In your brief foray at the beginning into postmodernism I'm not sure the collage analogy is appropriate because the many fragments of a collage will often add up to a recognizable overall image (such as of the cow in your visual example), whereas postmodernism-literary deconstructionism-doesn't attempt to derive an overall meaning or structure (as I understand it). Actually, when you say in your reply here to another comment that you're wary of what someone says his/her lyrics are about, you sound vaguely postmodernist. What someone or a band says his/her/their lyrics are about shouldn't necessarily be the last word on the matter but it should always be the first word, I think. Of course, an artist or band may not specify what the lyrics mean, in which case the band or album context ("about the band"), which you appear to dismiss or at least consider secondary, will be helpful (or I think indispensable). There should be some sort of anchor, otherwise one can become utterly untethered and can impute, through analytical contortions, any kind of meaning to any set of lyrics, ending up in hermeneutic chaos or inconclusion.

It’s a wonderful song. Again, I am mesmerised by Su’s incredible vocals here and I’ve been a fan since 2014- blimey, 10 years already - Su finds a new thing to do with every song. She really is quite something. Thanks for taking the time to do this. it really is appreciated.

Wow, I am very surprised this video hasn’t gotten more views. I hope this fanbase will be ready for the new era that is about to come. I don’t think the two interpretations of existentialism is wrong, nor do I think the “band” interpretation is completely wrong either. But whichever interpretation we take that involves the band, I think it would be fair to consider that the issue involves something more broad and deeper than what happened with Yui. In fact, I would argue the “schism” within the fanbase around Yui was just a microcosm of something else. Perhaps something that Maya eludes to, in my mind anyway. Either way, I think this whole thing is an instance where we have multiple layers of meaning and interpretation that all converge through a singular point such as a symbol or concept rooted in history. In this case, the pop culture surrounding the concept of The Matrix. Kind of like how the concept of the Apple has multiple branching paths of nuance and meaning that all stem from history, religion, and biology. I have been dabbling a bit into Sleep Token lore and that is a huge symbol they use as a point of origin for their lore and my God are there so many dimensions to it. I noticed the artwork for Believing has imagery eluding the the Garden of Eden as well, interesting. A good example for such a meta concept for Babymetal is the idea of the hero figure who Sumetal represents. But the hero figure has multiple layers of narrative meaning ranging from a messianic figure who must sacrifice themselves for the good of all mankind, a warrior chosen by “God” who must lead the resistance against tyranny, or a brave soul who must take on the daunting task of exploring the final frontier by going on an epic space odyssey into the unknown. I think the concept of the hero figure has evolved over time to take on different roles and virtues. In the case of The Other One, maybe the hero is just a child star who has taken this narrative to heart and had been entrusted with the hearts of thousands if not millions at a young age; who now must make the hard decision as an adult on whether or not to sacrifice her public image for the mental safety of herself and others, or let it continue and see if a better future will come of it for everyone. Either way, for her, it is like playing with a fire that has evolved over time into becoming the para-social equivalent of a nuke, and I use that word with intent (Monochrome). That leads to my final point. I like to interpret these songs as an open ended question being posed from the perspective of someone who grew up in what is essentially global fame, whose identity around such a phenomenon is wrapped into a hero persona representing a fictional character wearing their face as their mask. For songs like this and Mirror Mirror, maybe the “other person” you mention is the Sumetal to Suzuka Nakamoto. Same can be proposed for Moametal and Moa Kikuchi. But for this example; Sumetal is the “face in the mirror” with Suzuka being the observer. “The One” (audience) is the “body” incorporated into the personhood of Sumetal, we are all contributing members of this entity known as “Sumetal”. I imagine plenty of times in her life she has had to literally look at herself in a physical mirror only to see the person we all have been seeing in the press and on these stages all these years, Sumetal, the saviour of heavy metal; and she no doubt has had to question herself on how much of this is real. Never did she expect this to become something so literal to so many including myself. It makes me want to cry. But hindsight is 20 20 and we now know the decision her and Moa made along with Momo. They chose to continue this journey, and in true hero fashion, they “sacrificed” themselves on stage to become living examples for all of us moving forward. Death Is The Only Way To Live. Maybe I am reading too much into this. But what do I know. I’m just a lost soul looking for answers who happened upon a home for now among whatever this thing we call “Babymetal.”

