The Recording Directors:
Hashimoto Shin (overall direction)
Taisei (ANGERME & Juice=Juice)
Yamao Masato (Country Girls, Kobushi Factory & Tsubaki Factory)
Kamata Koji (Tsunku♂ songs & Morning Musume ’18)

— “Taiki Bansei” was the first single for S/mileage after the group was renamed to ANGERME, making it a big milestone song for them. Did you already feel confident about the song during its production stage?

Hashimoto: Not only was it their first song after being renamed, it was also the first non-Tsunku♂-produced song we were putting out there.

Nakajima Takui’s original (Nakajima’s ska beat-based version of the song was completed earlier, making ANGERME’s version a cover even though it was released before the Nakajima version) was very powerful, and so our focus was to get the H!P version to sound as funky as possible. We ended up giving it one extra chorus, too, compared to Nakajima’s version. We got the arranger, Suzuki Shunsuke, to tweak the arrangement multiple times and it was recorded using as much live instrumentation as possible. We wanted to make it sound as lively as we could. Not having any solo lines in the song aside from the bridge was also another experiment.

Still, we were very worried if the would accept the song or not. Hearing the audience getting fired-up during the song’s first performance at the Hello!Con was such a relief to us… Having nothing to lose, we also submitted it as our entry for the ending song of “Mecha-Mecha Iketeru!” The fact that it was actually chosen was all thanks to the song’s power. So to us it’s a very a memorable song in many ways.

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Part Eight: “Sukiyaki × Conveyor Belt Sushi = Preparedness to Live”
Writers Yuzuki Asako and Asai Ryo
profile the lyrics of Hello! Project songs!

Song #1: Morning Musume – “Sukiyaki”
(Tsunku/Tsunku/Takahashi Yuichi)

Henkka: Seeing as there doesn’t seem to be an English translation of the lyrics to this song online, let me give you a summary.

“Sukiyaki” is a simple, heartwarming lyric about a girl who is bringing her boyfriend over to meet her family for the first time. It depicts the picture-perfect family as they wait for the boyfriend to arrive. Mom’s busy preparing for dinner — sukiyaki — in the kitchen, the little sister’s running out to buy ingredients that Mom forgot to buy, Dad nervously pretends to look busy reading the newspaper, and the boyfriend misses his train due to absentmindedly worrying if everything will go smoothly. Meanwhile, the protagonist is trying to figure out if her boyfriend would be mad if she was to chicken out and introduce him to her family as merely a “good friend” of hers.

When the boyfriend finally arrives, the whole family immediately takes a liking to him. Despite the dad’s earlier feigned disinterest, he takes a lead in excitedly running their little house party. The boyfriend quickly wins over the mom as well, by eating not two, not three, but four bowls of their dinner. The song ends with the protagonist thinking about how she loves her boyfriend and how reliable he is, while contemplating on how sukiyaki actually represents the “heart of Japan.”

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