Nannimonai - a Rare Example of Blending

Usushioshisuu’s song Nannimonai is really interesting because it reminds me of a concept that my music teacher from grade school talked a lot about. This concept is the fact that vocals are rarely blended in with the instruments anymore. They are treated like two separate things on different levels. He provided a good example every time he mentioned this. 

A famous singer who always blended phenomenally with the instrumentalists was Ella Fitzgerald. And the moment I heard the chorus from Nannimonai, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my music teacher and his fascination with Ella Fitzgerald’s singing style. 

The way the vocals and the instrumentals completely blend in the chorus and harmonize, makes it sound like the guitar is doing the work of back-up vocals. 

The song sounds like a mix of a show tune and a classic rock song. It has a very satisfying chord progression with plenty of crunch. That, and I don’t often hear Kasane Teto’s voicebank used like how it’s used in this song. It follows the same trend that the song does, complimenting it perfectly. Her vocals have the perfect amount of crunch but also stay smooth to stand out just enough to catch your attention. Her UTAU voicebank sings this song (obviously because the song came out in 2015) but I feel like if someone did a cover of it using her SV voicebank, it wouldn’t do the song proper justice. 

Listen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czSy0iuVw20&ab_channel=%E3%82%AB%E3%83%95%E3%83%8D&themeRefresh=1

(Trigger: mentions of unaliving oneself in lyrics)