INDEX
Wish I Could Just Make Dumb, Happy Songs
In a sense, those of us listening may be hearing this as a significant change for you, Shintaro Sakamoto.
Sakamoto: I guess people are listening more closely than I thought. But really, these lyrics are simply the result of me leaving out the things I do not feel like singing about right now. What I am feeling at the moment probably just found its way in naturally. That kind of detached, god’s-eye observer perspective just no longer feels right to me on an emotional level..
These days, something like that god’s-eye view almost exists as a given in everyday life, through AI and similar technologies. Did that make you want to bring more of a direct, personal involvement into your expression?
Sakamoto: We live in a time where even the information you get from an online search might not be true. It used to feel like a convenient tool where you could look something up and get the correct answer. Now you have to go one step further and question whether it is true or false. You no longer know what standards to rely on. I feel like that sense of not knowing what to do in times like these sits pretty deep at the core.
That feeling really seems to come through in the lyrics of “Protect Your Brain” and “Numb.”
Sakamoto: When you put it that way, it sounds like my own sense of crisis about society is just spilling directly into the lyrics, which is a little embarrassing. I thought I was making things the same way I always have, but maybe I have been more affected than I realized, and that influence is leaking out.
It feels less like the album was made by a detached observer looking down at the situation, and more like it comes from someone actually living inside it.
Sakamoto: I am not sure how conscious that was, but somewhere in the back of my mind there was probably a feeling that sounding like an observer was kind of lame. If that comes through, then I am glad.
When ”Let’s Dance Raw” came out, it was often described as dystopian. But a full cycle has passed since then.
Sakamoto: Looking back, society still had more room to breathe back then. The overall atmosphere of the world was very different.
It even had a science fiction-like setting, looking at a world that had fallen two thousand years ago from a point two thousand years in the future. Now our present reality feels even more like a dystopia.
Sakamoto: Yeah, that is true. About ten years after ”Hollow Me” in 2007, I once said something like, “I do not think I would make an album like that now.” At this point, I might be able to say the same about ”Let’s Dance Raw.” It might come across as a bit too removed, like looking down from above.
Maybe we are hearing it as heavier because, as people actually living through this, we feel so stuck in our own lives. That is why having ”Yoo-hoo” at the end felt like a small kind of relief, like spotting a friend faintly lit up somewhere ahead in a dark era. This album really seems to resonate with what this moment in time feels like.
Sakamoto: I guess it is hard to stay completely separate from the mood of the world. I tried not to make it sound too gloomy, and instead to look for something I could still enjoy within all of that. Honestly, I would like to make happier, more ridiculous songs. If carefree songs could sound cool right now, I would love to make them. But that is the hard part.
Shintaro Sakamoto “Yoo-hoo”
Released Friday, January 23, 2026
Price: ¥2,600 (excluding tax)
- To Grandpa (Dear Grandpa)
- Is There A Place For You There?
- Justice
- Protect Your Brain
- On The Other Side Of Time
- The Clock Began To Move
- Numb
- Why Do This?
- Ghost Town
- Yoo-hoo
