YUI – I Loved Yesterday – Kill Me Softly With “LOVE & TRUTH” …

… and then kill me again.

I must have heard that one song “LOVE & TRUTH” no less than 400 times by now as I have frequently left my players (Hi-fi, mp3 phone, PC iTune) on single song repeat mode while traveling, working, reading, and blogging ever since YUI’s third album has landed in Singapore.  And if you think that I am obsessed with numbers, guess what I have noticed when I first read the song list of “I Loved Yesterday” at HMV?  All her three albums have 13 tracks.  No more, no less.  Strange eh?  And how did I even remember such a detail?  Freaky.

At times I wonder which is the most tedious to write: a book, a CD, or a movie review.  To write this review, I have listened to her two previous albums in conjunction with “I Love Yesterday” quite a few times in order to, perhaps, remind myself why I like YUI’s music in the first place.  Her trademark of a hauntingly innocent girlie voice with a taint of vulnerability and yet full of conviction in delivering her music is still written all over her third album.  The fact that she has written all the tracks on her own and plays the guitar track translates to yet another rock album that does not deviate from her style – except “LOVE & TRUTH” that seems to be the odd one out.  It must have something to do with the lethal combination of a rock ballad and a symphony.

A song written for the Japanese film “Closed Note”, what “LOVE & TRUTH” means to some of YUI’s fans is perhaps similar to what “Last Smile” does to the Love Psychedelico fans – we love that one song so much that we will probably spend eternity waiting for another “LOVE & TRUTH” or another “Last Smile” to appear from the same artist.

“I Loved Yesterday” comes with a DVD that contains 4 video clips of songs from her previous album and a short concert filming of “LIVE at BUDOKAN” (7 tracks).  I would be lying to say that the filming of her live performance is near perfect.  A bit far from it, unfortunately; a bit pitchy here and there, in fact.  On a more positive note, besides able to see her in action on stage with her guitar, the last clip “YOKYO” is probably one of the most moving music clips I have seen (the most moving scene still belongs to Ayumi Hamasaki when she screamed at the top of her lung thanking the crowd at the end of the show … at an open stadium, to a silence audience, without a mic).  Also, there is a clip called “Jam” and I swear I have not heard that song from any of YUI’s album before.  I like that one quite a fair bit.

Overall song quality-wise, “I Loved Yesterday” may be the weakest compares to her debut “From Me To You” that is packed with songs with memorable tunes and her commercially successful second album “Can’t Buy Me Love” that is lifted by her movie “Midnight Sun”.  Nevertheless, it is still a 21 years old YUI production that is worth keeping.  Below is the video clip of “LOVE & TRUTH”.

Related Entries:

• YUI – My Short Stories – Did You Know This is a B-Side Compilation?
• YUI – I Loved Yesterday – Kill Me Softly With “LOVE & TRUTH” …
• YUI’s 2nd Album – Can’t Buy Me Love
• Yui’s From Me To You … I Like