hey sorry for a two year late quote reply but - me, i love these tracks; the japanese versions fall so flat in comparison
Kyo’s a lot more confident in his own language, bc of course. but the all-english of those two combined w/ the fact that he doesn’t really pronounce, articulate, or rhythmize english like english puts these two tracks in a no-mans-land of abstract half-languagelessness.
like one of my favourite vocalists in english, Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins who sings her own language about as abstract as Kyo does.
i think in both these bands, there’s an uncommon way of singing not without a language, but starting from meaningful words and parting enough from the idea that they should be understood to let impression and performance take all the way over.
Most of the time, 99%, i never prefer the english version of vkei songs, bc it sounds like the vocalist is trying real hard to get it right, like focusing intentionally on getting the pronunciation and delivery right, it steals focus/energy from the performance and twists up melodies and rhythms written for a different syllabary.
But Glass Skin & Dozing Green are perfect to me bc of the absurd degree to which Kyo didn’t give a shit, didn’t compromise any on the vocal part but made the language compromise to his performance, and came up w/ something that’s all mood and aesthetic with bits of understanding language filtering through.
Love will be born again is one of my absolute favourites and I am absolutely gutted that there is no live performance of the English version.
Kamijo’s solo discography contains a lot of songs in English too. There is a translator credited so he does not do all of it himself but that also means the lyrics make sense for the most part His pronounciation is not too bad but he has never been overly concerned with enunciation so you will likely need to check the lyrics at some parts.
As an example here is Vampire rock star
Others fully in English off the top of my head:
Sang I, II and III and the Theme of Sang
Eye of Providence
Mystery (both versions)
Bloodway
Ecstacy
Castrato
Given that Intense Caress is also mostly English, it seems that there is some correlation between horny lyrics and English
Speaking of Kamijo, in addition to the Holy Grail version of Love Will be Born Again, the Revenant Choir has always been infamous to me as a fully English J-Rock song just because of how totally unintelligible I find it. I also don’t really think either of the song’s two rerecordings, from '08 and '16, are that much more intelligible than the original '07 version, and neither are any of the live versions. For some reason, while Kamijo’s Engrish is somewhat understandable for just a single line or verse, I just can’t understand him at all when a whole song of his is in Engrish (then again, Kamijo’s not the only J-Rocker this exact critique applies to, like with Kurenai or Beast of Blood which are also mostly in English).
iirc a lot of hyde’s 666 album was in english. as well as him releasing an english version of roentgen. idk about his solo stuff nowadays but i remember really liking those two/being able to understand mostly what he was singing lol
Like most people, I had to be told that Revenant Choir is in English and I still sometimes forget
I think his pronounciation has improved a lot since Revenant Choir but some words or lines are still absolutely intelligible.He is definitely not the only japanese singer whose english is sometimes difficult to understand but I don’t think his problem is the katakana english so many suffer from, for the most part at least. I think he is diffucult to understand partially because he sometimes puts the emphasis in a very odd place or somehow makes a word have more (or less) syllables than it should. It might be because he gets them translated and since he can’t write them in English from scratch, it is much more difficult to make sure you have the correct number of syllables for each passage. So he just pronounces them weird to add some This is just my theory mind you, but it would explain why he can pronounce some things perfectly fine and then completely butcher another word with similar sounds. Although English pronounciation also does not make any sense in general so it’s also very easy to make mistakes completely by accident so maybe it’s just that
Saw people mentioning Glass Skin. In general how fluently do you think Kyo is in english? They have toured alot abroad as well so he should have learnt alot naturally so to say as well.
People can live in forgein countries for years without learning the language. And I don’t think there is much learning opportunity on a stressful tour. So I don’t think his english became much better and is still very basic.
His pronounciation is not too bad but he has never been overly concerned with enunciation so you will likely need to check the lyrics at some parts.
