Interview: yama on C.U.T, Australia Tour & First New York City Concert

Javits Center, New York

The Natural Aristocrat (Nir Regev): How did you bring the world of C.U.T, your concept EP, to the stage?

yama: Over these six years I’ve been active in all sorts of ways, and there are more and more things I want to express, so, taking that afresh, I set up the C.U.T keywords, as C.U.T. The theme of C.U.T is simply doing, however I like, the music I truly want to express right then.

The Natural Aristocrat (Nir Regev): Why was “Sanagi” chosen to close the C.U.T album?

yama: That one. In these six years I felt I had finally become a sanagi, a chrysalis. A chrysalis. What comes after the chrysalis is emerging and taking flight, a butterfly or something, I don’t know. But becoming that.

I finally thought, I’m a chrysalis now, and wrote the song. The act of making the EP called C.U.T was itself a selfishness of my own, an ego thing. It was the first time I made a work with a proper sense of self, and I made the EP C.U.T with my feelings toward the work in a state of high purity. So I put that message into it and placed “Sanagi” at the very end.

The Natural Aristocrat (Nir Regev): As an artist, do you decide your set list more based on Spotify listens, the numbers, or more on the live fan reaction that you see in the crowd?

yama: Play counts do of course differ by country, so of course I look at that, as data. But while putting plenty of songs everyone probably wants to hear into the set, I also want to show my current self. So I mix in new songs, and I think about it in all sorts of ways so people can enjoy the mixed old-and-new me as I am now.

The Natural Aristocrat (Nir Regev): What are you most looking forward to for your October tour dates in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, October 16th and 17th?

yama: Of course it’s my first time performing live in Australia and I’m very much looking forward to it. I’m still at the stage of agonizing over what kind of set to do. But apart from the show, if I’m going all the way to Australia, I want to hold a koala.

Anime Herald (Seth): I need to warn you about that. Koalas, because of what they eat, are kind of always a little buzzed or inebriated. So you can’t really trust a koala very much.

yama: They’re apparently quite ferocious. (laughs)

Animation for Adults (Antonio): Your recent music, like the album Semicolon, explores themes of mental health, self-acceptance, and moving on to new chapters. How has writing these raw personal struggles changed your relationship with your fans?

yama: Yes, Semicolon. Apparently there’s a meaning to getting a tattoo overseas. By putting in a mark called a semicolon, you declare an end to the self that was mentally weak, and are reborn from there. There’s a tattoo culture of putting in a semicolon with that meaning, and a fan taught me that. In a letter, and I remembered it the whole time.

I too was still full of conflict, wondering what on earth I even am, making music while thinking about all of that. So I think making the album Semicolon had a great deal of meaning for me.

It’s also an album I made in order to tell my fans that I had become someone who could think that way, that I had climbed to the next stage. I put into it the image of a gift from me. So I think the distance between me and the fans got a little closer.

Yahoo! JAPAN (Kasumi): There’s a concert today. I hear it’s your first concert on the East Coast. If there’s any difference between the reactions of fans at the concerts you’ve done in Japan and the reactions of overseas fans, please tell us, and please tell us what you’re looking forward to at today’s concert.

yama: Last year I performed live in America for the first time, in San Diego, and New York is a first. It really is completely different from Japan. How can I put it, it’s powerful, I feel passion. That energy comes across at the show.

I get a lot of energy from it myself, every time. The heat of every single song always comes across from the audience, so this time too I’m hoping we can have that kind of comfortable communication.

Scarlet Rhapsody (Lisa): Out of all of the music you’ve released, which song is your favourite song you’ve ever made, and why?

yama: That’s hard. But the one that’s still fun for me even now when I do it live is “a.m.3:21,” a song I released in my indie days. Compared to the arrangement back then, we do it live now with all sorts of different bands, band arrangements. Even with all of it brushed up in various ways, I sing it feeling that it’s tremendously fresh and enjoyable.

Dead Rhetoric (Katerina): Which anime opening or closing has meant the most to you, either personally or in how it’s impacted your career?

yama: With every anime song, there’s a shared sense between me and that particular work, and I sing by expanding out from where those overlap, with that sensitivity, putting my own feeling into it.

