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02. 七回歌うといいことがある歌

Posted by H!P46, 10 February 2009 · 1385 views

あやっぺ
Thanks to the new module that allows choosing a custom entry date for blogs I'm setting this one back four hours from when I really posted it! <3

作詞: 久保田洋司 作曲: 斎藤悠弥 編曲: cosma

Song Credits

Another familiar name. A very familiar name for me because I couldn't stop raving about him for the lyrics he provided for three songs on the last album. Those were 今はレットイットビー, 風に任せて and 引越せない気持. I've enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) all the Aya songs he's written lyrics for. 斎藤さん has composed a few songs for other acts associated with Hello! Project like Buono!, MilkyWay and 久住小春 the first for the anime しゅごキャラ! and the latter two for きらりん☆レボリューション. His experience isn't just limited to anime songs though. He composed another Aya song not too long ago, one that was written by 久保田さん in fact. I wonder if anyone can name it? People who I've already told can't play along though! XD The results of Googling 'cosma' usually come with 'Vladamir' attached. I couldn't find anything on who it is.

Title

I still think this is the best song title ever bar none. It got a good reaction at STB139 and I think most people were in disbelief at it. Aya herself said it's an interesting/funny title but I think it's far beyond merely interesting. Why seven? It's generally considered a lucky number although that's more of a Western thing. Aya, like many Japanese people, considers eight to be her lucky number. Western superstitions have passed over to Japan though. Some tall buildings don't have a fourth floor (it skips from third to fifth) and some even skip from twelve to fourteen because of the Western superstition of unlucky thirteen. 久保田さん has written seven songs for Aya to date though, at least seven confirmed and released songs. Three are on this album, three are on her previous album and also the song that I mentioned 斎藤さん composed. I've translated it with lyrics I got on the internet so it might be inaccurate on that front but I'll probably upload after this bunch anyway.

Foreword

I've translated some lines in weird segments so I've marked them with | so you can follow.

七回歌うといいことがある歌
The Song That When You Sing Seven Times Good Things Happen


雲に隠れた 十六夜の月
The moon of the sixteenth night concealed by the clouds
それがいいんだと 誰かが言った
Somebody once said that's a good thing

何も見えない 夜空見上げて
Looking up to a sky where nothing can be seen
もの思いの 帰り道です
It's an anxious road home

願っても 願っても | そう簡単に
Even if I wish
叶わないことほど 願っています
I'm wishing for something that won't come true so easily

七回歌ったら いいことがあるという歌を
聞いたことがありますか あなたは
Have you heard the song they say good things happen when you sing it seven times?
七回歌ったら いいことがあるというけど
いいことって どんなことがあるのでしょうね
They say good things happen when you sing it seven times but what things might "good things" be?

十五夜じゃなく 十六夜の月
The moon of the sixteenth night, not the fifteenth night
それもいいねと 誰かが言った
Somebody once said it's still a good thing

少し欠けてる思いを胸に
見上げてみた | 帰り道です
I looked up at my incomplete feelings within
There's my road home

満たされることなんて そうはないけど
It is not something that will be completed
こんな夜もいいなと 思っています
I wonder if a night like this is just as good

七回歌ったら いいことがあるという歌を
口ずさんだことがあるでしょうか
Have you sung to yourself the song that when you sing it seven times good things happen?
七回歌ったら いいことがあるというけど
いいことって あなたにはどんなことですか
Though they say good things happen when you sing it seven times, what does "good things" mean to you?

七回歌ったら いいことがあるという歌を
聞いたことがありますか あなたは
Have you heard the song they say good things happen when you sing it seven times?
七回歌ったら いいことがあるというけど
いいことって どんなことがあるのでしょうね
They say good things happen when you sing it seven times but what things might "good things" be?

Thoughts?

十六夜 means the night of sixteenth but 十六夜 refers to the moon of that night. Whenever I mention 十六夜 it will be the latter of those two.

The sixteenth night is the day after a full moon and I actually purposely delayed posting this until the sixteenth, which is today... February 10th. In the lunar calendar, the first is new moon and as a result a full moon is always on the fifteenth. 十六夜の月 was the sixteenth single from w-inds. Somebody obviously saw some significance in making a their sixteen single about the sixteenth, something that didn't happen with this song otherwise it would have been seventh on the album. That song is a pain though because it made looking up the significance of the day after a full moon that much more difficult. I didn't come up much in my search though and I wades through a lot of Google results! It wasn't really that useful anyway. The best thing I found out was that 十六夜 is sometimes called 既望. is an alternative name for 十五夜の月 or 満月 and means 'previously', as in "previous a full moon" . It's a homonym of 希望 which means 'wish(es)'. However, 十四夜の月 is called 幾望 which is also a homonym of 希望 so what little joy at finding significance was soon washed away!

I actually spent most of the time on this entry trying to find the significance of a cloud-covered 十六夜 though. I found nothing! My best guess is that the night after a full moon means that the moon is gradually waning and that analogies can be applied to that. More about that later though. A cloud covered 十六夜 means that you can't see it... a good thing like a sort of "out of sight, out of mind" thing? If anyone has any knows why it would be significant, please step forward. My brain isn't working anymore!

