Before we get into “Nabeshima” mode, I just want to post one more music video from our previous album.
We made a little music video and I want to tell you the story behind the song.
It’s a song from “Overture” album, the last album from [Tone, Hassy, Jake] lineup and the first Christian album we did with Japanese language.
This song called “Cat Licks”, I wrote it in Summer of 2016.
Just before the presidential election of the United States that year.
I wrote this song while watching facebook wall, watching my American friends posting and arguing about their politics. Right people only believing in their Right things and Left people only believing in their Left things, each side referring to those fake news of their own side. (If I remember correctly, there was no such word as “fake news” back then. That was a bit later.)
Now I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. For ordinary Japanese people, I look like a crazy person. But that taught me about how to believe. What “to believe” really means.
So I felt like many people were having a wrong idea about believing things. That inspired me to write this song.
Funny thing is I wrote this song in Japanese.
Because “Overture” was a Japanese album and also my English skill is limited to simple stuff.
However, by now, those conspiracy theories are very popular in Japan, too.
Now don’t get me wrong.
I love conspiracy theories.
Because they are very good entertainment.
Fake news and conspiracy theories.
They are doing this one thing: Giving people what they want.
They are good entertainment because after all that’s what entertainment is all about. They are popular because they give people what they want.
However, while I love entertainment, I don’t think it’s appropriate to make real world judgement based on these entertainment things.
If you believe in Jedi, that’s okay. We believe in Jesus, too.
But you have to tell the difference between real prophets and false ones. Like telling the difference between Jedi and Sith. (People supported Sith over Jedi at one point in the movie, am I right?)
So here is our “sarcastic” protest song about this internet age.
Musically, this is not a heavy metal song AT ALL.
Because “Overture” album was not a heavy metal album. It was a “sentimental” album because it was the last album with [Tone, Hassy, Jake] lineup.
This song has “indie rock” type of clean sound, which I actually love so much.
It’s just a song and it’s just a little cute song.
But we always wanted to make a video and make a statement about this “fake news”, “conspiracy theory” and current status of “social media” world.
I did it just by myself because this is a song done by our previous lineup, also because “quarantine time”. (Even though half of the footage was recorded back in January.)
It’s a homemade indie video just like usual but I think it’s fun.
We hope you enjoy it.
For the lyrics and English translation, click here.