Lyrics: Butterfly

It’s been a while since we’ve posted new lyrics on the BOO site, and as we gear up for the forthcoming release of ‘ONE STEP!/Tomorrow never knows, it’s time for ‘a step’ back in time to one of BACK-ON’s earlier releases called  ‘Butterfly‘!

This is definitely one of my most favourite BACK-ON songs, although at the time of its release, the song certainly caused some concern amongst the fans that preferred the ‘rock’ side of the band, as it had a very ‘electronic dance’ feel to it. A PV was never released for the song, and it was promoted on TV with a 15-second CM featuring Kenji03 against an urban backdrop, fitting as the song was the ending theme for the TV series Shinjuku Swan.

As usual, you can find the lyrics below (after the cut-off) with the original kanji, romaji and karaoke versions of the lyrics as well! If you haven’t heard the song yet, visit our Music page and scroll to the end for our pop-out radio and listen to it.

By the way, we do occasionally amend the spelling of the original English lyrics if we believe it to be appropriate. But as always, if you spot any mistakes, please let us know either by commenting below or via the contact form.

Finally, if you would like to post these lyrics elsewhere, please kindly link back to this page. :)

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BACK-ON’s new single ‘ONE STEP!/Tomorrow never knows’ out on January 27th 2010!

BACK-ON will be releasing a new single called ‘ONE STEP!/Tomorrow never knows‘ in January 2010!

It’s been a while since we’ve posted news on the BOO website, and we are very glad to be bringing you this fantastic update, as this is the first single release since  ‘flyaway‘, which was released way back in January 2009.

The single will feature 2 songs:  ONE STEP! feat. mini and Tomorrow Never Knows, and is due out on January 27th 2010, with an RRP of  ¥1,050.

Two of our most favourite websites have been very receptive of new single suggestions, so you can now pre-order the single from:

• Play-Asia ($11.90)
• YesAsia ($13.49)
• CDJapan ($11.06)

amongst others. It is probably worth bearing in mind that purchasing from YesAsia and CDJapan will contribute towards BACK-ON’s Oricon rankings,  but Play-Asia is currently offering 10% off the listed price (sale price shown above) so after postage and packaging, it might be slightly cheaper. 10% discount is no longer on offer so may or may not be cheaper*

I certainly have high hopes for the single. Tomorrow never knows has already been used as the background theme music for the DyDo coffee TV commercial and in case you haven’t heard it yet, you can watch the 30 second CM in full or below courtesy of jr77355.

In the meantime, we do know that BACK-ON are currently preparing for their 2 forthcoming live gigs in Taiwan on the 26th and 27th of December, at Taichung’s SOUND LIVE HOUSE and Taipei’s THE WALL LIVE HOUSE respectively.

You can see the special promotional poster below:

BACK-ON will be supported by local bands such as LAZY LADY, OverDose, Broken Flowers (碎紙花), and Solidor(固定客) (Solidor’s Blog).

Last but not least, Kenji03 and the band members are here to promote their mini ‘tour’ on Youtube. The video is courtesy of MONSTERSNITE and we get to hear Kenji03 speak some quality mandarin! :)

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Official BACK-ON photos from SUMMER SONIC 2009

A very short post today as it’s all about the photos: when BACK-ON performed this evening (7th August 2009)  on the Garden Stage of SUMMER SONIC 2009 in Osaka!

These photos are from the official live report and I really wish there were more! Loved TEEDA’s hoodie top by the way:

And this is a map of the entire venue – BACK-ON was right in the heart of everything!

Icchan and Kenji03 certainly look as though they were enjoying themselves (see Icchan’s full blog post):

Finally, to give you an idea of what the atmosphere is like at this massive music festival, take a look at the official Attractions & Audience photos and videos from Osaka – we’ve included a few below:

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Photos from BACK-ON’s live performance at the “Tales of Festival 2009″!

Fans of the Tales of series will probably already have seen these photos, but for everyone else, BACK-ON was the musical guest of honour (along with the female J-pop group GIRL NEXT DOOR and misono) at the annual Tales of Festival of 2009!

The festival is a celebration of the Tales of series, as well as an event for announcing forthcoming new games. This year’s festival was held on 14th June 2009 and BACK-ON were invited to perform flyaway and Re:Start, songs that most fans will know as the OP and ED (respectively) theme songs from Tales of the World : Radiant Mythology 2.

According to various reports, they wow’d the audience with their thrilling renditions of both songs:  Gpara said that ‘they single handedly roused the crowd’ during their performance.

BACK-ON later invited Ito Kanae (伊藤かな恵) – Kanonno Earhart’s seiyuu – who featured in the flyaway [Tales of] remix – to join them onstage; she was too nervous to actually sing in front of the crowd.

BACK-ON with Ito Kanae courtesy of Gpara

The photos are courtesy of Gpara.com,  Dengeki.com and Famitsu.com, and you can view them in full by visiting the Tales of Festival 2009 section of the Gallery.

