AIMYON: On previous tours, I would often hear things like "I hope you can finish it" or "Do your best and stay healthy", but on the day of Koshien, I got a lot of "Congratulations". It was a strange feeling, but I started to feel like maybe it would be okay to say to myself, "Maybe I've worked really hard up until now". Maybe it was because Tsurube-san said something like "Please praise me" in his opening remarks, but a lot of people praised me, so I accepted it genuinely and thought to myself, "I've done well".

But this isn't the goal, and I'm not burned out, so I feel like I need to start working hard again from scratch, so that more people can listen to my music and get to know me. I don't know what the right way to go is from here, but I think that making songs and releasing them is the standard for an artist's activities, so I want to keep doing that.

The first release of 2023 is "ai no hana", the theme song for the NHK morning drama "Ranman" which began airing in April. After shooting the music video for "Futaba" released in March last year, when he found out at the airport in Okinawa that he would be in charge of a song for the morning drama, he recalled, "I was just surprised."

AIMYON: Asadora was always on TV when I was a student and would wake up early in the morning to eat dinner with my family, and my parents were also big fans of Asadora. After I found out about this story, I had a chance to go back to my parents' house, and "Chimudondon" was on at the time, and my father's family is from Okinawa, so we were talking about "Is this season's Asadora Okinawa?" and they asked me, "Are you going to do the theme song for Asadora?" and I was shocked! But I shouldn't say it, so I just kind of lied and said, "It seems like the artists have been decided for the foreseeable future." (laughs). But at that time, I thought, "My parents will be happy," and I was excited until the announcement.

"ai no hana," produced by the familiar Yusuke Tanaka, is a universal song that starts with AIMYON acoustic guitar, accompanied by piano and glockenspiel to create a delicate mood, and expands in scale with the addition of string arrangements in the second half. Her singing voice expresses an exquisite warmth that is neither too loud nor too whispery, and it is actually AIMYON 's first song in three beats.

AIMYON: There wasn't much information about the drama beforehand, so I looked at materials from Makino Tomitaro (the botanist who was the model for the main character Makino Mantaro, played by Kamiki Ryunosuke), asked about the image of the opening video, and tried to create various things while gathering detailed information. However, I couldn't decide on something that I thought was "this is it!", and when I discussed it with the staff, we decided that "Maybe it would be better to cut down on the number of words as much as possible." I felt that it wasn't good to get too involved with the story, and thought that lyrics that were vague in a sense, as if looking at things from a broad, bird's-eye view, would be better.

I tend to write lyrics with a lot of words, but I think it would be better if everyone watched the drama and fleshed out the lyrics. I've always wanted people of all ages and genders to listen to my songs, and sometimes a lot of people listened to them without me intending it, but this was the first time I've written a song with the intention of people of all ages and genders listening to it. Of course, I want people to listen to it even after they've watched the morning drama, so I didn't cut back on my originality, and I wrote the song purely with the words and melody that came to me.

Aimyon has produced many hit songs with flower and plant motifs, including her signature songs "Marigold," "Futaba," and "Sakura ga Furu Yoru wa," and she is surrounded by many flowers and plants in real AIMYON, so "ai no hana" is a song that shows her true talent and is full of originality.

AIMYON: People often said to me, "Futaba will bloom and become ai no hana, right?" but that was just a coincidence (laughs). I've always used flowers as a theme, so I thought I might try to move away from that for a while, but this song is about a botanist, so I thought I'd write what I wanted to write without forcing myself. At the end of the lyrics, there's the line "ai no hana for you," but that wasn't the reason for the title. I wrote the whole song once, gave it the title, and then added the final lyrics.

Recently I've been putting titles at the end of songs, and usually I use words in the lyrics as titles, but this time, the chorus repeats "Love, convey love," so when I thought the theme was "love," the first thing that came to mind was "ai no hana." Then, while recording, I thought, "Come to think of it, I haven't said this song is 'ai no hana,'" so I decided to add it at the end.

When it was announced that she would be performing the theme song for "Ranman," AIMYON also shared an anecdote, saying, "I was approached about performing the theme song just as the orchid I had been carefully growing at home had finally formed buds and bloomed purple flowers."

