Album Review: Fujii Kaze - Prema

Upon the releases of Fujii Kaze’s English language singles “Hachiko” and “Love Like This”, the general response from fans was ‘These sound too Western’ or ‘These are too pop’. This baffled the shit out of me, because Kaze’s music has always had a western flair and has always been rooted in pop, and it’s largely because Kaze is a fan of American pop music — as evidenced by him releasing two cover albums chock full of American pop songs. But also, “Hachiko” and “Love Like This” both sound like the kind of songs Kaze would have put out in Japanese anyway. And I’d wager that if they were released in Japanese that the fan responses would be very different.

Whenever a Japanese act releases a song in Japan which so much as alludes to the possibility of it catering to a Western market, fans seem to turn on it. When Namie Amuro started releasing songs in English, fans did not care for them. When Perfume released “Spending All My Time” — a song with predominantly English lyrics — fans shat all over it like a dog on grass. And the reasoning was never that the songs themselves sounded terrible. It was ‘Why are they trying to pander to an American audience?’ even though these songs felt like inevitable places for these acts to arrive at with their music. Namie’s music was always influenced by American radio, so Uncontrolled, Feel and _genic sounding like American pop radio was hardly a deviation from what she had been releasing for a decade prior. And Perfume’s debut album Game had a Euro-centricity to it which “Spending All My Time” followed through on 4 years later. So a part of me wonders if the whole ‘These sound too Western’ is just an auto response to any Japanese act who releases a song with more than the customary amount of English.

All of this to say, Prema does not feel like a deviation from anything Kaze has done before, although I’m sure there will be some who say that it does and dislike it for that reason. Prema feels like a natural progression of Kaze’s sound and his approach as an artist. Prema is the album that Kaze was always going to release sooner or later. The timing of it after a string of Japanese language singles may be a surprise. But the album itself being in English is anything but a surprise. At least not to me.

I also have to say that I really like that Prema is regarded as Kaze’s third studio album. There is no splitting of his discography between English and Japanese. It’s great to see lessons were learned from the whole Hikaru Utada and Utada mess. It signals an approach that all bilingual artists in Japan should take with albums recorded in one language or the other. It just makes sense with where the world is at right now with music. Non-English songs and albums are topping charts in America and across Europe. City pop finding a market in America. And most albums in Japan releasing through Universal, Sony and Warner — making it easier to give English albums from Japanese acts wider releases. So there really is no need to split discographies or treat a release differently just because it’s in English. Prema sets a potential expectation for how Kaze may approach his albums from here on out. Maybe his fourth album will be in English and Japanese. Who knows? But I like that there is no delineation based on the language of the album.

Fujii Kaze - Prema | Universal Music

I was feeling a bit concerned about what Kaze’s third album would sound like based on the Pre-Prema singles that he had put out. I didn’t think they were bad. I just wasn’t feeling them the way I usually do Kaze’s singles. Each of these songs also felt like an extension of Love All Serve All as opposed to songs for a whole other album. So I was relieved when the news broke that Kaze was releasing a new album, and that these songs would be bonus tracks. And when “Hachiko” dropped I said ‘FINALLY’. A song that actually grabbed my attention and felt like Kaze was in a new space and phase of his career.

When most Japanese and Korean acts release songs specifically for the English market, a concern is never what the song will be about, because oft-times the song will be written by a team of songwriters who are adept at writing easy breezy pop songs primed for radio. And so much of Japanese (and Korean) pop is built around songs which were originally written in English by these same teams of songwriters anyway. But sometimes just the switch to English can be enough to make a song sound less cool. Because what sounds poetic and rhythmic in Japanese, can sound batshit crazy and clunky in English. This was something which became very apparent with Hikaru Utada’s Exodus album — which wound up being a huge part of its appeal, because it was so different from what you’d expect from who was (and still is) one of Japan’s best selling pop acts, and it said so much about who Hikaru was as a person and an artist. It’s the same shit with Kaze on Perma. He doesn’t massively change what he writes about just because he is writing in a different language, so nothing about these songs feel misrepresentative or drastically watered down. Yes, this means we get some strange lyrics and phrasings that a native English songwriter probably wouldn’t have gone with. The whole premise of “Hachiko” is kinda crazy. Fun and makes sense when you know the context, but still kinda crazy. And “Casket Girl”’s lyric of ‘There’s nothing you can say, you’re already dead’ is up there with Hikaru Utada’s ‘What a day, young boy next door passed away’. And a native English songwriter probably would’ve had a note for the ‘Sweeter than my mother’s cream pie’ line in “Prema”. But the key thing that Fujii Kaze and Hikaru Utada share is that they both know how to write great pop songs with great melodies, and this is maintained regardless of the language they write them in or the oddity of their lyrics.