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Lyrics: Re:Start – Kanji, Romaji, Karaoke and English Translation

Our most recent post in Lyrics featuring the English translation for flyaway by Quartet4 has been very very popular with visitors (400+ have visited the page to date!) and anyone who has heard the single will no doubt agree it is one of BACK-ON’s best!

The single includes a very strong ‘B-side’ track in the form of Re:Start, the third song in both editions of the CD, which sadly does not feature in the Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 game, but is – in my humble opinion – an amazing song.

As we mentioned before, finding an accurate translation is always an issue, but thankfully Quartet4 allows requests on his dedicated Forum, and has now posted the full translation online! The song is about starting over but not forgetting the memories shared with the other person. Gorgeous, as expected from Kenji03 and Teeda!

Quartet4 has kindly provided permission for us to repost the translation here, and – as we test out a new display format – you can find it below the cut with the original kanji, romaji and karaoke versions of the lyrics as well!

If you haven’t heard the song yet, visit our Music page and scroll to the end for our pop-out radio and listen to it. In the mean, I’d like to say a big thanks to Quartet4 for the translation!

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Teeda and Kenji03 interviewed by Jennifer Ho on Alchemy’s Asian Pop Show on SBS Australia!

BACK-ON have been featured on several local radio (and TV!) programmes recently, but availability aside, there is always the difficulty of fully understanding any questions or answers. However, back in December 2008 (18th to be exact) Teeda and Kenji03 were interviewed by Jennifer Ho on Alchemy’s Asian Pop Show over the telephone, with the translation provided by their Japanese interpreter Mika Nakamori.

What makes this particular interview rather different from others before is that firstly, there are two versions. One version is Japanese-only, where you hear Jennifer Ho ask Teeda (and Kenji03) the question in English – in an Aussie accent (as expected) – which is followed by their reply in Japanese.

The other version is almost exactly the same, except that now Teeda and Kenji03’s replies have an unobtrusive English voice-over, which enables us to understand what they are saying!

Without spoiling the interview for you (although we have provided a full transcript below the cut) there is a really funny moment where Kenji03 launches into an answer and then forgets the question (best heard in the Japanese version) and it seems that Teeda really likes koalas? It is also interesting what he says about how the band came to work with GReeeeN:

GReeeeN and BACK-ON have the same producer known by the name of JIN. Sometimes he brings GReeeeN’s new tracks for us to have a listen to or take our tracks to GReeeeN, vice versa, which has made us realise we had the same message to tell, even though we come from different backgrounds.

What we want to express with our music is no different, and we thought we could make
something really cool together – mixing rock and Jpop – that’s how we ended up together.

Teeda then talks about what BACK-ON brings to Ashiato, their first single with GReeeeN as BAReeeeeeeeeeN:

GReeeeN’s music is more of a pop music, with a kinda popular straightforward sound, whereas BACK-ON has been playing in the underground rock scenes in Japan and occasionally overseas.

We’ve brought that kind of BACK-ON taste into the collaboration: we’ve turned it more ‘rockish’ by adding some features like rough raps or distortion to the sound.

Of course there is more, and you can listen to the interview for yourself by visiting the link below:

Listen to the interview on Alchemy’s Asian Pop Show

I would really highly recommend it, although here is some breaking news about their plans for 2009: BACK-ON’s first full album YES!!! is going to be released in Europe! Apart from doing more live gigs, they would also like to do a tour in the US and possibly Europe and Australia.

Hope you will enjoy listening to it as much as we did :) A big thanks must go to Jennifer Ho and Mika Nakamori for their fantastic work! As mentioned above, if you are unable to access the audio, you can read the full text transcript of the interview below:

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BACK-ON featured on Fuji TV’s とくダネ! (Tokudane!)!

YES!!! was released just 3 days ago (12th November 2008) and I am happy to say the album has been doing well in the Daily Oricon Rankings as it has been sitting within the TOP #30 spot for all 3 days, climbing to a high of #24 yesterday!

12/11/08: #26
13/11/08: #29
14/11/08: #24

These are the figures I’ve been able to capture so far, and I’m actually really looking forward to the release of the weekly results to see how well BACK-ON have done, especially now that they have been featured as part of Fuji TV’s staple weekday morning news program とくダネ! (Tokudane!)

According to the Wikipedia entry for the program, it is currently broadcast from 08:00 – 09:55, Mondays to Fridays” and with reference to the English version of FujiTV Outline, this ‘infotainment’ program has held the top position for audience ratings during the morning slot for 74 months running! This is good news, because even if the viewing audience are primarily made up of OAPs (assuming Japan and the UK are similar in that respect :p) this still means that BACK-ON was promoted for two minutes to the majority of TV viewers!

And it was a great introduction imho, which you can watch for yourself courtesy of MONSTERSNITE (gangangan03’s new account!) by clicking the link below or scrolling to the end of this post!

Click here to watch BACK-ON being introduced on Tokudane!

For those without access to Youtube, here’s a quick breakdown of what happened in the clip:

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Is BACK-ON’s first full album called “Yes!!!”?

Rumours that BACK-ON might be releasing their first full album this year have been floating around since earlier this year, when the various online record companies posted an ‘Untitled’ album by BACK-ON due out on the penultimate day of July. However, 30th July came and went, and news from the band during the summer were really just day-to-day thoughts from their official blog.

