Originally Posted by ShadyNook
i'm impressed how Ringo's concerns directly address what many people on this forum have mentioned. Her desire to screw the band and do a song with just her and a synth is funny.
she doesnt even think Noudoteki is very catchy. that sounds familiar. its like she's one of us.
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I don't think that is what she meant about 3min. We already knew that she wrote the song and brought it to Jihen as a practice song, to get them to where she wanted them to be in order to try other material. The lyrics she wrote were mostly nonsense, to fit the music, and it was used as a rehearsal song, until it was chosen for the CM and for the single. Ringo is always going to be Ringo's harshest critic, and considering japanese is a language of constantly belittling yourself to sound polite, I don't think Ringo literally means she thinks the song is crap. She would never have released it if that was the case, I think she is just being polite. In japanese it is often the case when you give a gift to say something along the lines of "this is a rather boring and trite gift, but please accept it." Most people don't really think that, of course, but its the custom to place yourself below in order to honor your intended target and act polite.
in fact, she has said the same thing about every single they've had more or less. She said, concerning OSCA, that it was a song she thought that would be disliked amongst Japanese listeners and didn't expect it to do well (this was before its release), and for Shuraba she said that she had given some demos to the television producers for show it was featured on and was shocked when they picked Shuraba, which she didn't think they'd like.
3min is an awesome song, it IS groovy and I don't get the hate for it, but hey, whatever.
the fact that Ringo puts so much though and effort into her work is truly a blessing. The theme for variety was artistic cohesion as a band, so she wanted to let people be comfortable, so they would bond and meld together, but for this album she seemed to really want to push them and herself, to be as experimental as possible. I hope they don't keep the leftovers for the next album, I'd be interested in seeing where they would go from here. The comments about being disappointed to follow jihen as they find their legs are interesting, but this is the way I look at it. Kyouiku is a different animal because it was almost entirely ringo compositions and had two different members, so at this point its a moot point. Adult was the first Phase 2 album but again, mostly Ringo compositions and Ringo calling the shots. Variety was almost the debut of Tokyo Jihen as an actual band and not just Ringo and Session Musicians Phase 2, so a lot changed and didn't work for most of us. In a way this is almost like their real sophmore effort as a band. reading the reviews makes me think of a lot of things that are often said about artist's second albums, the sophmore slump etc (which usually fail because they can't top the success of the first. in this case that doesn't apply, but often artists often venture into unexpected experimental categories, as would be the case here). Either way, if there is at least one new track on the album that you like, I'd say its worth it, especially considering a lot of us aren't even paying for it, so...