Fujii Kaze - Prema | Universal Music

Prema being a major shift from Help Ever Hurt Never and Love All Serve All wouldn’t have necessarily been bad. But I do like that Prema feels like a natural step from those albums, and that Kaze didn’t feel the need to try and change the formula too much from what he knew worked. Prema sounds different enough to Love All Serve All that it feels different, but not so different that it alienates. Although the album being in English has already alienated fans.

As somebody who is not alienated by the language change — Going from Love All Serve All into Prema doesn’t feel abrasive or jarring, which I think is a huge testament to how well Kaze knows his own sound and the direction of it from album to album. Help Ever Hurt Never and Love All Serve All were both produced in their entirety by Yaffle. Prema doesn’t feature any production from him at all, and yet it still manages to sound like it was and sit alongside Help Ever Hurt Never and Love All Serve All. Kaze and his A&R have their shit together. There is something to be said about producers no longer having distinct sounds, and I’ve talked about this in relation to Kaze for the songs of his which were produced by A. G. Cook. I wonder if Kaze is actually co-producing his own music, but is going uncredited, which would explain the sonic consistency of Prema alongside Help Ever Hurt Never and Love All Serve All. But that’s a whole other post.

Prema still has that familiar Kaze sound which was established on Help Ever Hurt Never and Love All Serve All, but it leans far more 80s, which makes it incredibly timely. We are at a time in music when Japanese music is becoming more and more popular globally. But it’s not current or ‘modern day’ acts who are getting international attention. It’s city pop and kayokyoku acts of the 70s and 80s. So it’s very easy to see how Prema would end up on the radars of younger city pop and kayokyoku obsessives, and also older audiences who remember when these types of songs were bussin’ the first time around and can’t believe they’re growing in popularity 40 years later.

There is so much familiarity that many of us have of the 80s, because it’s become an eternal decade. The 80s has continued to have a presence in every damn thing since the 80s. But familiarity has always been a gambit of Fujii Kaze’s anyway. So for him to release an 80s leaning album makes so much sense, without it feeling like a calculated choice or a capitalisation on a moment in music. Because, baby. Kaze IS the moment.

Every song on Prema has a sound or a vibe which makes you feel like you’ve heard it before, and your brain will create a frame of reference for each one, even if it can’t pinpoint specifics. I can’t identify which songs “I Need You Back” reminds me of. It just does. It’s hard to identify which song in particular “I Need You Back” sounds like, because the whole thing is really just a bunch of typical sounds and production choices from big 80s pop songs, which is kinda the point. “Prema” has a Hip-Hop style breakdown with a kettle whistle-like sound effect that cropped up in a bunch of Hip-Hop songs in the late 80s and 90s songs — one which comes to mind being House of Pain’s “Jump Around”. And this same classic sound was even referenced in “Too Deep” on the Streets of Rage II soundtrack. “Love Like This” sounds like a Kazumasa Oda song. “You” sounds like a bit of Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” and a splash of Bobby Brown’s “Roni”. “Casket Girl” and “Okay. Goodbye” sound like a cross between Tatsuro Yamashita and Stevie Wonder. “Forever Young” sounds like a Good Future theme from Sonic CD. As per Kaze’s first 2 albums, the influences cast a wide net, and yet they all make sense together. And there is never a sense of any song or sound feeling like a direct copy or a rip-off — which can be difficult to do with 80s sonics.

Prema also strikes a great balance between uptempos, mid-tempos and ballads — something Kaze also struck on Love All Serve All. There is never a moment in this album when it feels like it’s lulling. I personally would have liked just one or two more mid-tempos, just because I think it’s a real sweet spot for Kaze, and two of my favourite songs on this album happen to be the two midtempos — “Love Like This” and “You”. Midtempos draw tenderness and romance out of Kaze in the way that he writes and sings, and there is just something about this that I’m drawn to. One of my favourite songs on Love All Serve All was “Garden” for this exact reason. He’s also a great balladier, which is why I wish “Michi Teyu Ku (Overflowing)” was originally released as a ballad, as per the version Kaze performed at Music Awards Japan and that it found its way onto Prema.

Fujii Kaze - Prema | Universal Music

Something that I don’t think Kaze gets enough credit for is his knack for writing great pop hooks. Every single song of his has a killer hook and Prema is no exception. If anything, Kaze’s knack for hooks stands out more on Prema because of the brevity of the album as a whole and the 80s sound making them punch that bit more. It’s ridiculous how quickly the hooks on Prema stick.

Kaze has such a great sense of melody and where to place them in songs. Music is a universal language. But even so, it’s really remarkable that Kaze’s ability to write great hooks and place melodies is as potent in English as it is in Japanese, and visa-versa. There’s no sense of ‘Ooo, that didn’t quite work. Maybe he wrote it in Japanese first and tried to flip it in English, but couldn’t get it to work as well.’ Everything just fits.

