Belle (soundtrack)

*This article is about the soundtrack. You may be looking for the character or the film*.

## ***Belle (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)***

* Japan
* English

## Soundtrack by Various artists

### **Released**

July 30, 2021 (Japan)
January 14, 2022 (international)

### **Studio**

Victor, Bunkamura, Tanta, Shibuya (Tokyo, Japan)
Abbey Road Studios (London, United Kingdom)

### **Genre**

* Film score
* J-pop
* emo pop

### **Label**

* Studio Chizu
* Sony
* Milan (international)

### **Producer(s)**

Taisei Iwasaki

> A score should not be a good piece of music on its own. The most important thing for the film is that it works well in the scene, so we had a lot of discussions about that when we were composing.
>
> Iwasaki answering the question of background music

***Belle (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)*** is the official English soundtrack for the 2021 film, *Belle*. The album was first released by Studio Chizu and Sony on July 30, 2021, with its English version distributed internationally by Milan Records on January 14, 2022. The score was composed by Yuta Bandoh, Ludvig Forssell, and Taisei Iwasaki.

## Background

Ludvig Forssell mentioned in an interview the approach for writing music for anime, "Usually, for an anime series, you have a list of different styles of songs or emotions that they want to convey until you start writing music before there's any picture. The other would be like scoring a picture with this film. Especially since we're talking about songs, the first song that I wrote was called 'Gales of Song'. It was more about focusing on the song itself rather than how it was going to fit the picture. If anything, they [Studio Chizu] wanted to have that song and then do the animation rather than do it the other way around". It was stated that the main three composers were him, Bandoh, Iwasaki, with Daiki Tsuneta who did the first track ("U"), and Miho Hazama ("Slingshot").

Regarding lead composer and arranger Taisei Iwasaki's process, he stated, "First, I read the script and storyboard, had a long meeting with the director Mamoru Hosoda to decide the overall concept, and then started writing the individual songs. To give one example of my approach to the songwriting process, I went to Kochi Prefecture, the model for the town where Suzu, the main character, is living, and wrote the song on the sunken bridge that appears in the film". In particular to the lyrics Belle sings, he revealed, "Hosoda-san first wrote the main idea and shared it with us. Kaho Nakamura, who plays the role of Suzu for the original Japanese version, rewrote the lyrics and I adjusted them to the music, which was a very unique process". After the film was released, they decided to do an English version of the soundtrack, to which he mentioned had difficulties in translating due to "conveying the fine nuances of the underlying Japanese when I write songs in English", though worked closely with Forssell to achieve what he believed was a "perfect translation". They were involved in the team that created the English version, and also recorded the vocals and did the mixing in New York, working for "ten straight days". Because of COVID-19, there were restrictions to travelling, the English lyrics done in July, and managing to talk to Kylie McNeill (English voice actor of Belle) in the New York studios, still following the protocols.

Iwasaki said of the two versions, "I am convinced that we were able to create two good versions independent of each other. When I was recording the English version in New York, I first told everyone that I didn't want to make a Japanese translation, but that I wanted to make two good individual versions. As for the mix of the songs, we did the English version as well, so it's not that one is better than the other, but I think we were able to create a good version of both the Japanese and English versions".

## References

1. ↑ Clemons, Jared (January 14, 2022). "INTERVIEW: BELLE's Composers On Creativity, Virtual Meetings and Working with Mamoru Hosoda". *Crunchyroll*.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Hanson, Kwok-Wai (January 14, 2022). "Exploring Music in BELLE with Ludvig Forssell (Interview)".
3. ↑ Davidson, Danica (February 3, 2022). "INTERVIEW: BELLE's Lead Composer Taisei Iwasaki Talks Music and Creativity". *Otaku USA*.
4. ↑ Eisenbeis, Richard (January 21, 2022). "BELLE Lead Composer Taisei Iwasaki".