coolest/best Shiina lyrics -- translated
 

Now, I'm not one for translations of Shiina songs, in fact I don't care what she sings and would rather not understand what shes saying. People say she has super-good lyrics, and this is one of those very rare occasions where that's good enough for me and I'll take their word for it.

So now ITT, those translation folks that are into it to post their favorite, certain Shiina lyrics that made em go "aw snap!" when they realized what she was saying.

I'm a bit curious.

I was pretty surprised when I found Kabukichou was about a mother who turned her daughter into a prostitute.

Always thought it was about a mother who was a prostitute and then left leaving her daughter to replace her? :huh:

When I first heard Remote Controller I thought, "This so can't be about a Remote." I guess the song is more about her life being caotic and not being able to change (the channel so to speak)?

I wonder if her ex-hubbie is inspiration for alot of those bitter lyrics?

I love how abstract all of her lyrics are. Maybe they just seem that way because of the nature of the Japanese language.

my aww snap moment happened when I found that alot of her lyrics sound suicidal. I'm just waiting for her to cover "I hate myself and want to die"

A lot of Japanese lyrics in general are abstract like that IMO. You don't find a lot of "I love you and I wanna hold your hand into the sunlight -ooo hoooooooo"

Using frecklegirl's translations, I feel like I've come at least a bit closer to my favorite songs... My lyric fav's have to be Odaiji ni, Sid to Hakuchuumu, Sakana, Aisaika no Choushoku and Toki ga Bousou Suru.

I like most of KSK lyrics because it's like a clean prose poem.

Actually I loved writing the lyrics on the white paper and memorized some sentence to use it in the case I get a question about what's your favorite poem.

Other than that I like Toumei Ningen and Rakujitsu, especially " I met you incidentally and loved you as if it had to be, and got to meet the setting sun." in Rakujitsu. I would like to say it to someone when my life meet the setting sun. (Of course for the perfections I shouldn't receive a comment from the someone " The worst thing in my life was I met you by accident." )

I've always loved the lyrics to Yattsuke Shigoto, and the way she sings it on the KSK version complements the content of the song perfectly.

Looking at the lack of replies to this thread, I guess I'm among the majority of fans (or so it seems like) on this forum who don't really care for her lyrics.

Maybe that's why her English songs bother me so much. When I suddenly can understand what she's actually singing, it distracts me from concentrating on her music.

It's tricky talking about SR lyrics. I don't think of them in English terms (unless they're in English, natch). No matter how good a translation is, I know something's missing, some poetic quality that is uniquely Japanese.

Having said that, I love Ringo's wordplay *in Japanese*. Her love of symmetry is no gimmick. Like the first couple verses of "Nyuusui Nagai":

jibun no sekai wo tobidasu yuuki wo moteta akatsuki ni
ima made tsuita kudaranu uso wo bika site kudasaru?
demo tabun muri hirou ga koete iru

tanin no kitai wo uketomeru ishi wo moteta akatsuki ni
tsuranuite kita kudaranu rinri wo mitomete kudasaru?
mata onaji koto kurikaeshite iru

Some people don't like romanization, but until I'm proficient enough in Japanese to read advanced kanji, I like romanized lyrics because they show off how words *sound*. You don't need to be incredibly fluent in Japanese to see how beautifully symmetrical those above lyrics are.