melody. - Love Story

It is a bit of a shame that melody. chose Love Story as the title track, for its attempts to emulate strong Jpop songstresses such as Onitsuka Chihiro leave it falling a bit flat as the weakest offering on this single. melody. is far better at the smooth lounge, groove and hip-hop styles.

Love Story is not bad per se, it featuring a rather lovely melody of strings and has a feeling of real despair in its melancholy strains more deeply felt than your average Jpop ballad. melody.'s voice is similarly not bad but she tries and fails to hit the power that a singer such as Utada Hikaru or Chihiro could, and wavers a bit as a result. It is in her emulation of those singers where the song lacks bite. While she must be applauded for trying, melody. is simply too weak to effectively pull off a strong heart wrenching ballad in that style.

Born2luvu, her text-speak collaboration with m-flo fares much better. As an m-flo song you can expect a fair bit of English nonsense in Verbal’s rap and he does not disappoint. melody. succeeds too at this much lighter song allowing her to use her vocals within a range that suits her far more. It is a laid back lounge-groove offering that sounds like, well, m-flo and is at once both relaxing and fantastically catchy.

melody.’s final song, Lovin'U -Deckstream Remix is another lounge-groove-funk number, and another collaboration. It is a remix of her 2006 single, Lovin'U. She performs well opposite male rappers, the lighter and fresh sound of her vocals working with the harsher sounds of spoken words. While being similar to the m-flo collaboration, this is sufficiently different to render both enjoyable.

I would highly recommend this latest melody. single, as the two later tracks are cool and sassy examples of the multi-faceted lounge style while, despite its flaws, Love Story is still a highly likable example of a Jpop ballad.