If I had to pick, there’s an anime called Ousama Ranking, and I got to do its ending theme [“Oz.”]. At the time I was making music in a completely tangled state. I didn’t know left from right, but it was a period when I was just doing whatever was in front of me with everything I had.

In the lyrics there’s someone getting by somehow on their own, but who somewhere is looking for companions. I had the feeling of wanting to share that loneliness with someone. It overlapped exactly, so there are a lot of memories in it.

Yahoo! JAPAN (Kasumi): Regarding fan reactions overseas, you mentioned San Diego earlier as a visitor. Has there been anything especially memorable, an unforgettable or surprising reaction? Please tell us.

yama: Songs I wasn’t expecting do get a big reaction. Of course the anime songs get a big reaction, understandably so.

But among my own songs that aren’t anime, that have no tie-in, there’s “Nisegao,” and it must be the beat, I don’t know. The moment they heard the beat, when we were doing that song in rehearsal, customers who were far away came over, and they were dancing, really properly dancing.

Having customers who dance like that is fresh to me, and it’s tremendously enjoyable to watch, and it makes me happy and puts me in a good mood. Feeling the wave of the sound, the beat, and enjoying it that way. I did think that might be stronger precisely because it’s overseas.

Yahoo! JAPAN (Kasumi): The people who did that, roughly what age group were they?

yama: How old were they? Young people. They were young. Young, young, young people came over.

The interpreter: Was that during the rehearsal?

yama: During the rehearsal, and they were clearly visible.

Scarlet Rhapsody (Lisa): What are your music goals for 2027?

yama: I’d like you to look forward to it. How to say it, I want to keep taking on new challenges one after another. I actually think I’ve been changing continuously all along, and I think human beings are things that change. But for 2027 especially, so that I can really take flight.

I hope I can take on all sorts of things.

Dead Rhetoric (Katerina): As your career has progressed you’ve done more of the songwriting, you’ve been putting more of your own stamp on the lyrics. What gave you the confidence to get more involved with the music you’re creating?

yama: The big trigger was a collaboration with Vaundy, about four years ago I think. I collaborated with Vaundy on the song “Kubittake,” and at that time he said to me that a person who can sing as a vocalist can also make songs, so he absolutely wanted me to know the enjoyment of songwriting.

He gave me an extremely passionate recommendation at the time. For my own part I hadn’t yet found much meaning in making songs myself. I wondered whether I really ought to be the one making them. But in practice, to convey a feeling, to convey a message, writing it yourself, even clumsily, even awkwardly, has an importance and a beauty to it. That conversation with Vaundy is the reason I started writing both words and music myself.

Anime Herald (Seth): You’ve performed internationally in multiple different countries. Any interesting or fun touring stories you’d care to share?

yama: There have been all sorts. All sorts of happenings.

The funny one was when we toured Asia. I’ve forgotten where exactly. During a real ballad, a quiet, slightly chill ballad, right before the chorus the crowd shouted “seh-no” at me in a huge voice. That startled me. Enormously. At such an important moment, I never expected that to come in, and I was astonished.

Animation for Adults (Antonio): You’ve talked before about how wearing your signature mask could feel restrictive, but now you describe it as part of you. Do you feel like being behind the mask allows you to be more honest or vulnerable than you might be without it?

yama: When I first came out, yes. When I stood in front of people I’d get something like panic symptoms, and my vision would pretty much white out. I had that when I was small. Because of it I used to say I didn’t want to go out in front of people. But I wanted to seize the chance somewhere.

I work with a mask on now. But over these six years of activity, I’ve gradually become able to accept my weakness, and in the true sense to accept myself, and I think my heart has been opening up more and more. There’s a version of me that has been protected by the mask, and thanks to it I’ve changed a great deal and am slowly becoming able to love myself. I have nothing but gratitude.

Incidentally, this mask has changed in design compared to the early days. At first it was tight enough that if I blinked my contact would come out. Now it’s made fairly functionally.

Yahoo! JAPAN (Kasumi): We’ve reached an era where anyone in the world, with no knowledge at all, can make a song instantly with AI. As yama, what kind of music do you want to share with people around the world from here on?

yama: That’s genuinely a theme I’ve been thinking about lately. AI, of course, can write melodies better than a human, if anything, and songs with interesting development, and I think it’s become an era where it can make them instantly, in about one to ten seconds.

