Gyakuyunyuu ~Kouwankyoku~ (Self Covers album) and May/June Tour 2014

[Nimh]

My copy arrived last week. Will give it a listen at my friend's place (superior sound system).

Came with a poster, rolled up. Very nice. No sense hanging it up without framing it, though.

[Nimh]

I've given the CD two listens. A lot of the tracks are sticking in memory, giving me lots of pleasant recall. I am amazed at some of the variations Ringo worked into this. Talk about overachievement!

Seriously, it did not need to be this good. This is the very opposite of a knock-off or cash-in. Maybe the concept was a bit of a shortcut for her, but it matches Utaite Myori, at the very least.

I want to go over other people's responses, which I only glossed over before listening to the CD myself.

[a_grumble_cake]

I really wish she would stop singing in English, you can hear her struggling to pronounce words correctly and it's really distracting.

[FadedSun]

Originally Posted by a_grumble_cake

I really wish she would stop singing in English, you can hear her struggling to pronounce words correctly and it's really distracting.

Completely disagree. Her English pronunciation is pretty damn good if you ask me.

[deadgrandma]

Yeah, her English has been good for a while now. She ain't like Sigma anymore...

[fluffiethesock]

I'm with grumble cake -- I find myself cringing during most of her English tracks, and I feel like it's gotten worse over the years. The English lyrics may make more sense these days, but the way she pronounces certain words/sounds is often awkward.

I'd love to see Ringo live one day, but if she ever does go overseas to the English-speaking world to find an audience there (with her English songs), I honestly think I'd be embarrassed for her. Of course, there have been other successful musicians with less-than-perfect pronunciation who have done well, so I'd be curious to see how people responded to her.

[Nimh]

I don't think it's so much her pronunciation of English that's a problem, but the actual choice of English words.

I can read the lyrics to Kachuu no otoko 59 times, and I still won't be able to figure out what the hell it's supposed to mean. Literally.

[deadgrandma]

^I always thought Ringos lyrics were on the more cryptic-ish side in general anyway...

At least they're not as bad as Tori Amos lyrics.

[kalmia]

While I do agree that he English has improved incredibly over the past fifteen years, I can say that there are only a handful of her English tracks that I actually really like. Sports and Discovery were probably the best eras for English Ringo tracks for me. Carnation is even much better in English in my opinion.

I do prefer her singing in Japanese. The language changes the feel of a song even before the accent. English and Japanese just have a different flow to them. English songs and Japanese songs will never be the same.

[Scribble R]

As many times as I've sung the words 'Just say it more than twice, repeat it every night' compulsively recently, her English singing is still kind of jarring.

Re: June 2014 shows

This is definitely a setlist that would appeal to a hardcore Ringo fan, but I think most of the selections have been performed better (both band-wise and Ringo) somewhere else. So Forbidden Games has to be the song of the show for me. Before now I'd considered it a more basic version of Doppelganger or Jusui Negai, but the panicky way she sings it here definitely gives the song its own identity. Roudousha is Miss Congeniality.