Then came September, and the revelation that the other half of the mysterious new group BAReeeeeeeeeeN were in fact BACK-ON, and since then, the band has experienced a huge surge of popularity. So much so, that at their first public performance after the release of 足跡 (Ashiato) at Shibuya Boxx on October 9th, the venue was packed out! We found out about this from the official ‘report’ on Back-on.com, which was accompanied by the launch of their official photo gallery, featuring more than a dozen photos from the gig!

There are more photos available at the link above, but perhaps more importantly… we had the very first hint in the last line of the report that the full album really is forthcoming, this time on the new rumoured date of November 12th 2008!

So what do we know about this potential new album? If the Japan-base online CD retail companies like Amazon.jp, CDJapan and HMV.jp are anything to go by, this is the jacket cover of the brand new album:

We also find out that the new album will probably be called Yes!!!, and that it should be priced at ¥ 2,600, which is around $27 USD or £17 GBP. Apparently there will be a total of 10 tracks, including 足跡 (Ashiato) aka. Footprints and color from the BAReeeeeeeeeeN debut single, which really shouldn’t be a surprise, given that the cover design really does scream (to me) GReeeeN!!! What do you think? Let us know on the Forums, if not in the comments below!

The supposed 8 other tracks on the album are currently unknown, but it seems BACK-ON will definitely be including all the title tracks from their singles so far, which presumably means songs such as (in reverse chronological order) -

• Sands of time
• flower
• Butterfly
• BLAZE LINE
• NEW WORLD
• Chain

and many more of their crowd favourites. One site even mentioned ヒカリサスホウ (Hikari Sasuhou), which was a huge hit with the fans at their October 9th Sonic Concorde gig, enough to make BACK-ON perform it twice!

Seeing as it’s one of my most favourite songs, I think I can understand why ;) And as if the photo extravaganza above wasn’t enough, look at the promotional photo we found on Amazon.jp!

Kenji03 is wearing glasses!!! That’s enough to make any fan-girl go KYAAAAAA! (I’ve borrowed this from someone, sorry!) It’s a pity the photo isn’t larger, but if you do want a good close up, I can certainly recommend watching a new video uploaded by gangangan03, where BACK-ON (in their new outfits!) introduce 足跡 (Ashiato), but unfortunately the broadcasting giants appear to have waved their copyright flag, and not only have they removed the video, but gangangan03’s Youtube account has mysteriously been suspended! It’s a HUGE HUGE blow for BACK-ON fans imho, and I really hope the account will be re-instated soon as it is a gold mine of media of the band. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

I would like to drop in a tantalizing hint “タネウマ★DJ ICHIKAWA from Volta Master remix” at this point, but let’s leave it for the next post and move back to the main topic:

Will BACK-ON’s first full album be called Yes!!!

Will it really be released on November 12th 2008?

That really remains to be seen, but please keep checking back here for more news!

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Lyrics: RAIN

It might seem a surprise to everyone for us to release the lyrics for RAIN out of the blue, but with thanks to nosoul4u and ookami (Forum Moderator!), who have both said on the Forums how much they would like to have the lyrics, I finally got round to sitting still for 2 hours to type them up. ;)

RAIN is from the New World mini-album, which Back-on released at the end of 2006, and is quite a feel good song. Surprisingly (for me anyway) it was actually the longest song on the CD (4:03) probably because of the long musical interlude in the third half of the song. It’s definitely a grower, although I have to admit I like Teeda’s rap part the best, even though he’s uber fast, particularly in the second verse, I had to slow down the tempo by almost 40%.

Interestingly though, Kenji03 sings a word in the first line of the chorus slightly differently to the usual pronunciation:

あの時僕らは何かに怯えて
where 時 is usually pronounced as “toki” (or “doki” if time of ’something’ but this is not used in this song) but “toku” is sung instead.

You can find the original kanji below, romaji on page 2 and the romanised version on page 3, with page 4 featuring the hybrid/karaoke mix of kanji and romanji.

As always, if you spot any mistakes, please let me know either by commenting below or via the contact form. If you would like to post these lyrics elsewhere, please link back to this page. :)

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Lyrics: message for kidz (Romaji only)

message for kidz is probably the happiest song written by Back-on for the new single Sands of time, and according to Icchan, is a song dedicated to cheering on anyone who has worked hard to overcome their hurdles and energising listeners.

The song definitely has a very cheerful and summery feel, and I really love it when it comes on on my playlist, but message for kidz does feature a strange if funny ‘chicken’ rap (as coined by Sesshy) in the middle, which adds that extra bit of playfulness. I’m still in two minds about it though!

We have to thank Sowon for kindly providing the romanised lyrics on the BOO forums, and allowing us to post it on the site! The lyrics for the bridge part of message for kidz, like fifty/50, was not available with the single, and was completely transcribed by Sowon!

As always, if you spot any mistakes, please let me know either by commenting below or via the contact form. If you would like to post these lyrics elsewhere, please link back to this page. :)

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