The second verse bring about the idea of navigating by the night sky but it's not really that. It's not quite a nautical reference because mariners tended to rely more on the stars than the moon but the moon does reflect a lot of light. A full moon reflects about 12% of sunlight back to Earth and 十六夜 reflects slightly less than that. If it's cloud covered then that's a lot of light that's not getting down to the street level! If you've ever walked somewhere unlit at night during a full or nearly full moon then you'll know just how bright it really is. Better still is if you've walked down the same unlit place under a new moon and your realise how much difference it really makes. But we now have a narrator walking home in the dark and it's not scary as such but it's not a situation you want to find yourself in often. I don't mean to be sexist but I'm going back down the road of the narrator being a girl.

Here's were I'll take a trip down Imagination Lane, a place I like to visit quite a lot. In the second verse the girl was walking down a dark path but if we take that less literally and more metaphorically, she's progressing along an unknown life path. It's the situations you find yourself in when you feel lost and are not sure where to go. Pretty good metaphor I think. I can only guess at the thing that won't be easily granted but some English clichés come to mind like "love's a hard game to play" or "nothing in this life worth having comes easily". My guess is that it's somebody's heart and even though she's wishing for it, she knows that it's not that simple.

I don't believe the 'you' in the chorus is about the boyfriend but more of a rhetorical device like the 'they' I mentioned in the last paragraph. In fact, it's possible to see it as the narrator talking, or thinking, to and addressing herself. In this sense I feel that they are similar to the choruses 今はレットイットビー in that the questions are slightly rhetorical. I was going to say "remarkably similar" but stopped myself because the two songs were written by the same lyricist after all. Maybe less so in this song but the questions are still quite difficult to answer. The two variations of the chorus are quite simple so I won't need to touch on them again.

The third verse reiterates that the focus is the sixteenth night rather than the fifteenth. Full moons have a long association with , myths and legends and are viewed as culturally positive. When the Chinese have 中秋節, the Koreans have 추석 and the Vietnamese have Tết Trung Thu, the Japanese have 月見. That'd be the fifteenth (full moon) of the eighth month of the lunar calendar. The Japanese wiki on 月見 justifiably points out that the West is more suspicious of the moon and gives a couple of examples like lunacy and werewolves to prove that point. But it's not about that special full moon, it's the night after which although it doesn't have all this fanfare surrounding it, is still a good thing.

少し欠けてる思い generally means "thoughts that are slightly incomplete", like most of mine! :lol: However, 思い has a lot of different meanings and even more if you look at the 国語辞典. I chose the one about emotional feelings for a particular reason (other than to fit with my interpretation). 思い in the means they are in the . In a few of the ダブル レインボウ entries I mentioned that 心 is both 'heart' and 'mind' but when 胸 is explicitly mentioned over then there's little doubt. It's even the same in English because we follow our heart... that's more to do with impulse than thought which would seem to ruin my effort to talk more about thoughts in this entry. Does it? Probably but the verse is about finding answers within yourself, the metaphorical road home.

Onto the bridge and when something is incomplete the usual tendency is to complete it again. However, the 思い mentioned in the preceding verse are going the other way. They are fading. This little passage is very clever because it's also another reference to 十六夜の月 which, being at the first stage of a waning moon is ever so slightly less than complete. The reason I delayed posting was so I could take a picture of the moon. There was no guarantee that it wouldn't be covered by clouds like in the first verse which is why I was so impressed with tonight's crystal clear sky even though it was freezing! However, it was lingering behind some trees for most of the evening so I had to wait until 9pm until I could get a good shot. On the left in the picture below is the full moon from 07.08.28 and on the right is our friend 十六夜 from tonight. I've rotated the images so it's easier to compare them (the moon wobbles a lot) but ignore the difference in colour. That's cause by a combination of atmospheric conditions and camera settings. What I'm long-windedly pointing out though is the shadow and slight flattening on the right hand side of the right hand image.
Posted Image
When describing this moon, the words 少し欠けてる are usually used. That's how slight incomplete the 思い in this context is.

There's a song that immediately sprung to my mind for this part. I don't know how to romanise Chinese but it's called 月亮代表我的心. Chinese being similar to English in grammatical order makes it pretty straightforward to translate: The moon, Represents, My, Heart. I listened to it all the time when I was younger so it's a really nostaligic song but the point is that in this song (I'm back to talking about 七回歌うといいことがある歌 although it relates to 月亮代表我的心 as well) the moon represents the narrator's heart. The moon is waning so even though it's so very nearly complete, the cycle is moving in the opposite direction and more and more of the darkness creeps over the Earth-facing side as time goes by. In other words it's fading and will eventually disappear.

Then it's onto two choruses to finish. Lovely song even though I think it's about moving on. The thing I like about this moon phase metaphor is that after waning to a new moon, it will wax to a full moon again. I tend not to think about it inevitability of the moon waning again after that though. I'm not that much of a pessimist!

