In 1998, Suzuki Ami made her debut at 15 years old with the single “love the island” through the TV Tokyo talent search program ASAYAN. Having welcomed her 26th birthday in February of this year, she released the single “ONE” in July as a celebration of the decade since her debut. Following her new single “can’t stop the DISCO” which went on sale in September, she released the fully Nakata Yasutaka (capsule)-produced album Supreme Show on November 12th in commemoration of her tenth anniversary.
Before your latest album Supreme Show, you released two singles titled “ONE” and “can’t stop the DISCO.” Was the album already completed by that point? We finished it all this spring. All the tracks on the album were done in the span of about a month. Generally, I would sing and then wait until the final check, but even if I was right there in the middle of the whole process, it’s not like we were working at it for the full month, so that made it extremely fast.
Nakata-san has his own unit capsule and produces other artists in addition to you. I also had drama filming, so it felt like we fit it in between each of our obligations (laughs).
Then you had “ONE” and “can’t stop the DISCO.” We set those aside for single cuts.
“can’t stop the DISCO” felt quite aggressive for a single. Why did you choose it to precede the album release? “ONE” had a total summer feeling, and my debut was in July, so I thought it had the most fitting lyrics to celebrate my tenth debut anniversary and chose that one right away. After that, when I was considering what to release before the album dropped, I thought it’d be nice if I could put out a song with a different face from “ONE” that had something a little unexpected to it. I wavered a lot between “TEN” and “can’t stop the DISCO,” but I thought it’d be better to have something with actual vocals (laughs). Finally, I went with “can’t stop the DISCO.”
The lyrics of “TEN” are certainly appropriate for your tenth anniversary, but it’s even more impactful in its sound. “TEN” is full of messages to myself, and I would’ve been perfectly fine with it as a single. But, well, thinking about promotion and radio airplay, I think there’d be a lot of people who wouldn’t understand it (laughs).
“Disco” isn’t a word you hear often lately. Did Nakata-san come up with the title? He did. If I had to say one way or another, the titles are just something extra tacked on after the fact. I feel like I basically leave the titles up to him, and Nakata-san doesn’t put too much deep thought into them himself, since the sound is naturally the most essential part. Well, the point is to make it simple and easy to grasp.
I heard from MEG-san, another artist Nakata-san produces, that when she went to his studio, he’d already burned a CD with his choice for the tracklist and no one could get a word in to change it. Did Nakata-san decide your album track order as well? He did (laughs). But because we were recording in advance, with every track we finished, we discussed roughly how the album should flow. Nakata-san came to see my birthday live event, and I wanted something I could sing in concert or at a club with as little change to the track order as possible. He was conscious of that going into the recording, so we created it with that purpose in mind.
More than spending time in the studio, it seems you both figured out the album’s image through framing it in the context of live performances and clubs like that. Ever since we did “FREE FREE” together for my join series, we meet at club events or other gatherings and work it out a little at a time.
What did you talk about then? From the beginning, I had hoped for the album to be bright, flashy and fitting for my tenth anniversary. Naturally, I also wanted a bunch more feel-good songs I could spin with confidence in my DJ sets. In any case, my ultimate objective was to make something people would hear and think, “Is this really Japanese music?”
Out of the ten intervals between the eleven songs on the album, four are fully connected and take you into the next song without a break in the energy as you listen, which I thought was a very DJ-like element to include. Were you particular about these transitions as well? I approached it as another form of music, without any rules that it had to be a certain way as an album, and just tied together the parts that I thought felt good. I actually wanted all of the songs to be mixed through if possible, but there was each song’s individual vibe to consider, too, so that factored into it. I just wanted to go all out and make the album as interesting as we could.
“SUPER MUSIC MAKER,” a single track you released ahead of your previous album DOLCE, was remixed and titled “SA’08S/A mix” for inclusion here. Is it a special song to you? Yes. It’s a song I love a lot, and “SUPER MUSIC MAKER” was the first track I recorded with Nakata-san when we initially linked up for my join collaboration, so everything started from there, too. When I play it in clubs or sing it live, everyone really responds to it. Seeing that reaction, I thought it’d be nice if I could spread the song to more people. The arrangement is a little different — the mix included on this album is the earliest version of the audio we recorded.
The original? Yeah, it’s the original. Well, there are actually several more versions, so who knows how many there are (laughs). Out of those, this one had a really simple feeling that made me think of a live environment. There was a little bit of cuteness to it and I thought the arrangement felt rather nostalgic, so I wanted to include it here.
Just one song, “LOVE MAIL,” is listed as a joint work between you and Nakata-san in the lyric credits. How did you go about that? Around the time we’d gotten past the midway point of recording, I started to think, “What if Nakata-san might be about to lose steam a bit? Maybe he’s running low on ideas.” I personally offered them to him as something he could use if he felt uninspired, just casually, not outright demanding that he had to include them or anything. Because Nakata-san is obviously coming from a male point of view, I thought it might be nice to have some more typically girly lyrics expressing how a girl feels. I just gave it a try and wrote some lyrics completely from the female perspective like that, wondering how he’d react to it. And then he pretty much used the whole thing (laughs).
So he practically adopted it. Yes, he used them exactly. And just like that. If only he’d let me know, I would’ve written them less sloppily (laughs).
You never thought he’d use them completely as-is. I went about it basically like writing a letter, without any real organization, just to give him some material. I wasn’t even very precise about my choice of words when I wrote it, and then to think he’d use it just like that! But it’s just Nakata-san’s style to charge right ahead that way.
It has a playful feeling to it. But women often say Nakata’s usual lyrics show a good understanding of what a girl’s emotions are like, too. Yeah, that’s true.
Was the album title “Supreme Show” added last of all? It was honestly the very last thing we did. I chose it at the last minute.
Did you not think about it too deeply, like how you described the song titles earlier? No, I at least thought about this much (laughs). Nakata-san is usually the type to throw out an idea like “we’re going with this,” but for this album title, he was totally hands-off. This album is celebrating my tenth anniversary, of course, and I’m doing my favorite genre and what I like best right now, so I wanted the title to reflect that. But I also wanted it to have a kind of “appetizing” feel (laughs), and no matter how many different angles I considered it from, nothing jumped out at me. In the end, instead of basing it on the sound, I first thought about the concept as being centered around one girl. I went from the perspective of a girl like that being dressed up and adorned with the atmosphere of each of these songs, then finally coming forward into the spotlight, and so I came up with the image of a showgirl who’d been colored by all of these songs. But it still didn’t quite feel like enough on its own, so I settled on “Supreme Show” to capture the meaning of it being the greatest and most impressive.