In honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, each writer wrote about three songs that were either written or sung by Asian songwriters.

Nick’s picks

1. Mitski – “Two Slow Dancers”
2. Japanese Breakfast – “Dreams – Recorded at Spotify Studios NYC”
3. Silk Sonic – “After Last Night”

Mitski’s “Two Slow Dancers” is a song about school dances. With soft electric pianos and Mitski’s almost-talkative voice, “Two Slow Dancers” is full of sadness. “It’s funny how you always remember / And we’ve both done it all a hundred times before / It’s funny how I still forgot,” she writes in the first verse. The narrator and her dance partner are experienced at dancing, but somehow keep forgetting the steps they have to do. When she sings, “It would be a hundred times easier / If we were young again,” she is looking back to the simple and easy love you can have when you’re young. Now that they are growing older, the two find love harder than it was before. “Two Slow Dancers” is a heartbreaking song, full of melancholy yet refreshing grief. 

Japanese Breakfast, fronted by Michelle Zauner, is one of the best indie pop groups out there right now. Their 2018 cover of The Cranberries’ hit song “Dreams” is the perfect encapsulation of what they do best. Taking Zauner’s emo roots and muting them a little, the band’s version of dreams features heavier instrumentals than the original. With a basic drum groove and bulky electric guitars, Zauner’s voice, which is a little less soft than The Cranberries lead singer Dolores O’Riordan’s voice, has the room to lead the track. Her voice is perfect for the band’s arrangement of the track. It flies out over the post-chorus, but stays solidly on the ground, maintaining a simple timbre, during the verse. 

I’ve been listening to Anderson .Paak since the week his second album, “Malibu,” came out in 2016. His funky drumming and swagger-filled vocals were entrancing to me. When he announced that he would be pairing up with Bruno Mars for their collaborative project, Silk Sonic, I was ecstatic. The pair’s 2021 album, “An Evening With Silk Sonic,” is one of my favorites from that year. Off that record, it’s the track “After Last Night” that stands out. With it’s incredible bass line and vibes galore, “After Last Night” is one of the songs that is most likely to make me snap along. The song’s reliance on R&B and soul tropes is not a detractor: I love it. A sort of pastiche of the music of the ‘70s, “After Last Night” is able to make old-school love modern again. 

Daniel’s picks

1. Geinoh Yamashirogumi – “Kaneda (from Akira Symphonic Suite Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)”
2. Joji – “Run”
3. Joe Hisaishi – “Merry-Go-Round of Life – from “Howl’s Moving Castle”

Japanese composer, Geinoh Yamashirogumi, created the amazing score for the 1988 anime film “Akira.” In the first 10 minutes of the movie, while a high-octane bike gang battle is taking place, the main theme of the movie, “Kaneda,” bellows beneath it. Named after the main protagonist of the movie, the song does a perfect job of setting the mood for this motion picture. This track, as well as the rest of the soundtrack for the film, features traditional Japanese noh music and Indonesian gamelan music mixed with modern synthesizers and other electronic instruments. As the city of Neo-Tokyo, a dystopian city that was destroyed by a nuclear blast years ago, is introduced in the movie, the tune creates an air of mystique and dread due to the fact that it is played during this scene. 

The Joji song “Run” tells the story of Joji’s former lover. The most straightforward interpretation of this song is that Joji maintains the belief that he and his old partner continue to care about one another. Because their emotions are so powerful, despite the fact that they are no longer together, they are still “running” away from one another in their own unique ways. However, this song has more than one meaning. By the time the song is over, it is abundantly clear that he has given into these feelings and is actively looking for a way to restart the relationship. The song has strong falsetto vocals and guitar solos. It’s best described as an atmospheric rock power ballad with R&B influences.

