[Exclusive Interview] Anna Aya Discusses Introducing J-pop to the Western Audience

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background as a singer and musician?

I’m half Japanese half Armenian and that’s one of the main things that make me and because I am fluent in both languages. I’ve been a model and an actress since I was six in LA, because I was born here in LA. For the past five years, I’d say I’ve been going back and forth between LA and Tokyo for fashion modeling. Now for the past year, I started music as well so yeah and the music is very special to me because it is J-pop, it’s a bilingual mix of Japanese and English lyrics so now here I am doing all three. 

“Someone Else” is your first English-Japanese fusion song. What inspired you to create this unique blend of languages and musical styles?

My producers Michael Africk, and Lewis Bell, had been looking for someone to introduce J-pop into the world, so I was really happy to be a part of that whole journey since I speak Japanese and English. I have been a translator before in my career so I decided to translate some of the English lyrics into Japanese, actually, the whole song was rewritten into Japanese too.

What was the creative process like for “Someone Else”? What is the story behind the song?  

The story behind it is just a girl heartbroken over a guy or something that happened and then realizing that she has so many more options in life that can make her happy and she doesn’t have to be stuck on this one thing that’s not serving her anymore. She finally realizes that she’s worth so much more and it’s a song about finding yourself and finding your worth.

How do you choose which part to sing in English and which parts in Japanese? 

We kind of just messed around with it, we didn’t know if we wanted to take one full verse in English and one in Japanese, but we kind of decided that we should start the first verse in English, so that people in the US and all around the world, who understand English can get hooked. More people understand English than Japanese, so they could be intrigued to listen to it, and then midway through it’ll kind of shift into the Japanese lyrics so we kind of made it a balance where it’s like English first and then Japanese. 

What obstacles did you face? 

Singing was very new to me so in the studio it was hard for me to like kind of adjust to that. I mean I’d say I’m a pretty fast learner so my producers were freaking out because they were like wait can she do this and then and then I was like I was doing it. It was really stressing out because I think I was just kind of like nervous about the whole new environment we were recording in Boston which I’ve never been before, so I was kind of just like in a whole new environment whole new experience but then slowly I started picking up like the tricks and more comfortable and then literally a day after they were like okay yeah like you’re doing good like don’t worry and I was like okay great so I definitely think like it was kind of just like me getting used to the studio was an obstacle. It was fun after I learned. 

What is the message you hope people take away from the song? 

The most important thing is that they feel better about themselves or good about themselves and like maybe you know shift the way they look at themselves or their perspective on life in general in a more positive light. Also, to love the Japanese culture because that’s very important to me and I feel like I can offer A new perspective on people’s ideas of Japanese culture.

Your music video for “Someone Else” features visually captivating scenes. What was it like working on the visual representation of the song?

it was definitely a new experience for me because I’ve recorded like shows and like stuff like that but I’ve never been like dedicating one video to a song so it was definitely a new experience having to sing while the song is playing in front of a bunch of people while the camera’s going it. There were a bunch of factors going on but I think I got to have fun with it uh I learned where to improve for my next videos. I want to add more of my fashion into it and for the Japanese lyrics and everything to be more prominent.