It is once again time for me to meet my quota of original content at NanteJapan. =) So for this article I have decided to drop a remix of a J-Pop song from the early 2000s.
Release Date: December 13, 2006
Key: D Minor
BPM: 131
Jyongri is a Japanese-Korean R&B/Pop singer signed to EMI Music Japan. She debuted in 2006 with the double a-sided single Possession/My All For You.
Possession was used as the ending theme for the television programs Itadaki Muscle, Super Chample and Ongaku Senshi MUSIC FIGHTER. At the same time, My All For You was the ending theme for Gokujou no Getsuyouru. Possession/My All For You is Jyongri’s highest-selling single, having sold 23,049 copies.
The song from this single that I decided to remix is Possession, a track that is 18 years old as of the time of writing this article. The older J-Pop heads will remember this song when it first came out. If you don’t know it, odds are you were a child in 2006 or had not been born yet.
To give a refresher to everyone, Possession is a high-energy dance/pop track that was typical of the material Japanese female pop soloists released in 2006. What made this somewhat different was the effective use of orchestral strings to help drive the track.
Possession comes in Japanese and English versions, and the official remix was done by Chris Paul (the music producer, not the basketball player.) Those remixes come in two flavours: the mainstream-friendly club mix and the more underground dub mix. And that is it.
Usually, I post the music video for this song to introduce you to the original version. But since this song is so ancient, it isn’t even on EMI’s YouTube channel anymore. You can find it on unofficial YouTube channels or elsewhere, but the quality of the video is pretty bad. Remember, in 2006, hi-def as we know it today wasn’t the norm.
The vocal track I used for my remix is the Japanese language track from the Possession/My All For You single. Good luck finding it on Spotify; much of Jyongri’s Japanese discography is unavailable outside Japan. It’s the same for Apple Music. But you can stream the original version for reference if you have a Japanese Apple Music account.
Possession is a song I am very familiar with, as I have attempted to remix it twice before, once in 2008 and again in 2015. Both remixes were awful since I had no clue what I was doing back then. But being young and blindly confident, I tried to do something with the song anyway. Thank the lord those remixes were lost in a hard drive crash many moons ago.
Now that I am older and “seasoned,” I figured I would give the song another go. For my interpretation, I did my best to take inspiration from the mainstream club songs of my early DJ days that resonated with me and apply that knowledge to Possession.
My goal was to have something close to the style of dance remixes of pop songs from the early 2000s that I would hear on mix shows and get on promos. The final result is way more polished and above my previous attempts at remixing this song. I finally did something presentable with this song after 18 years.
