Interview] Marei Uchida releases her 10th single "No Scenario" to express her feelings for her fans!

Marei Uchida led the successful "UCHIDA MAAYA Zepp Tour 2019 "we are here"" held from November to December 2019. Her first single for 2020, "No Scenario," was created based on the feelings she felt on that tour, and she is scheduled to perform a solo live at Yokohama Arena in July. As she is about to take a big step up in her career, this single is a reminder of her passionate feelings for her fans!

The music and music video is like being wrapped up in Marei Uchida!

─ Let me start by talking about the music video (MV). The MV for "No Scenario" shows a lot of what I imagine Uchida-san is like in her everyday life.

Uchida: It shows you in a very natural way. The director is the same person who shot the music videos for "Karappo Capsule" and "Hello, future contact" as well as the making-of DVD for the photo book "Maaya went to France! The person who shot the music videos for "Karappo Capsule" and "Hello, future contact! Except for the lip-sync scene, the rest of the video was actually shot with a cell phone camera, which I thought added to the sense of closeness.

─ Even though it is a music video, it has a sense of being an off-shot. I thought the scene where they are brushing their teeth was something you don't see very often (laughs).

Uchida It's very rare to see a tooth-brushing scene in a music video (laughs). We were shooting in the morning and in the evening, and I was thinking it was time to brush my teeth when we shot the scene, so the timing was perfect. I was able to brush my teeth in the evening, so the timing was perfect. Thanks to this clean slate, I was able to enjoy the nighttime shooting.

The weather was not so good for the outdoor scenes in the park.

Uchida It was cold! (laughs) It may be hard to tell from the video, but it was snowing that day. It may be hard to tell from the video, but it was snowing on the day of the shoot, and we had to have our stylist shake off the snow on our heads and clothes. However, the scene where she walks outside with an umbrella was a nice accent to the music video, and I thought it was a good thing.

─ ─ I felt that the music video, in which you shot Ms. Uchida in her natural state, was in line with the theme of the song "No Scenario".

Uchida: Yes, the theme of "No Scenario" is the closeness to me. That's why you can hear a lot of my voice in the music, and I sang all the hamo myself. I think the music and the music video are both wrapped up in the spirit of Marie Uchida.


─ ─ "No Scenario" is also a song filled with your feelings for your fans.

Uchida: Since this single was a non-tie-up song, I was able to create it freely, starting from the theme setting. So I decided to write a song that would convey my feelings straight to the fans, something I had not done much with the title song before.

─ ─ "No Scenario" was written and composed by Sho Watanabe.

Uchida: I asked Sho to write the lyrics, and he did. The lyrics and the beautiful melody were so close together that even he himself said it was a great song in the middle of the road.

Uchida─It's amazing to hear that from the person who wrote it (laughs).

Uchida: He mumbled it during recording, and everyone teased him about it (laughs). (laughs) But I thought it was a really direct and heartfelt song.

───The lyrics are reminiscent of a live performance.

Uchida: I want people to pay attention to the lyrics and listen to the song live. The live songs we have sung in the past were up-tempo, with lots of call-and-response parts to get everyone excited! But this time, the tempo is a little different, a little slower.

It's a bright, energetic song, but it doesn't have a lot of fist-pumping and jumping.

Uchida: In the demo stage, the tempo of the song was much faster. I thought that a fast tempo would make it harder to convey the song's quality, so I sang the song in three different tempo patterns as a trial. I chose the slowest version among them to complete the song. The conclusion reached by the Shirei team was that the song should convey the lyrics without being rushed.

─ How did you feel about it yourself?

Uchida: After singing "take you take me BANDWAGON" and other extremely fast live songs, I felt like I had reached my limit (laughs). (Laughs) I wanted everyone to listen carefully to the current feelings that I had after the Zepp tour last winter, but at the same time, I wanted the tempo and arrangement to not be too restrained, which is exactly the point of this song.

Did you start working on this song after the Zepp tour?

Uchida Yes, that's right. We had talked about a single before the tour, but I couldn't think about a new song at all until after the last day of the tour on December 16. Moreover, I had a birthday event on December 28, so it wasn't until then that I was able to properly focus on the production. On the night after the birthday event, I talked with the producer, Akihiro Tomita, and all the staff about how I was feeling right now.

─ What did you feel when you finished the tour?

Uchida: Of course touring is fun, but I was always anxious while doing it. But when we completed the Zepp tour, I felt as if I could communicate perfectly with the fans and the staff, and I thought, "It's going to be all right! I thought, "I'm going to be fine! I felt that I had been able to build a strong relationship of trust with everyone by performing live over and over again. So, rather than the feelings after the Zepp tour, I would say that they are feelings that transcend all the live shows we have done so far.

─ ─ What struck me about the lyrics of "No Scenario" is that many of the words express the fact that you are in the middle of the road, such as "It's still an incomplete story" and "We've only piled up the highlights along the way.

Uchida: I thought "the end" was boring. I want to keep singing and keep growing, and I think this is expressed in the words. I am not a perfect person at all, and there are many parts of me that have not grown as a human being, but I think it would be nice to have a relationship where we can show each other our weaknesses and accept each other. This is also the reason for the title "No Scenario". There are still a lot of unknowns, and I can't see the future at all, but I see myself and everyone else moving forward.

The title gives a sense of freedom, that what we are walking on is not a predetermined path.

Uchida: I myself live my life with this kind of feeling, so the title fits me very well. My day job is as a voice actor, but recently I have been doing a lot of work that doesn't feel like voice acting, and I think that walking down a path that is not set in stone is what I am like. But that is because I have a place where I can return to everyone. I think I can go anywhere because I have a place where I can return to everyone.

─ How was the recording?

Uchida: It was difficult because the tempo was slower than usual. One of the charms of this song is that it builds up and builds up the excitement, and then finally it lets loose with a bang, so I could imagine myself singing it live.

─ There is a moment in the latter half when the tension of the song changes.

Uchida That's right. At first I thought the song was being sung in a close proximity, but then I got the image of being taken out into a bright and wide world all at once.

─ I see, so it starts out with the personal Uchida-san, and then switches to the Uchida-san singing on stage at the live performance.

Uchida: So the music video is an image of the first half of "No Scenario. I would like you to feel the expansion beyond that point at the climax of the song.