I'm sure that everybody already knows by now - I'm always, always late with news after all. Arashi is holding "ARAFES", or "Arashi Festival", at Kokuritsu both this and next year. Apparently Kokuritsu is going to go under renovation after next year, so Arashi will be doing concerts for the last two years of the "current" Kokuritsu. Instead of their usual concert, ARAFES is supposedly going to be different, inspired by the broadway musicals and Cirque du Soleil show that Aiba, Jun, and Leader went to NY for recently. Hmm, so that trip was a research trip XD Furthermore, there will be no back dancers, so it's just five of them and thousands of fans. And they're having a voting on J-Web where fans can vote for 3 favourite singles, 3 favourite coupling songs, 3 favourite songs from albums, and 1 other song request - I suppose the songs with most votes will be performed.
I know that a lot of people in the English-speaking fandom will be voting for "Tokei Jikake no Umbrella", (while I don't understand why so many people love that song to bits, I do understand loving a song that never gets performed, and wanting to see it performed so badly) and I know that "Love So Sweet" is probably going to be in the top votes anyway. I do hope that more people choose songs that weren't performed recently (at least, in the last couple of years) but having said that, I myself voted for "5x10" and "Gorimuchu", both of which were performed last year. In the end, everyone has their own favourites, and any concert that is an Arashi Matsuri is fine by me! (Yes, even if they do end up singing all the Hanadan songs and "Lucky Man" and "Hadashi no Mirai", yet again. I'd be lying if I said hearing those songs don't make me happy!)
My friend Salwa isn't subscribed to the mobile app, so I let her use one of my three votes for each category. We voted for - [single] "Kaze no Mukou e", "We Can Make It!", "Sakura Sake" (Salwa's choice); [coupling song] "Superfresh", "Gorimuchu", "Tokei Jikake no Umbrella" (Salwa's choice); [album] "Joy", "5x10", "Yes? No?" (Salwa's choice); [request] "Sketch".
"Kaze no Mukou e" and "We Can Make It!" are two songs that, when I heard them on TV when some Arashi PV special was on, made me decide to look up more of their music. I really liked the rap lyrics in both - I guess that's why Sho-kun quickly became my ichiban, although I didn't know yet back then that he was responsible for them. Salwa chose "Sakura Sake", after which this conversation ensued -
ME: But they sang that last year.
SALWA: So? What if not many people chose it this year?
Since "Sakura Sake" means to her exactly what "Kaze no Mukou e" and "We Can Make It!" means to me, and I love the song anyway, I decided that she was right.
"Superfresh" is easily the song I wanted to hear live the most, while for Salwa it's "Tokei Jikake no Umbrella". (My Girl single wins favourite single!) "Gorimuchu", because, well... we both wanted to hear it again. ^^;
Choosing album songs was difficult because there really were so many! In the end we both decided that "5x10" is a must, because it's a song that we'd want to hear, no matter how many times it gets performed. I chose "Joy" because it's the song from Beautiful World that I wanted to see performed the most, but it wasn't in the setlist for the con I went to, nor in the DVD. Salwa chose "Yes? No?", because she really loves that song.
What I really wish they did was put the solos as a separate "3 choices", instead of lumping them with the albums, because there were a lot I'd want to vote for, like "Gimmick Game", but I decided against because if I have to choose between voting for one member and voting for all of them, of course I'd choose all of them.
In the blank request space, I put in "Sketch".
Anyway, the concert for this year will be held on September 20th and 21st. I wonder if there will be Dome performances after, or if the Waku Waku events was it for their Dome events of the year. I wonder how Kokuritsu would be with only five of them on stage. I wonder what other people are voting for, and if/when they will release the results.
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