Absolutely excellent. I’m going to forward this to my 30 year old daughter to digest. I know she will love it as well! Your take on this is valued. 🤟🏻🤟🏻

Thanks - nother great analysis from you! I'm always fascinated how you manage to unearth the hidden meanings in BM songs I probably would never have found by myself.

Thanks for this. Curiously I have lived through one interpretation of this song around the mid-point of my life. Very thought provoking on a personal level.

Thanks for the video and the excellent analysis!! I never delved into the meaning of the song, so this helepd a lot! On a side note: Someone else pointed out the similarity to the T.A.T.U. song "All the things she said" I must say that I heard the similarity istantly the first time I heard Believing! So I have been thinking that the similarity might not be an accident, but they looked for it! But I can't think on a way that it could improve or even add to the song meanings you already gave 🤔

Hi Professor, another excellent analysis. I had this song pegged as a song about a couple in a relationship where trust has been breached and they are working out if they can continue on, as they know they can't go back, even if what they had in the past was valuable. However, I now lean toward your existential reading, based on the promotional material released as a companion to the song. It makes sense that Sumetal and Suzuka Nakamoto exist inside the one person, but present to the world as manifestly different personas. It may be the only way that people with a distinct alter-ego can maintain some degree of sanity, by separating their personas into two distinct beings where internal dialogue can be processed at arm's length, as if they really are two different people. This is perhaps your best walkthrough yet. Super interesting.

Some reviewers mentioned a similarity in text and music between this song and "All the things she said" by t.A.T.u (2002) around this stanza: Babymetal: All the things you said, all the things I know All the things you said, all the things I know Believing, believing you, believing you t.A.T.u. - All The Things She Said All the things she said All the things she said Running through my head Running through my head All the things she said (all the things she said) This is not enough (enough, enough, enough) I wonder if this was intentional

Wonderful analysis! I love songs that are essentially nonsensical fun (like Oh! Majinai), but also ones that make me think and trigger my emotions. It's probably one of the reasons why Believing is in my top 3 TOO songs 🖤

I love your in-depth analysis of BM songs prof!

I again appreciate your lecture ありがとうございます from Japan💛。 This song does not have any advantage for Japanese viewer like me, because the lyrics are in English 😄 . One thing I can say is your interpretation that this song hardly relate to specific events of the band is probably correct. Su and Moa made comments on the TOO album in an interview in the magazine PMC vol.27 that was published in April 2023. When it comes to "Believing", Su said "This song was created about 5 years ago and some sound source recorded back then is mixed in this studio version. So if you listen to it carefully, you can hear my childish voice. So it is a kind of collaborating by current I and then I" [page 41]. --- That means way before pandemic and before Yui's official departure. Of course, it has something to do with transient period from teenage girls to grown-up women, I mean "Dark Side", but there is no reason to release this song 5 years later if the transition signifies a lot. Su also mentioned in the interview the different personality expressed in different language and said "This song has other people's perspective which may look at the same thing differently. It fits with the concept of "The Other One" that represents another world of BABYMETAL" (My translation is not perfect, sorry. Funnytoss may have better one.) So this song must have broad and general messages in the concept. Speaking of the word "God", I read a book that explains the difference in distance between God and man. In the one and only God, the precedence comes God, universe, man and nature. In Japan, however, universe and nature are given then God then man when you refer to Kojiki (古事記). Your god is far remote from man whereas God and man have close vicinity or proximity in Japanese notion. When I read the "Leave everything in God's hand", it reminds me of not ultimate and commanding (or preachy) existence but a kind of referee who tosses a coin.

