Okay so in my limited time here I have grasped a couple things from some of the long time listeners of shiina. I have also come to some conclusions on my own. Now this this thread could be a total crock of malarkey , or it could be dead on. I have no idea, its just a speculation thread that I was thinking about earlier today.
Now imo the first 2 shiina albums were much more rock. And her second 2 albums were much more non-rock (not including her cover album, which I will talk about as well). Please keep in mind these are relative terms, and should not be analyzed as if the only genre she existed in was rock and non-rock. Now this is excluding tokyo jihen, I'm mainly talking about shiina as an artist.
Some people have different opinions on why, but it is evident that her style has changed in flavor over her career. Some enjoy the change, some dislike the change, some don't care, they are just along for the shiina ride. But I wish to raise the question,
why has her style changed? This will be what we are speculating on my friends.
So first off, I will post my theory.
I believe that her style is changing because she is having more freedom with her music (as a seasoned artist), than she was in her beginning days (as a record label's whore, doing whatever the company said she had to to sell records). You may be saying, jigen you are a nut case, but at least let me give some reasons
.
Now I will bring my first point up, her demos. Now I am no music industry person and because of that I may not fully understand the purpose of a demo tape. I think a demo tape is something an artist makes up, showcasing their style, and presents it to a record label in hopes that they will like it enough to sign them. If my definition is wrong, or off, then my whole theory is shot to hell, he he he.... Well as I listened to her demos, I noticed, man these are really good, I love you ringo-hime. But then I started thinking why I liked them. So I paid attention to the instrumentation. The majority of the demos are first off piano (keyboard) based, and secondly, sound much much more non-rock than her 1st album. I would say the dominate instrument in MM is the guitar... The percussion parts of some of her songs were of a jazzy or at least of a non-rock nature, something that didn't really come back till KSK . I would say all the songs on MM and SS had either a rock sounding percussion, or a techno one, or none at all. Anyways shiina thought, in her young naiveness, that the best way to represent herself was what she put on her demo tapes. So in listening to what is on the demo tapes and listening to MM, I think the two styles are vastly different. And even the songs put on MM and her later albums, sound much rounder than their sharp album counterparts from the demos. A good number of the songs were built entirely from the keyboard, but in more than half of the songs on MM she has guitar in her songs. Why? If she rarely had guitars in her demo, why have them in her album? Well from all the songs from the demo that did not get picked or released at a later time, most of them were of a non-rock nature (not saying at all that non-rock songs were not picked, just saying that the rock songs were picked in a much higher percentage. Quantity wise, much less rock should have been picked).
Second off, the type of music shiina listened to. In the biography thing on shiina it stated something I thought was very interesting. It was a comparison of shiina and utada. It said shiina listened to black music (jazz) as a youth, then made white music as an artist, whereas utada listened to white music as a youth and ended up making black music (R&B ) as an artist. Although the types of black music were different, its an interesting comparison (although in japan "black music" is an umbrella term, meaning more than just a couple of genres). So to me, the demo reflects that shiina was trying to make it playing some black music ( some R&B stuff and some jazz stuff), but in MM it is primarily rock. So to me if shiina was told that she could not make the type of music she liked and listened to in the beginning of her career, then she would do it when she gained more artistic freedom.
Third off, lets look at her cover album. If we look at a cover album, it not only tells what kind of music the artist listened too, but also how they envision the song. Now it has 2 discs, kameda dics and the shiina disc. The kameda disc is far more rock themed. The shiina disc is far more jazzy/R&Bish. The shiina disc has only 1 rock themed song, and maybe 1 pop themed song... It would seem to me that shiina was beginning to start recording the stuff she wanted to (not just the shiina disc, but the cover album as a whole).
Fourth off, does she main guitar? I get the impression that she is a pianist. I really have no idea what instrument shiina mains. Is she a prince (the artist) type of artist, who has mastery over a large variety of instruments, or is she a 1 maybe 2 instrument artist. I would say she is a pianist from the little I've seen of her. So why in the world would a pianist start playing a guitar and start to rock out with her figurative cock out? I think it was label pressure, not that she didn't like rock, or didn't wanted to get near her guitar playboys, but why in the world would someone who made their whole demo from the keyboard debut with a guitar in her hands? I would say the guitar is more closely associated with her than anything, take her video game character the SEXY I-NO!!!!!
Plus nothing gets me going more than a sweaty shiina playing a guitar, too sexy!!!! But still, is it even an instrument she is proficient with?
Fifth off, look at her b-sides.
Her b-sides seem to be of a lot less rock orientation than her a-sides. Although I am not sure what the purpose of a b-side is, I know her b-sides are less rock. I'm sure if I did the math, rock b-sides would be out numbered by the non-rock ones.
So I just think that shiina change in flavor is much more a representation of her having more creative influence in her music. As I stated before I am a huge fan of her new flavor
Oh yea, I said a lot of things without going back and checking if they were true, plus some of my theory is based off of stuff I am not 100% certain of...
Well anyways, I'm going on too long without really going back and patching up the holes in my theory. I am sure it will be shot to pieces, but at least I know I can start some discussion with this one (hopefully, lol). So anyone care to comment on my theory of the real style of shiina?