The Singles Jukebox

Now in theaters!

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[5.43]

Ryo Miyauchi: Yasutaka Nakata has been hired earlier this year to bring his signature electronic-music cool for the Rio Olympics, but here he takes off his shades to wears his heart bold on his sleeve. It’s a movie theme song after all, so it’s a tad too earnest, though so can be good EDM, the style the producer embraces here like he has been doing the past few years. Impressive is how he keeps the individual intact while working a genre that tends to go for a one-size-fits-all personality. It’s important to keep the personal for a theme song of a movie that covers people in transition, a theme also present in many of Nakata’s best songs.
[6]

Cassy Gress: The first time I heard this was actually soundtracking the trailer for the movie Nanimono, and it works rather well in the context of “a bunch of cut-up bits of a coming-of-age drama.” I’m not sure it works outside of that, though; the drums race along the pavement while the piano chords dawdle behind, mixed a hair too low. 
[5]

Alfred Soto: A pleasant mash-up. The keyboard evoke OneRepublic’s “Apologize,” the vocoder a hundred R&B hits, the drums Mike Posner in Ibiza. Not mediating at all is an affectless vocal.
[4]

Claire Biddles: Like a Japanese Coldplay, this is the kind of anthemic-lite that I can imagine sounds better if it’s being sung by a large crowd of people and accompanies by climactic lasers. I first thought it might be a theme for a sporting event, but it’s a movie theme, which works too — it’s bland but it has the potential to be filled out by other people’s emotions, real or fictional. 
[3]

Juana Giaimo: Kenshi Yonezu’s voice remains stable throughout “Nanimono” as the music starts building around him — the beat speeds up and gets more complex, the piano remains at the back, giving a solid base and heavenly sound, and the drop blends all of it naturally — instead of being completely detached from the song, as so happens on many EDM tracks. As a result, “Nanimono” may not be memorable, but it is very soothing in the moment you listen to it.
[7]

Will Adams: The glimmering piano at the start grounds “Nanimono” in its cinematic context, but the proceedings are classically Nakata. The intricate architecture of his sounds materializes bit by bit until Yonezu is surrounded by skyscrapers. With each chorus, he’s more confident and assured in his surroundings; it’s as satisfying a journey as one you’d find in his more typical works.
[7]

Iain Mew: It’s weird hearing Nakata tackle a mainstream EDM-pop ballad, and one with a largely typical Japanese pop-rock vocal no less. It is recognisably Nakata, even outside of the delightful vocal pinball sections, but hearing his tricks applied with such restraint rather than in overhwelming density doesn’t seem quite right. It’s not to say that “Nanimono” isn’t stirring and pretty in places, just that it also has the effect of a bit of a peek at the wiring beneath the previously seamless surface of a gleaming machine.
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