I don't know if you have ever met such a singer.
He could not understand his language, but he could be captured the moment he opened his mouth.
Just a few seconds makes you desperate to know him.
So you pick up your phone to search, listen, cycle through...
And just like that, his songs you listen to over and over again.
There is no intersection, but it has inadvertently become your eternal.
The Yonezu Genshi shared today has such significance for me.
Although I knew him late, I didn't miss it.
1
When it comes to Japanese singers, it is natural to avoid Yonezu Genshi.
He is like a fertilized towering tree that has grown rapidly over the years.
The roots of the tree grew from Japan to Asia and even spread to all of Europe and the United States.
He has more than 10 billion-dollar singles on YouTube.
LOSER, Horses and Deer, Orion, Flamingo...
Among them, "Lemon" is 680 million, and "Fireworks" is 440 million in the top two.
He is more like a piece of fragrant steamed bun in China.
As long as he sends songs, the publicity windows of major music platforms always have his place.
He is the Japanese singer with the most fans on any platform.
Even the old songs from 3 years ago can still rank first in the country.
This is how the QQ Music Soar Chart ranks today.
Lemon and LOSER are at number one and number five on the list.
If it is a new song, it is completely understandable, but both songs have been released for more than 3 years.
It can be seen that his music has a great influence in China.
Of course, Rome was not built in a day.
He can have the influence he has now, which is accumulated bit by bit.
His debut solo album "diorama", songwriting, arrangement, instrumental performance, mixing, album concept and cover design were all independently completed by himself, and after its release, it won the sixth place on the ORICON Records Weekly Chart and was selected for the fifth CD Shop Award.
In 2017, the album "DOOTLEG" was released topped the global charts in 23 charts.
At this time, Yonezu Genshi was already very popular in the Japanese circle, but it was still relatively unfamiliar to the general public.
Until the advent of "Lemon", he completely exploded.
The song became the most popular single in Japan in 2018, and he won Artist of the Year as a result.
In the 2019 Oricon Weekly Karaoke rankings, he won the championship for 52 consecutive weeks, breaking the record of "Women in women" after 5 years.
Music dissemination takes time, especially for transnational promotion.
This work has also entered the domestic list many times, and the longest remains for 72 days.
The single has more than 300,000 reviews, and for foreign language songs, he has won very thoroughly.
A few years ago, he was selected by Weekly Modern as one of the "20 Young People Who Will Affect Japan in the Future," ranking ninth.
He was on fire, and it was on fire thoroughly.
2
As a Japanese singer, why is it so popular in China?
What is the charm of his music?
Foreign singers want to become popular in China, and there are undoubtedly two points.
One is that the melody is good, and the other is that the song has depth.
In my opinion, Yonezu Genshi has both.
First, let's talk about the melodic arrangement in his works.
His melody will make people fall in love at first sight, and the first time they hear it, the more they like it.
His music has small but delicate meticulous carvings, as well as bold paragraph arrangements.
Take, for example, the highly sought after Lemon.
He is very familiar with the most comfortable state when people listen to songs, and each time the clever design is unexpected, poking at the hi point.
The song has no prelude, and it takes a lot of courage to come up and sing it directly.
Apparently, Yonezu was confident in the melody of his main song.
The layers of the work are very rich, and there are some variations in each layer.
The first layer, the column chords of the vocals and piano.
The second layer, vocals, piano, guitar.
The third layer, piano, guitar, electronic drums, children's calling.
The fourth floor, applause, piano, guitar, drum beats, metal rubbing.
On the fifth floor, all instruments and musical elements are fused.
The song arrangement spirals upwards, reaching the apex of the sound through the continuous superposition of elements.
Interestingly, at the junction of the main song A and A1, he used a false termination.
A sudden pause can be unpleasant, like someone talking to you halfway through and suddenly leaving.
Fortunately, there were only 4 beats of rest, and when the melody sounded again, the audience began to become more excited.
Don't underestimate these details, the reason why you have been infinitely brainwashed, they are indispensable.
In addition to "Lemon", "Flower Fire" is also a melodic supreme work.
As the theme song of the anime, it is considered to have stolen the limelight.
All I can say is that Yonezu is a melodic genius.
Of course, his melody is not stacked with routine chords, but is reassembled in a limited number of chords.
He relies on the high unity of chords, rhythms, and arrangements to guide the emotions of the songs, and the ups and downs of the melody determine the emotional fluctuations of the listeners.
3
Yonezu Genshi has formed his own set of composition systems in melodic creation.
While we are obsessed with melody, its inner spirit is the medicine for long-term listening.
In his music, someone can hear despair, someone can feel hope.
Regardless of our understanding, he has been expressing himself.
His emotions are full, sometimes negative, sometimes uplifting.
Childhood is not as innocent and full of good memories as many people are.
He was withdrawn, non-verbal, and had almost zero communication with his father.
In the cold atmosphere of life, he once thought of himself as a monster.
What he really opened his heart to the outside was that after learning that he had high-functioning autism, he found that it was not his problem that he had previously been at odds with his family and society, but that the disease was at work.
In this case, LOSER was born.
In the MV, his dance is like drinking fake wine, which makes people scratch their heads.
This state of not being understood is like being a child.
Even if he is full of talent, he does not have a friend around him, and he is endlessly ridiculed.
Although he tells his own misfortune, the intention of the song is not self-deprecating.
He wanted to express that even if he was like a superfluous monster, like a loser, he had to learn to reconcile with himself, say goodbye to the past, and go in a new direction.
Just the other day, he released a brand new EP, one of which is "Death" is also very interesting.
This work was inspired by the "Grim Reaper" in the traditional Japanese form of music and art, Rakugo.
The MV perfectly restores the scene elements in the Rakugo performance, telling the story of a half-hanging doctor who makes a deal with the god of death to help the god of death find the person who will die, but in the end because of greed to help the rich merchant to continue his life, the result is taken away by the god of death.
This work is particularly interesting in terms of background, arrangement, and singing, and changes the style of Yonezu Genshi in the past.
From melody to song idea, he has always maintained his own unique J-pop.
His unique personal experience gives the listener the energy to bring it naturally into his work.
Today, it is not easy to become a Japanese national-level singer and even a world-class singer.
Although life before the age of 20 was not friendly to him, he finally survived the most difficult moment.
God gave him a sour lemon, but he made it into sweet lemon juice.