Adult contemporary, where did it come from?

[koganbot]

Here's the theme-song to a Japanese videogame* that's sung in English by a Chinese woman (Faye Wong) who was born in Beijing but originally rose to fame singing in Cantonese rather than Mandarin. But the reason I post it (Faye Wong sings it well, but she's done more interesting stuff) is that when I heard it I thought to myself, "I bet she's covering a song by a country diva" thinking that this was the sort of song a country diva aiming to hit the adult contemporary market might have sung about thirty years ago. So my question would be, who else who isn't country would be likely to sing something like this? (One answer: Faye Wong, though I gather that this sort of thing was less and less a part of her repertoire as she went on. She's still a subject for further research, my having seen her name for the first time four days ago.)

"Final Fantasy VIII - Eyes On Me" (Watch on YouTube)

*Final Fantasy VIII, which I gather isn't just a game, but a whole franchise, a combination videogame and Taco Bell.

Comments

[petronia.livejournal.com]

From my perspective "who" isn't quite the right question; this is what 1998 Final Fantasy-style symphonic jpop ballads sound like XD; Although "Eyes On Me" was so popular it may well have created the videogame symphonic jpop ballad as a category; Japanese RPG game music has always been emblematic to the gamer audience but before this era hardware limitations had restricted it to the "chiptune" MIDI electronica one thinks of as "videogame music".

Sticking with flagship Squaresoft games (same composer/songwriter for these - Nobuo Uematsu), Final Fantasy IX's theme was a direct rip of this formula:



Final Fantasy X (2001) had an Okinawan folk-inspired design that was reflected in the music:



By X2 (direct sequel - 2003?) we're back with mainstream jpop as represented by Koda Kumi (this is not the most interesting song in X2 - in which the main character is a superpowered pop star like Jem - but it shows the progression):



By Kingdom Hearts I-II we have Utada Hikaru in her 2steppy period:





Then with Final Fantasy XII (2006, the most recent one to date), we change composers and the in-game music sounds totally different, but for the ending theme we're suddenly back to the big symphonic ballad:

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Of course the point of these is that they operate according to the "Titanic" principle, i.e. they're imbued with meaning by the 80-hour epic narrative they accompany (usually by way of romantic leitmotif) so that when you get to hear the all-stops-pulled symphonic vocal version you're meant to bawl.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

That was the context that "people who are fans of 'Eyes On Me'" would place it within. I was going to follow up by saying "but of course there's another context, which is that of yr avg late-90s orchestrated jpop ballad Uematsu was riffing off of"... only to find I can't come up with all that many examples! Lots of jpop ballads, that is, but they don't tend to be as lush, vocally or instrumentally.

Perhaps I'm just thinking of Onitsuka Chihiro (but then again, she debuted later):



According to Wikipedia this went to #11 Oricon (the album went #1) and sold 500,000 copies in 2000; "Eyes On Me" sold 400,000 copies in 1999.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

So alternately Uematsu just liked Faye Wong's style and pastiched it, because what it sounds most like is her:





(I'm not for this stuff in huge doses tbh, but I do like that last one a lot - mostly for the lyrics.)