ゲスの極み乙女。 - 私以外私じゃないの / Gesu no Kiwami Otome - “No One's Me Except for Me”
~Zumi Underground
In English or Japanese, that band name is a mouthful! In Japan, everyone gets a nickname to make things shorter and easier though. Arnold Schwarzenegger is shortened to simply “Shuwa-chan”. Most people shorten Gesu no Kiwami Otome to simply “Gesu” so let’s roll with that for the rest of the post and I will do my very best to not make this whole post a Japanese language lesson =)
ONTO THE SONG! Again, I swear I’m not doing Funky Mondays on purpose, but like I said before—funk=good mood and who doesn’t wanna start their week off in a good mood? Just coincidence so far though, honestly. Okay, onto the song for real this time! So if you had to put it in just one bucket, I would say it’s more rock/j-rock, but man…their bassist is SUPER funky so I’m adding the funk tag to this one.
Gesu is already incredibly popular in Japan, but I just had to attempt to bring this amazing blend of so many genres to the west. This song is seriously all over the place. There’s the aforementioned funk, some jazz and rock, and a healthy dose of pop in there too and it’s all present simultaneously sometimes and completely separately at other times in this song. I don’t consider myself a wordsmith by any means anyway (I know I have no business trying to run a blog), but to try to describe everything going on in this song and somehow trying to convince someone it actually works!? You just have to listen for yourself (which hopefully you’re doing right now).
I love the way they use both male and female vocals in the call/response in the second verse. It works so well with the lyrics that walk you through fairly depressing beginning where “No One’s Me Except for Me” is more of a misfortune that many of us may have felt at some point in our lives to a gradual realization “No One’s Me Except for Me” becomes something to be valued and irreplaceable. If you don’t speak Japanese, go ahead and take a look at the translation over at jpopasia.com because the lyrics are really solid and you’d never know how dynamic it is otherwise since melodically, the song starts and ends fun and upbeat.
There’s so much I can try to say about this song, but I don’t wanna hold your Monday hostage any more than I already have. My goal with every post is to expand your library, but I hope this one took that a step even further and exposed you to something completely new and different that you can dig. One last thing, I watch Terrace House on Netflix which is like a Japanese version of MTV’s Real World and the bassist is on one of the seasons. I was shocked when I saw him on the show! Comment on the post below if you’re interested in that.
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