AIMYON It sounds like a lie, but it's true (laughs). (Laughs.) It bloomed so beautifully that I thought, "This is what blooming is all about. It was a gift from someone, and it hadn't bloomed for about three years, but after I heard about "Ranman," a small bud appeared, and I was like, "You're purple? I was like, "You're purple? I like this kind of thing. I feel like it's my destiny.

I often write about my views on life and death, don't I? I think flowers are also recognized as "living things". I think they are easy to link with human emotions, or that they are "human-like", so I think that's why I often use them in my lyrics. When I was writing the song "ai no hana", the lyrics "Laughing in the sunlight" came to mind when I was at home and the light was reflecting off the plants and swaying, and I associated it with Makino-san smiling. The staff member who listened to this song said, "It's good to have it in a textbook, I can imagine everyone singing and crying together", and that made me happy too.

The image of "a song themed on flowers that would appear in textbooks" and the story that "Okinawa was the first place I found out I would be performing the theme song" made me think of "Flowers - Flowers in the Hearts of Everyone". Just as that song is loved by so many people because it expresses the joys and sorrows of life with lyrics like "Cry, laugh", "ai no hana" also describes the partings and sorrows that inevitably come in life, and on top of that, it sings "Tears are for tomorrow, the seeds of new flowers" and "Tears will never wither, a circle that connects to tomorrow", which is why I think it is a masterpiece that conveys the weight of loving someone more realistically.

AIMYON: At first, I wrote it from the protagonist's point of view, but I gradually shifted to the idea of featuring the people around him who support the free-spirited protagonist. In the materials I received from Makino at first, it said that his wife had a hard time, so I thought that by writing from his wife's point of view, I could express the perspective of the people around him. I'm sure it was very difficult and there were difficult times, but I still thought that the line "I don't hate the present, the present" was "love." I thought "Maybe these words are a bit harsh to listen to in the morning," so I thought of other words, but I thought these lyrics were good, so I left them as they were.

As for "Love that falls short in words"... I think the lyrics came out with the same feeling as "You in your straw hat", but I've never seen an expression of love that is adequately expressed in words, or rather, I have the image that an expression of love is something that is lacking. I think that even the love songs I've written so far have been about the awkwardness of not being able to express things in words. I also say "Kiss me because the words "I love you" aren't enough" (laughs). I think "There aren't enough words in this world to express my love for you" is the greatest expression of love.

The CD single's B-side includes "Your Heart" (pronounced "kareshiumu"), which was produced and arranged by Shigekazu Aida, also known as Aigon, who has worked on "calcium" and "From the corner room on the 4th floor Floor". With Aimyon's AIMYON wordplay and clapping throughout the song, it's sure to be a hit at live shows.

AIMYON: The title is a play on the lines, "Maybe you're irritated because you don't have enough calcium," and "Doesn't it matter whether I'm there or not?" I could write as many lyrics as I want (laughs). The vocal recording went by in no time, and it's really fun to work with Aigon on this kind of "broken and mischievous" sound in a good way.

Currently, Aimyon is holding her long-running tour "AIMYON TOUR 2023 -Magical Bathroom-", which will include a total of 40 shows, including additional performances. One of AIMYON 's live shows is her frank conversations with the audience, and of course, it's a special experience when the whole venue sings together. With the long-awaited lift of the ban on singing out loud, this tour is sure to fully showcase AIMYON 's charm.

AIMYON: The distance between us and the audience is different from the arena tour, and we can talk to each other this time, so I hope it will be a rough live performance in a good sense, but since there are so many shows, I hope we can make corrections each time and get better. During the coronavirus pandemic, more artists didn't do live performances, and we couldn't prove that "live performances are really good," but when the voices came back, I thought, "This is the right way to do it after all." My stance of doing live performances to get people to know me and listen to my music hasn't changed since the old days, and I want to respond to the fans who say, "I want to see you" through live performances. I want the audience to enjoy themselves, like, "Let go of three years of frustration!"

Interview & Text / Atsushi Kaneko