The title of the song is 七回歌うといいことがある歌 but the line in the song is 七回歌ったらいいことがあるという歌. They are essentially the same but there is a subtle difference. In the title there's an nuance of inevitability that good things will necessarily happen when the song is sung seven times. On the other hand, the in the lyric the nuance is that good things will happen after you've sung the song seven times and not a second before. It's not a huge difference and in this context it doesn't make any real difference but it's handy to know if you're studying Japanese. Conditionals are quite complicated.

Oh, and this song is about the song that when you sing seven times good things will happen but the title of the song is the song that when you sing seven times good things will happen so technically this is it! :good: If anyone has a go at singing it seven times, let me know what happens! XD

For those curious, the singer of the song 月亮代表我的心 that I mentioned earlier is the late great Teresa Teng, legend throughout the CJKV countries. Aya did some weird experimental jazz cover with 平山みき of her 時に流れに 身をまかせ for 歌ドキ which really didn't work. Miki covered it several times in her shows with a lot more success. For example, this is from her 夢で逢えたら show. Teresa Teng also released a Chinese version of that song but the Japanese version was the original. It's not a direct translation but the songs do have pretty similar meanings. Absolutely beautiful song(s) though I slightly prefer the Japanese version, and not just because I understand it slightly better but also because it flows slightly more fluidly.

So many words... can you tell I like the moon?
:P

Singing Style

Just like in 結婚しない二人, Aya provides the chorus herself for this song but it's much less obvious. If you pay attention you'll hear it throughout the whole song but it's most just standard backing rather than harmonisation. It sort of fills out her voice and make it a bit more meaty. The easiest parts to hear it are the end of the bridges but it's there pretty much always there. If you listen to choruses you should be able to hear two Aya voices throughout but where there are long drawn out notes it sounds like the lead vocals sing short notes while the backing vocals continue for longer. It starts off as quite a full note with the two together then trails off with that tremolo finishing off alone. Not much else to say about the vocals in this song. Are two Aya's better than one? Is asking the same rhetorical question twice going to produce an answer? <3

Musical Style

The first song on the album that was previewed at STB139. It's had the Naked Songs treatment but in reverse, going from simplified to full bells and whistles, which is probably a phrase I should have reserved for track 4, boomboomboom. The STB139 versions were actually part of the evolution of the song. It was performed at three of the six shows, the first two being on the same day. At those two there was only an acoustic guitar as accompaniment but two weeks later, at the final show, piano and drums were added and the guitar was jazzed up a bit during the chorus. The most immediately noticeable change in the album version is the replacement of the guitar as the most prominent instrument with the piano. The most obvious addition is the huge brass complement but there's also woodwind in there. The listed wind instruments are tenor sax, trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone, horn, flute and oboe. That's a lot of wind! ^^; It serves to the jazz element of the song though. That evolution from a plain acoustic song through to jazz is interesting in its own right.

If you want to hear the STB139 versions, you can download them below.

08.10.26 Afternoon Show
08.10.26 Evening Show
08.11.09 Evening Show

Romaji (aka The Anxious Road Home)

nana kai utau to ii koto ga aru uta

kumo ni kagareta izoyoi no tsuki
sore ga ii n da to dare ka ga itta

nani mo mienai yozora miagete
mono omoi no kaeri michi desu

negatte mo negatte mo sou kantan ni
kanawanai koto hodo negatteimasu

nana kai utattara ii koto ga aru to iu uta wo
kiita koto ga arimasu ka anata wa
nana kai utattara ii koto ga aru to iu kedo
ii koto tte donna koto ga aru deshou ne

juugoya ja naku izayoi no tsuki
sore mo ii ne to dare ka ga itta

sukoshi kaketeru omoi wo mune ni
miagetemita kaeri michi desu

mitasareru koto nante sou wa nai kedo
konna yoru mo ii na to omotteimasu

nana kai utattara ii koto ga aru to iu uta wo
kuchizusanda koto ga aru deshou ka
nana kai utattara ii koto ga aru to iu kedo
ii koto tte anata ni wa donna koto desu ka

nana kai utattara ii koto ga aru to iu uta wo
kiita koto ga arimasu ka anata wa
nana kai utattara ii koto ga aru to iu kedo
ii koto tte donna koto ga aru deshou ne


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Great JOB, u see i tried to translate the whole songs but i was>> XD SO MUCH KANJI. neverless i did translate this title "Nanakai Utau to Ii Koto ga Aru Uta" (the Seventh Songs that i sing) also hit the jackpod when i translate "unmarried couple" & saw yours i was happy *still learning japanese* XD so the whole other titles that i translate is "Omoi Afurete" (overflowing or filled with Feelings) , "Shinju" (pearl) and "Kizuna" (bond). XD

keep up the good work, i always enjoy your song translations/review specialy when it comes about aya XD .
Thanks for your words. I'm glad you enjoy reading these but remember that I'm still learning Japanese as well so we might both be wrong! XD Good to see an Aya fan reads these though. More effort goes into the Aya entries than the Miki ones but they get less feedback. It might be a factor that I tend to announce the Miki entries in the Miki thread but then again, it could just be because Mik is more interesting as a person! XD

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01. 結婚しない二人
02. 七回歌うといいことがある歌
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