Interview - Bennie K
Bennie K first took the splash into stardom in January of 2001, since then they’ve released three albums and made waves as part of the wildly successful “When you connect. Coca-Cola” campaign featuring their single “Dreamland” which was released in June. We caught up with Bennie K, comprised of vocalist Yuki and MC Cico, about their latest single “Sky” which has already dropped in stores on September 21st.
Keiko Murata (Keiko): This time, Sky does a 180 from the full on fun of the previous work, “Dreamland”. It shows the real inside of you two, so what kind of feelings did you face it with?
Yuki: When they hear the name Bennie K, I think there are a lot of people who think of fun, bright songs like “Oasis”, “Sunrise” and “Dreamland”, but we’re really conscious about making sure to show a lot of human interest. And we’ve been showing this inside kind of image since our first album. So, we wanted to have everyone see that we’ve shown a lot of different expressions.
Keiko: My impression from the lyrics is that because of the way you were in the past, you are who you are now.
Yuki: Yes. In “Dreamland”, I think we really show off the happy state that is Bennie K now, but in “Sky”, it’s illustrating the conflict in the mind before it dispels those feelings. The second half is like struggling to become the positive Bennie K we are now.
Cico: Basically, the feelings in “Sky” are the ones that we always hold, so I think we’ll hit walls after this too, and that we might get sad. But, we put the wish to have the power to break through all those walls into a song. I think people grow the most when they’re in hard times, and isn’t living in such a way that you can catch the “This is that kind of a test right now” times, and change them into a positive, “I’m kind of enjoying it” feeling great? Because we have all those types of feelings in a song, this isn’t the end, today is always a start. So, it’s not something of the past.
Keiko: So, if I have this right, getting through the trials you’ve had as Bennie K is what made you the way you are in “Dreamland”?
Cico: I think that’s right. I can’t see the feelings in “Sky” as a hard time, but I can’t call them freewheeling times either. Because I see them as times we’ve gotten through, we made “Dreamland”, and this [“Sky”] might have been born from that.
Yuki: Basically, it’s not that we released “Dreamland” and were done, it’s just the feeling that we wanted to put this out after “Dreamland”. We just wanted to show that raising feelings to that high of a point is generally something that comes because of the troubled and lost times.
Cico: So, they co-exist. For instance, the way to express “Dreamland” is to have a bullhorn and be saying “Let’s go!” to everyone. However, “Sky” is like you suddenly say, “The truth is…” So, there are things we want to open up about too. For Yuki, it’s that “In order to get over the wall, you have to go through really painful times too”, and for me, it’s that “I’m all about having fun, but sometimes I feel really lonely too”. Because there are feelings like wanting to wrap everyone up into one, and wanting to be together, we’re afraid of getting hurt, and we say “Back off!” those times are certainly there. But, surely, we have people say “I get it, I get it”.
Keiko: How do you feel after having just gotten those feelings that were hidden so deeply inside of you out?
Cico: I’m genuine, so since I think that this is the world that I always wanted to illustrate, I’m satisfied.
Yuki: Also, accepting “Sky” is the first acceptance of Bennie K, I think.
Keiko: And the second song, “OSAGA” has the various feelings of Cico’s hometown of Osaka and Yuki’s hometown of Saga all in it pleasantly.
Cico: I had thought, “We don’t have a self-introduction type track aside from ‘Benkei to Ushiwakamaru’”, and I wanted to express our hometowns, and figured that if we did, people might be able to feel closer to Bennie K. So, we made it a melody that would let people really feel the fun festival merrymaking. We’ve both left our hometowns to come to Tokyo to make music, and I was sad that wouldn’t be able to return to Osaka quickly. And, not being able to return to Osaka despite all the support Bennie K has there was extremely painful. It feels like I’m facing Osaka and saying, “I won’t forget Osaka’s guts”. I haven’t been able to return, but I wanted to show that my heart is always in Osaka.
Yuki: I was always… when I said it, I wasn’t sure if I’d be misunderstood or not. Whenever I’d say, “I’m from Saga”, people would say “That’s the country” and make a lot of jokes (laugh). Those were kind of funny, but since I love the town I was raised in, Saga, I always thought, “I’d love to show everyone its charm”. It’s nothing but the ocean, mountains and rice paddies, but I think that the nature has become part of what is a base of my personality. I want to have a chance to show everyone that good part of Saga. And, just at the right time, Bennie K went to Saga for our first chance at a one-man live down there, and everyone was saying, “Welcome back”, really warmly, and I thought, “I really do love Saga”. My hometown is great. And, in the hotel we were at there were guide maps about everything, so I got those and looked up everything that had changed in Saga and wrote lyrics (laugh).
Keiko: This has a lot of your love in it, doesn’t it?
Cico: This song is a love letter to Osaka and Saga. What I want to say is that our groove was born in Osaka and Saga. Because the two of us together make Bennie K, we wanted everyone to know that.
Keiko: And, the third song, “Happy Drive ~Taste Your Stuff~” has such a happy title, and yet it’s a collaboration song with m-flo about a fight that happens on a date that you seem to enjoy.
Cico: Yes. I thought, “I want to do something new”. But, m-flo has done so many collaborations with different artists. So, even in that “because it’s with Bennie K”, I wanted to do it, and as an idea we had “How about a love song where they fight?” Once we started on it, Verbal’s rap is perfect and cool, and we got to put a lot of different things into it.
Yuki: It really is a love song where they fight.
Cico: Yes, but in the end, it’s like, “I was just joking!”
Yuki: Couples on dates do this in reality too, don’t they? But because they do that, they have the loving times too.
Cico: And, they fight because they love. I’m really satisfied that we could do a song like this.
