Active as both a fashion designer and a model, MEG has also been making great strides as a musician. “OK,” her new song, has been receiving attention, and what’s more, her unexpected choice of partner for this release is Nakata Yasutaka of capsule, the most in-demand producer of the moment. A familiar face to those in the club music scene, Nakata’s sound and MEG’s sweet voice are without a doubt the perfect match. Sure to accelerate the fusion of pop and club music, this is the catchiest number out right now!
What made you decide to become a singer? As a child, I vaguely wanted to be someone who could express something. I always loved making things, and I liked drawing. From those creative options, music felt the most familiar to me. It was less like my specific dream than something I just naturally ended up in a place where I could pursue.
Please tell us your favorite artists or any artists you admired in the past. When I was in middle school, I liked western music, especially oldies; I often listened to singers like Neil Sedaka and France Gall. On my last single, I covered “Koi no Bakudan” by Anzai Maria, but there’s a lot of Japanese pop I like from that time period as well. If I think about it now, I like the kind of melodies you hear in kayokyoku, which might be the common thread between all of them. And I was a typical kid who watched a lot of TV, so I thought of singers as something like “those people inside the TV” — I feel like I never thought far enough about it to see them as something I could dream about for myself. But in one way or another, I pictured that as a faraway line of work, sparkling and fresh and always full of some hidden excitement.
When did you begin to take an interest in dance music? Ever since I debuted in 2002, I’d mostly sung ballads and covers, but when I was given the opportunity to appear at WIRE [Japan’s largest indoor rave, organized annually by Ishino Takkyu of Denki Groove] in 2005, I experienced firsthand how the whole of Yokohama Arena responded to the same beat and realized that this must’ve been what I’d wanted to do all along. I don’t want to appeal to people’s emotions; I want to share them. To throw something out there and have it come back. It hit me that I’d never really understood that until then. When I thought about how to make a more enjoyable experience for the people who came to my shows, I thought it’d have to be this kind of music, so I think I’ve been getting energy and ideas from that invisible game of catch in my more recent work.
I’d like to talk about your new song “OK.” What sort of image does this song have for you, to give a simple explanation? In a word, it’s basically a fun song, and it’s a single I have no doubts about. And because I changed labels so that many more people could hear it, maybe there was an element of breaking free and moving forward in that, too. At least to me, the song, the arrangement, and the cover art all feel collected together into one cohesive image. The producer, Nakata [Yasutaka]-kun of capsule, works extremely quickly, and we’re actually working on an album together at the moment, but if I really think about it, I haven’t given him much direction where the music is concerned (laughs). I don’t really have any memory of us talking in the studio. It takes a lot of courage for me to leave everything up to another person, but I think because the approach to music we prefer and the way we think are both fairly similar, I feel a sense of security or trust that he’ll understand what I want to make and bring that to life for me, and maybe that’s why we haven’t needed to talk very much anyway.
What kind of audience are you hoping will hear this song? Like I said before, from the perspective of having moved to a new record label, I want much, much more people to hear it than have listened to me in the past. And if they came to see me perform live somewhere, I’d be happy for that.
Is there anything that links music and fashion in your life? For me and the way I’ve lived until now, I don’t really approach things as being “only music” or “only fashion” — my lifestyle is my axis, and and having music and fashion to enjoy as a bonus alongside that is more realistic to me, so I don’t actually think about them as separate things. I work, I enjoy being in love, I like going out to look for cute clothes, and I look forward to new songs by my favorite musicians, and thinking about all of them together like that is normal for me. If I want to contribute something to that kind of lifestyle, it’s important not to cut corners on package design and presentation and not just consider the sound or materials. When I think about that, the creative process becomes more and more fun to me.
What is music to you? Right now, instead of making some sort of appeal to others, I want to create something that will let me share a sense of freshness and fun with everyone. I hope I can continue to treasure it as one form of excitement and enjoyment.
<aside> 📎 unbar (September 27, 2007)
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