Shuffle And Repeat

Single Review
Rie fu – romantic

romantic is Rie fu’s 11th single, and it was released on November 12, 2008, and reached #100 on the Oricon weekly charts.

tracklist:
1. romantic
2. In The Airplane
3. Money Will Love You

Based on what I have heard from Rie fu before, I should say that romantic is quite a shocker to her fans. It’s completely different from the usual folk music she used to do, and it’s more urban-friendly. But on the other side, I wasn’t quite shocked to hear something different from this song because I already knew that Taku (the genius behind m-flo) produced this track.  He is known for his R&B works, which got me wondering before how the song would turn out. Then the song got released, and I got so shocked with what  I heard. Rie fu sounded like she knew how to handle things with this new urban environment. And that impressed me a lot. The urban-y background mainly was made-up of distorted strings, a piano, synth, and a dance beat! At first, it’s just the strings that runs while Rie fu sings. It is then quickly followed by a smooth dance beat that runs along for the rest of the song, then the chorus comes  in, bringing the synth, which just gives more more life to the song. I was quite happy with the new direction Rie fu has taken because it suited her more than the usual music she does before. With that being said, definitely the best Rie fu has put up ever! NOW I’m EXCITED with Urban ROMANTIC!

The b-side, In The Airplane, starts off with a bit calm with a pleasant melody playing, before the drum hits, and distorted synth takes over. Rie fu sings lively, which gives the song so much energy. She uses a lot english in this song too, and boy, how cooler can her english be?! The lines “i tried to say hello!”, and “I can be what I want to be, I can be where I want to be” proves her fluency in the english language, which impresses me a lot because no many of JPop artists can be that fluent. Anyway, the b-side is really good too, and I enjoyed it a lot!

Returning back to the soft, acoustic department is Money Will Love You. To be honest, I wasn’t really happy with songs like this that Rie fu released before because I thought they were a bit boring but, after I listened to this song fully, I started thinking how wrong I was. It definitely has more than what I thought it would, and I was happy with what I heard.

Favorite Track:
romantic

shuffle rating!
A-