hana reviews: Akina Nakamori's Femme Fatale (part 1)

or: how one depressive episode made me read all 15 princess diaries novels in six days. Warning: this is less of a cohesive review, and more a diary entry from the days I first experienced this album so it's going to be rather long.

I have been obsessed with Akina Nakamori and her music since I first listened to Blonde on September 14th of last year. Her voice instantly resonated with me on a deeper level and from the very first day I could tell that she would grow to become one of my favourite artists of all time very, very quickly. According to last.fm I have listened to her 1,044 times since that day, excluding the many performances of her I've watched and any time I listened to her on a device other than my phone. 

Now there is only one issue: I have over the past six months come not even close to listening through her entire 37 album and 66 single discography. It's always been a struggle for me to get through large discographies; I tend to find favourites very early on and then stick to those for months until I get bored of them and move on to the rest of an artist's music. As far as last.fm is concerned, I have only listened to 45 of her hundreds of songs, which seems about right. Last week I finally got bored enough of the few ( but excellent ) songs of hers I was listening to, and listened to one of her few full albums: Femme Fatale. 

Now for context: earlier that day I had watched the Whitney Houston produced Princess Diaries movie starring Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews. While watching the movie I had the desire to re-read the novels to see how they'd aged since I read them as a fourteen year-old. I was surprised to find out that a few new novels had come out since and that I now had new reading material. So I sat down, got out my old e-book reader with all the old books still exactly where I left them four years ago, and put on the Femme Fatale album so I could listen to new music while enjoying some of my formerly favourite books. 

Track 1: Reversion:

 今 悪魔に変わっても 眠るその胸に 私 撃ち込むわ 今夜 衝撃の Reversion

"even if i turn into a devil, on your sleeping chest i'll shoot you tonight, shocking reversion"

I liked this surprisingly much from the first listen. It's rare that I like a slower paced song from the start, but this song was instantly memorable. Something that I really loved about this song that also applies to the rest of this album is that I didn't feel the need to look for a translation or anything at any point because it was so easy to understand the lyrics simply from the vocals and melody. It felt like reading a picture book, I couldn't read the words but the pictures were enough to follow the story. I think that's a quality found in most Akina songs, her vocal delivery is always powerful and emotional enough to stand on it's own without the support of superficial factors like "understanding lyrics". If a song can't deliver a message without being literally understood, then what even is the point of presenting it as a song instead of written poetry? I don't need a translator to tell me that "そうよ あなたの愛だけが欲しいの" is clearly a plea for love, because the singing is the translation.

This song's only flaw is the fact that no live performance of it exists. Unfortunately Femme Fatale seems to have been a bit of a low point for Akina's career, or maybe the promotion was just lacking, because not even half of the songs have known performances. I would give anything for a live version of this song, but short of becoming a millionaire and hiring Akina for a private concert this seems to be unlikely to ever happen. 

Track 2: Heartbreak:

堕ちるとこまで 堕ちてスキャンダラス gokigen そうじゃない 鉤裂き Heartache たのしまなきゃ嘘よ!

"down to the bone scandalous, gokigen that's not it. cleft heartache, if you cry now, you lose!"

A more traditionally pop song, I'm confused as to why this wasn't chosen as a promoted single as it seems to be the most radio-friendly song on the album, at least in my non-professional opinion. 

This song took quite a few listens to stick with me, it's electronic pop elements, while catchy after a few times, seem to have the opposite effect the first time around. It's so standard pop that it almost works against it. It's certainly a nice song to listen to but until I had to write this I hadn't listened to it again since those first few times last week. Still, it's an Akina song and her average songs would still be outstanding in many others' discographies. 

Track 3: 抱きしめていてDakishimeteite:

あなたがわたしで わたしはあなたよ ふたりは no seperate 命つながれ 闇の果てのきらめき 信じているの

"you're me, i'm you. no seperate.
life-threatening, i believe in the sparkle at the end of the darkness."

I was instantly obsessed with this one, I didn't listen to anything else for the rest of that day. It's still in my top three from the album, and one of my favourite Akina songs in general. I love her soft vocal delivery, how the entire song makes me feel like I'm walking on clouds, the outfit for the performance... It's all flawless.

Now, after I stumbled on this so early on in the album listening journey I kept it on repeat for quite a bit. From Saturday afternoon to Sunday evening I didn't listen to anything else. During this time I read the first four princess diaries books and I had the following thoughts:

1. These books aged really well, they're still perfectly applicable to the world now. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. 

2. I don't know how the fact that Mia was dating Micheal when she was a freshman and he was a senior didn't bother me before but it certainly does now. Especially with the whole he's her best friends brother element. Confused as to how no one in the books seems to have cared at all because I would be worried at the least if my friend was dating someone with 25% more life experience.

3. I really grew up to be Mia 

That last point does make sense. I loved these books a lot when I was a little younger, one of my copies is so destroyed from all the times I read it that it has some pages almost falling out and I'm proud of it. That copy in particular is volume 9 "Princess Mia" and I'll get to that masterpiece and how it helped me through my depression at a later point. But the fact that I now have the same interests as Mia makes me happy in a certain way. I like knowing that despite changing and growing a lot in the years since I read the books I still have the same convictions and goals in life. Not that there's anything wrong with changing during your teenage years, I'd argue it's probably for the better if you're almost a completely different person at 18 than you were at 13. 

But for me, I feel like I've always had a really solid idea of who I wanted to be, or at least How I wanted to be. I loved these books not because I wanted to be like Mia, but because I felt like I was similar to her in many ways, I just didn't have any way to show it on the outside. Reading these books at 12 years old didn't make me want to become vegetarian, I always wanted to be but wasn't allowed until four years later. Reading the books didn't make me want to cut all my hair off to look like what I visualized Mia as looking like, I'd always hated my hair and wanted to keep it a lot shorter than I was ever allowed to. I'm glad that looking back, a lot of the things I struggled with and wanted to be so badly back then are now just parts of my reality. I'm glad that I'm not as far off from being the person I always wanted to be than I thought. I just wish I'd have known at the time that I would also end up with divorced parents and gaining a new sibling in my late teenage years very soon. Should've paid more attention to that part.

This isn't to say that the books only made me happy while re-reading. I have a tendency to keep the emotions I felt while doing something far better than the actual memory of doing the thing. I've read that that's how memories work; you don't just remember something, but you also remember remembering it. So if you read a book as a sad, lonely 12 year-old and read it again shortly after you'll reinforce the memory, not of the reading itself but of the sadness you felt while reading it both times. 

This is an issue I have with most books I read in the past, using reading as a coping mechanism has lead to me having bad associations with many, if not all of them. Which is unfortunate because I did enjoy these books, there's a reason I chose them to isolate myself with. But re-reading them over that weekend made me feel a deep sadness that I couldn't do much about. I've learned to avoid and repress most of my childhood and early teenage years because of the pain they cause me looking back on now, but this time it wasn't possible for me to separate the negative feelings I first associated with the books from the positive ones. 

So I was somewhat depressed for the entire weekend, and it was entirely my fault. I wish I could say that type of behaviour is out of character for me. It's going to take some time for me to fully separate my old feelings from the books, and it's going to take even more time until I've fully separated them from the album. And that's okay. Remembering that I used to be in a far worse place is painful but I'm happy to be reminded that I've made progress.