I definitely like the interpretation that the person in the song is speaking to themself. But I never thought about it in terms of the inner and outer self. My interpretation is specifically about the past and future selves, and the illusion of discontinuity. The verses are very broken apart and separated, in the way they are delivered, like individual worlds rather than sentences. They also speak about "no middle ground" and "heads or tails". But the chorus unites the disparate parts in a continuous flow. "The seasons change," talking about a gradual change. Summer and Winter are undeniably different things, but they are connected by the continuity of time. And they always come back, but never exactly the same. So I think a past and future self are facing each other, and struggling to reconcile the ideas of "This person is me," and "This person is not the same". "All the things you said, all the things I know" - the past self is speaking to the futurse self. What the past self knows, the future self merely said. Knowledge is just a ture belief. The future self may no longer identify with believing what they said. And the truth of what they said may have been lost. The past self is struggling to identify with a person who no longer believes what they know, or no longer lives in a world where what they know is true. But the chorus ends with "Believing you." I don't think this refers to trusting what "you" are saying, but instead believing "you are true." As in, the past self accepts the belief that this really is their future self. The second chorus is reversed, the future self is now speaking to the past self. "All the things I said, all the things you know" - the future self is struggling to identify with a person who truly believes what they said. But again, they end the chorus "believing you," and accepting their past self. The bridge, unlike the verses, is very smooth and continuous. It interchanges "you" and "we" freely, as the two selves identify with and without one another. As both the same and different people. They are one person, but they are not the same. The verse is spoken in the present tense, which is the boundary between past and present. Then the final chorus: "All the things I said, all the things I know. All the things you said, all the things you know." The past and future selves are no longer thinking in terms of each other as binary. The past self can now refer what they said in their own past, and the future self refers to knowledge that may be challenged in their future. And they choose to believe that it's all still truly them. I don't know if this made much sense, but that's my interpretation.

excellent content Andrew-Metal, Professor of BABYMETAL theory, after years of Su-Metal telling us to "Don't think, Feel" in a recent interview she said this album makes you think, I have always thought that BABYMETAL was deeper than most people think, like Pink Floyd deep or Steve Miller deep...lol

I'm nowhere near as smart as you when it comes to these things, so I'm probably wrong, but I always tended to the autobiographical interpretation. More specifically, I saw it in light of the album and the "new" BABYMETAL. There's no denying that they have evolved from their former self and that the album reflected this more mature self. To map this to the lyrics, perhaps they are talking from the perspective of the person that they'd like us to be, the "ideal" fan, with the addressed "you" being them. So they want us to believe them, to trust that they are still BABYMETAL, even if time is inevitably bringing about changes. Contrary to what you said, I would care about this autobiographical meaning. To be honest, when I realized that this might be what they are talking about, I found myself thinking "Damn, they got me. I was really criticizing their evolution to some (minor) extent and had some doubts about their future. They have never given me any reason to doubt them, so I shouldn't react like this. Stupid idiot. :-)". But I will admit that this doesn't quite hold up at closer examination. It would better match the use of "believe in", in the sense of having faith, as opposed to "believing" the truth, as you pointed out. Also, while I understand your point of autobiographical lyrics feeling a little lazy, writing them in such a way that they can be understood as autobiographical by the initiated, while still being open for interpretation to the rest of the audience, actually seems pretty smart to me.

Wonderful breakdown about the surprising depths of this song, one of my favorites from the (not) album! There isn't much to be said that you and the other knowledgeable commenters haven't already covered, but I do want to think out loud regarding the "meta" meaning and intent of a Japanese band writing an all-English song. If I were to translate the following phrase: "BABYMETAL has a certain je ne sais quoi that makes people love them", I think it's fair to say there would be something inherently missing when we translate the (French) "je ne sais quoi" directly into "a quality that cannot be described or named easily". I might use "je ne sais quoi" rather than an alternative "English" equivalent in part because they're not actually entirely equivalent. Or as another example, using the word "chutzpah" doesn't entirely equate to the English "boldness". In other words, the "foreign" loan word exists and is used as part of English because it serves a special purpose for which there may be no equivalent in the original language. The feeling of seeing/experiencing a "foreign" word in a song typically is lost when the lyrics are translated (or in this case, written in this foreign language in the first place) So in addition to your insightful and interesting analysis of the text itself, I wonder if various words used in the song strike a Japanese viewer differently, and there may in fact be further possible meaning behind it, at least from their perspective!

Thanks again for a fun video ! The last interpretation with the digital self made a lot of sense to me. If it was about Babymetal and changes, I thought it was: Babymetal from 2 members to 3 members, regardless of the Babymetal with 3 members which came before it aka not a Yui(metal) song. 19:06 if this is about Babymetal... then it might refer to Babymetal live shows, where we come together, they and us. In Babymetal lore, the fans are like the church goers and Babymetal is a church like a traveling circus:, traveling around the world pitching up their tent for a while. A Babymetal show is like a religious experience, almost a different temporary universe, not part of our regular life.

