Sphere released their 10th Anniversary Album on the 8th of May titled 10s.

After a year and a half to recharge themselves, Sphere returned in February with a concert at Maihama Amphitheatre titled LAWSON presents Sphere 10th Anniversary Live 2019 Ignition. With the title of Ignition, they start their engines going into their 10th year.

For this album, all 4 members contributed lyrics to the lead song titled Music Power→!!!! as well as working with JAM Project for a new song Hagane no Victress with JAM Project. There’s also songs focusing on each individual member with CITRUS*FLAG, My Sweet Words, SPOTLIGHT and Partage. Natalie also interviewed members of this group during in after a year and a half break, and asking the members of Sphere about their new songs and themselves going forward.

This is the fourth of five parts in an interview translated from Natalie.

Of upper tune Citrus and Kotobuki Digi-rock

The 4th to 7th songs are all individual songs you all sing under the Sphere name.

Kotobuki: Yes. Each member is the focus of these 4 songs.

Toyosaki: We have a fun song titled Ding! Dong! Ding! Dong! where we squeeze all our individuality into one song. We asked director Sato to dissect it or, use that as a basis and make 4 unique songs for us this time round.

We’ll begin with the 4th song, the upper CITRUS*FLAG. It feels perfectly like…

Tomatsu: Me! (laughs) When we were given that suggestion we were all asked to think of how we would relate our songs to music, I chose “music x upper”. If Sphere was to basically sing a song that feels like Tomatsu, I thought “would this be alright to perform in a live??” was how fun it was to make it. When Sato requested other words, I suggested images of “carbonic acid”, “splash of water” and “citrus”.

Citrus. (laughs)

Tomatsu: Adding CITRUS to FLAG felt like a good chemical reaction for Sphere. The song itself has tons of fun in it, and while recording it we even added more yelling in the background.

Kotobuki: There was a lot of yelling in the in-betweens.

Tomatsu: Right? I feel like anything could happen during the live for that, no matter what you do it’ll be enjoyable regardless. I hope it will be that kind of song.

The next song, My Sweet Words feels like a digi-rock song, which would be right down Kotobuki’s alley.

Kotobuki: That’s correct. For my solo project, I use Kotobuki-rock as a title for my rock songs but, how do I best represent this for the four of us? Actually Aki-chan suggested we use the digi-rock style this time. I requested Hidenori Tanaka, the person who always does my solo lyrics, to work on the lyrics for this. I love the world view and choice of words Hidenori uses. My theme was “music x message” so I “wanted to make a story with Letter as a motif”. I send him a letter of the words I wanted him to use by letter too. I’m very satisfied I received such wonderful lyrics for the song too.

Tomatsu: The lyrics was very cool.

Kotobuki: I was the top batter when recording started so I got excited when I wondered “if the 4 of us sings this, how would it turn out?” When we heard the actual song with all our vocals over each other, I felt it was really cool! As the 4 of us are seiyuu, and also performers, each of us can that song’s world and express ourselves in the songs with ease. That was what made me the most glad.

The fans are the light, songs are made to understand each other

The 6th song, SPOTLIGHT, is a country styled guitar pop so I’m guessing it’s Toyosaki’s.

Toyosaki: Yes. My theme was “music x daily life”, it was very refreshing to have all of us sing this natural, guitar pop song with calm colors. My solo songs are basically based on my favorite things. For this song, I based it on the Sphere’s songs, that are their favorite as an image. Singing SPOTLIGHT as Sphere, it made me thought of what we are to the fans, and I felt like the “Light” is one of the things tha guided us there.  

Tomatsu: Aa…

Toyosaki: The last chorus has the phrase “You’re not alone, you’re definitely not alone” repeating but, when I stand on the stage and think of the other 3 girls while singing it, I also think of the fans on the other end too. Also, I re-listened to Sphere’s past songs for this 10 anniversary timing. I realised hearing the fans’ voice is better than the original sound.  When I just hear the four of us I go “does it really sound like this??” I had a phrase that was very befitting of Sphere that goes “This voice of mine becomes music, it becomes our light.”

And the last song, Partage, is a classical song with it’s string quartet and piano is Takagaki’s.

Takagaki: Classical was my roots, and it’s part of my identity beyond my solo career. This was based partially off of Elgar’s Morning Song. I asked riya of eufonius to write the lyrics for me and my theme was “Music x life” so…

You would assume it feels heavy, but if we put your career into perspective, it makes sense.

Takagaki: It’s actually heavy you know! (laughs) My theme was too big, so I wondered what I felt towards music, for example “music is something where if it reaches someone, it’s theirs” or so. I got caught up thinking about that and send those ideas to riya. She summarised it into one beautiful French word, Partage. Partage means “to understand each other”,  this word originally came from Partage Bouquet, the same thing a bride holds on her wedding day. In other words, sharing happiness.

Kotobuki: Amazing.

Takagaki: I feel that music is just like that, so I was awe-struck. Also, this Partage, to put it into another perspective, is to share it with someone who will eventually get 10s into their hands so I hope it becomes theirs’.

Source: Natalie