Talking with my team recently, I do think humans are somehow drawn to works that humans make. Works AI makes are of course interesting too, but that’s a functional aspect. For example as illustrations in a book, or background music, background music for video, I think it’s very usable. But in the end, what we want from work that a human draws, that a human creates, I think it’s that person’s story.

The value of music going forward, of music that humans make, is that if the things that person has experienced, the way that person lives, their way of living, is projected into the music, value is born there. So I want to convey it that way myself. Being human, humanness, I didn’t talk about that at all in the early days. But from this era on, what everyone wants is people’s stories.

So that I can put out my own humanness. So that I can project that properly into the music too. That’s what I think I’ll do from here.

Anime Herald (Seth): What is your origin story? How did you decide you wanted to become a musician?

yama: From childhood I loved music and I loved singing. Honestly, the time I actually wanted to be a singer was only when I was very young. In between I never thought about making music my job. There was a period where I was working normally, as a company employee.

So the feeling that I really wanted to try music, that I wanted to try singing, got stronger. From there I happened to be uploading videos of myself singing to YouTube, and that’s where I met the producer who became my current partner, a producer at Sony. And the first original song I put out was “Haru wo Tsugeru.”

A great many people heard it, and that became the reason I could go on living by this.

Anime Herald (Seth): What was the process for creating “Shikisai” for Spy × Family? Did you have a lot of creative freedom, or did they tell you specifically what they were looking for?

yama: Incidentally, with this Spy × Family song, it was the original creator, the original creator of the manga, who requested it. There’s a songwriter called Kujira, and they asked for the two of us as a pair, yama in collaboration with Kujira. So as far as the song goes, Kujira wrote both the words and the music, and I was the vocalist.

Because we had genuinely been named for it, I was allowed to do it completely freely, with no restrictions of any kind on the song.

Animation for Adults (Antonio): You have mentioned that when you watch anime you focus deeply on the internal psychological empathy of characters. When you write an anime theme song, how do you capture a character’s inner life without spoiling the plot?

yama: I actually think that’s simple.

When I’m reading the work and I find that each of them resembles me in some way, or that I like this character.

Then naturally I hold it up against my own inner self, and if I write and sing while picturing it very abstractly, only the important core part seeps out into the work. So unexpectedly it doesn’t become a spoiler, and yet I think the power the work is carrying can go into the music just as it is.

That part is simple, I think.

Dead Rhetoric (Katerina): Your last album, Semicolon, was centred on the idea of a fresh start. How do you feel that album embodies that idea from a musical standpoint?

yama: With Semicolon it was still a turning point, my old self and my current self overlapping. Both were present at once, and I took that as a good thing. There was the me of the early days who had been covering Vocaloid songs. And going back further, before Vocaloid, liking city pop, going back to the roots of what I listened to in elementary school. Mixing those together, and for instance there was 2000s two-step music in there as well.

And then making songs that felt like Vocaloid, like 2010, the very earliest Vocaloid era. I think Semicolon was me groping around in all sorts of directions.

CUNY: If one anime character could attend your concert and sit in the front row, who would you want it to be?

yama: That would be really hard to do. (laughs) I’d get distracted. (laughs) Who would it be, who would it be. I don’t know, but Spy × Family’s Anya would be tremendously cute, wouldn’t she. She looks like she’d be thrilled. I thought she’d enjoy any song at all.

Comics Crusaders: You are so vocally talented. How would you explain your creative process when it comes to creating a new song?

yama: There are all sorts of patterns. There are songs where the theme is something with a very strong message, something introspective. And conversely there are songs that start from the musicality, from curiosity, thinking I’ll try putting in a bit of the essence of this culture or genre of music from this era. Roughly two patterns, I think.

Anime Herald (Seth): Welcome to New York. Any fun stories from the trip, or fun plans for the trip?

yama: I’m going to see MJ on Broadway, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Dead Rhetoric (Katerina): What do you enjoy about being able to sing both the anime tie-in songs and your own creative material?

yama: Both are interesting. Writing only about myself is honestly hard. When there’s no theme, making a song from nothing by myself takes more time, and I end up lost, wandering in a maze.

But when one theme or rule, some color, is already decided, it becomes a matter of throwing what I like and my own color at it. I find that collaboration interesting, and I like it quite a lot. Both are enjoyable.