Kaze’s skill for hooks and melodies puts his cover albums and choices of songs into a clearer context. Kaze likes pop songs with really great hooks and melodies which are immediately recognisable. A good hook and melody will always stick, regardless of whether you remember the words or can even understand them, or whether you even like the song or not. And with Kaze being an artist with a discography which is now bilingual, it’s an amazing skill for him to possess and be able to apply in both languages. This further highlights how universal music is as its own language. Because even if his Japanese fans cannot understand what he’s singing on Prema or his non-Japanese fans cannot understand what he’s singing on his first two albums — they will all be able to hum the hooks to each song.

Fujii Kaze - Prema | Universal Music

When I saw the tracklist for Prema, my immediate thought was ‘Only 9 songs?’. And having listened to the album many times, it really does feel too short. Prema needed an additional 2 or 3 songs to better round the album out. A big issue I had with a bunch of the singles Kaze was releasing in 2023 and 2024 was that they all felt like Love All Serve All songs, so I’m glad they weren’t just thrown in amongst the Prema songs — as is often done with Japanese albums. But flipping a couple of these songs in a way that made them fit Prema would have made a lot of sense — similar to how the single “Hedemo Ne-Yo” was reworked to better fit Love All Serve All. “Feeling Go(o)d” and “Michi Teyu Ku (Overflowing)” could have worked nicely. But I take my hat off to Kaze for not just dumping the Pre-Prema songs amongst the Prema songs. I hope more Japanese acts follow suit, especially in this age of music. Releasing an album with 12 tracks, when 8 of them were singles released over the past 2 years is not the move anymore.

But one of the biggest faults I have with this album is that it lacks a completeness in terms of an overarching narrative which says something about where Kaze is in his life. On Help Ever Hurt Never, Kaze seemed kinda lost. At times it seemed as though he may have even started to lose faith in faith. On Love All Serve All, it felt like Kaze was still unsure of his place in the world, but had at least found a sense of purpose to help him move forward through it. With Prema I’m not really sure where Kaze is at. Maybe uncertainty is where he’s at. But that uncertainty feels more like something which affected how the songs turned out, as opposed to where Kaze is at in life. Prema feels like Kaze couldn’t decide on whether to write an album about relationships, faith or the uncertainty of life. There is a thread you can weave through each of these things to tell one story. But Prema doesn’t really do that. Even within one song, it may bounce between faith, relationships and the uncertainty of life, but not really tie these things together. And this paired with the album having only 9 songs makes it feel like an incomplete thought.

Kaze is pretty upfront about his relationship with spirituality and this has always been present in Kaze’s music. But it feels REALLY present in Prema. Two of the main themes of this album are love and loss — both are expressed in relation to faith. The songs about love could be interpreted as being about ‘a girl’, but could also be about a love for God. Despite the video for “Love Like This” featuring a straight-people love story, when I listen to that song it really does feel like a song about a love for God. But despite faith being at the heart of many of the songs on this album, it’s themes of loss and death which stick with me the most. I wish Kaze had explored this more and found a way to better tie it all together. But perhaps he didn’t know how to. Or perhaps he felt this would be just a step too far for his first album in English.

Listening to Prema made me wonder if Kaze suffers from depression and if this is possibly a theme of the album. There is a real sombreness and melancholy to Prema — even on songs like “Casket Girl”, “Prema” and “Forever Young” which sound jubilant musically. Also, there is a sense of distance to Kaze on Prema. Like he isn’t quite as present as he was on his previous two albums. In this sense, Prema reminds me a lot of Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope. But the biggest difference is that Janet said ‘Fuck it’ and laid a lot of her feelings of emptiness in the songs, where-as Kaze seemed to leave gaps in his.

Fujii Kaze - Prema | Universal Music

Prema is a good album. Every song on it could be a single. Kaze’s charm shines through on each and every song. But there is a sense of incompleteness about it. It’s not as easy to pin a sense of how Kaze’s feeling to this album as it was on Help Ever Hurt Never and Love All Serve All. And as much as I wasn’t a fan of the Pre-Prema singles, those songs do paint a clearer picture of where Kaze was / is in his life and how he feels about it all. Kaze adding just a couple of extra songs to this album to help tie everything together and provide a bit more clarity would have worked wonders. And having the entire album play as a non-stop mix also would have been a great way to at least feign the completeness of the album. When I first listened to Prema and heard “Casket Girl” transition straight into “I Need U Back” I sat up and said ‘OKAY BITCH. RENAISSANCE.’ But that was the one and only transition on the album.

Listening to Prema makes me to feel that perhaps the version of Prema we got was all that we could get. But that there was a plan or a desire for it to have been something more. And this is the biggest problem I have with Prema — it just isn’t enough.

The Japanese market isn’t really one for special / deluxe editions of albums. But given Kaze’s different approach to most with Prema and his career to date. I really would urge him and Universal to release a deluxe edition of Prema, in a bid to better realise it.

Highlights:
▪ I Need U Back
▪ Love Like This 🏆
▪ You
▪ Okay, Goodbye
▪ Forever Young