtOXX2EWBYy?si=178ce712b880402c

 

Bandcamp (Japan Metal Jesus album)
https://imaritones.bandcamp.com/album/japan-metal-jesus

 

Song: You Key
Band: Imari Tones
Genre: Spiritual Progressive Dance Pop Rock (Superpop)
Album: Japan Metal Jesus (2012)