The animated feature film “Howl’s Moving Castle,” which was released in 2004, includes the Joe Hisaishi piece titled “Merry-Go-Round of Life.” It is a well-known work of art that encapsulates the entirety of the human experience, from conception to decomposition, in a single song. This waltz has a natural connection to the film’s themes of love, youth, innocence and destiny, all of which are explored throughout the course of the movie. Composer Hisaishi manipulates the piece’s dynamics by bringing them up and down, much like the horses that ride around on a merry-go-round. The volume of the music gradually increases until it reaches a crescendo, becoming more solemn and grand as it does so.

Sarah’s picks

1. RINI – “Aphrodite”
2. beabadoobee – “the perfect pair”
3. Mitski – “Francis Forever”

Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, and her name is often referenced in songs talking about relationships and romance. RINI’s song “Aphrodite” compares a girl he likes to Aphrodite’s intoxicating beauty. The song is a soft R&B ode, making it feel like he is singing this to Aphrodite herself as she sits on her oyster shell, a shell in which she emerged from in mythology. RINI is pouring his heart out in “Aphrodite,” singing lyrics such as, “You’re the only one I want more of” and “Bring me to your sacred place.” The instrumentals create a smooth, almost hypnotizing, rhythm as the electric guitar and distinct drums blend with RINI’s breathy vocals. 

Beabadoobee, or Beatrice Kristi Ilejay Laus, sings about an imperfect couple in her song “the perfect pair.” The track is about a rocky relationship she is in and her figuring out that the flaws she sees in her partner are also visible in her. The lyrics, “I know you hate it when there’s nothing to say / I’m not quite sure we’d fix it, guess we’re so used to it” indicate that a lack of communication is what’s destroying the relationship. Beabadoobee hides the troubling lyrics inside music that sounds like a warm spring day. She crafts a soft indie melody that reminds me of artists like Clairo and Liana Flores. 

In “Francis Forever,” Mitski conveys an exhausted, lonely take on what it means to miss someone who is gone from your life. The song can be interpreted as Mitski missing someone who has died, or as missing an ex-lover. In the song, she feels like wandering forever if she doesn’t have to remember missing that person. The most hard-hitting lyric is, “I don’t need the world to see / That I’ve been the best I can be” because it comes from a vulnerable place. Mitski doesn’t want to pretend anymore with her feelings, she wants this person that she doesn’t have anymore to fill the void inside her and to make her feel better. 

Eli’s picks

1. YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA – “TECHNOPOLIS”
2. Yoko Ono – “Mrs. Lennon”
3. ナイトクルージング – “Fishmans”

The late ‘70s were an exciting time for the development of electronic music. Germany had Kraftwerk, Italy had Giorgio Moroder, but one of the most interesting groups to come out of this era was YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA from Japan. YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA, along with Moroder, helped to transform electronic music from an inaccessible, experimental genre to an irresistibly upbeat subcategory of pop music. “TECHNOPOLIS,” released in 1979, perfectly represents their style, combining influences from Italian disco, progressive rock and krautrock to create a groundbreaking wholly original sound.

You may think of Yoko Ono, John Lennon’s iconic second wife, as the creator of abrasive, experimental music. While those kinds of songs are certainly present on her 1971 album “Fly,” she shows a more sensitive, melancholic side on “Mrs. Lennon.” Featuring just piano, acoustic guitar and Ono’s haunting, tortured vocals, the song is sure to shock anyone who might have dismissed her work based on the perceptions of her that have been deeply ingrained in popular culture. The song heartbreakingly describes how Ono feels that she is viewed as Lennon’s wife and nothing else, rather than as an artist. “Mrs. Lennon” is sure to change any Beatles fan’s perspective on an undeniably divisive figure in the band’s history.

“ナイトクルージング” by Fishmans, known as “Night Cruising” in English, is a soothing, dreamlike song that, in hindsight, was far ahead of its time. Though it was released in 1996, the song would easily feel at home in the discography of popular American artists such as Mac DeMarco and Tame Impala. Structurally, the song only features two chords, giving it a meditative, trance-like quality. “Night Cruising” could go on and on forever in an infinite loop and you’d never even notice because of how immersive it is.