I think that TOO is about their journey so far, but seen through the eyes of their personas, the other side of the mirror so to speak, or literally given the lines in Mirror Mirror. 🤘🦊⚡

Nice. I agree with every interpretation simply because Babymetal has done an amazing job over the years of having songs that the listener is free to interpret the song in a way that makes sense to them. I find it amazing that they have been able to write so many songs in this fashion. It's all a matter of how someone relates to the lyrics. And as we age, we might interpret those very same lyrics in a very different way. Genius. Which is why those funny old songs can still be listened to years and even decades later. Also, rediscovered by an old fan who listens to it and shares it with someone who listens to it with a new ear. And they come to a new interpretation. Marks of great lyrics. and a song with staying power. Much like Babymetal themselves. For some thought of as a short lived gimmick. Turns out they're here for the long haul. and personally, I hope folks will be sharing Babymetal with their grandkids someday. certain

Thank you, Professor. I always enjoy your thoughts on Babymetal songs and the lyrics included in them. You always manage to bring up a couple new perspectives that I hadn’t thought of given my extremely limited understanding of Japanese. That and when I was able to live there, let’s just say in the “pre-Internet” days (ok, a long, long, long time ago) I had only taken a semester of Japanese in college. So my retention is certainly not as well recalled as I’d like. Anyway, thanks again and hope to someday see you at a BM show and meet you in person. I was able to see them this Fall at the Aftershock festival in Sacramento. Still intending on returning to Japan to see one of their full blown concerts with all the bells and whistles before I kick the bucket. 👍🏻

As David Gilmour said in Pink Floyd's Sorrow: "Time pass, the river roll"... in a sense...

This goes more or less in the same direction as I think. The Song is in doubt between the past and the future but we don't know what exactly. And I think this was exactly the situation in the hiatus. They knew that the old kawai Band was no .ore correct. They were changed, but would the Fans follow? They were reading so many thinks about themselves that didn't know.

All your readings, be it mending relationships, existential inner conversation or the digital aproach, make sense to me. Which means that the song can come in handy on different occasions. Holding on to the good things of the past and still move on are things we can find in a number of other Babymetal songs. You interpreted "head and tail thing" as flipping a coin. Maybe there were coins that had the head and the tail of something on both of their sides, but I was reminded of something one of the ancient asian authors of war once wrote. I think it is Sun Zi in "The Art of War", but this is very much quoted from memory: "The wise commander will arrange his forces like a snake. If the enemy engages the head, the tail will attack him. If he engages the tail, the head will attack him. if he engages the center, both will attack him." This seems to say that a clear decision, although maybe painful, is better than making no decision at all or trying to do everything at once. I have no way of telling if this is what the song line refers to, but it was my take from the beginning. In German, we express this thought as "In Gefahr und höchster Not / ist der Mittelweg der Tod" (In danger and highest distress /the middel way is death). The important thing with flipping a coin is to actually flip it. We have to move on, even if things are complicated and we know that our control is limited. We just have to move on. But that does not mean that we have to ditch all that was before. As always, professor, thanks a lot for expanding my understanding of this song and making me a better Babymetal fan.

Thanks, I always enjoy listening to your thoughts on their songs. @flugelhornoldman1362 already said about when this song was originally being written and the initial recordings being made. As far as "leave everything in God's hands ... " my immediate thought was that was referencing the Fox God of course.

Babymetal has always had a symbiotic relationship with their fans. We are The One. Looking into the mirror, we appeared the same to the fans. As Babymetal changes, will the mirror reflect the same image back to them? That is, will the fans accept what they are doing next? They're telling you that they believe that the fans are going to get it.

29:50 I disagree, kind of. I personally consider their performances part of the songs due to the nature of the band. Ever since this song released my interpretation aligned with what you call the "existential reading". Yes, it's true that mirrors aren't explicitly mentioned in the lyrics but I feel like that idea is emphasized a lot by the choreography. Moa and Momo mirror each other A LOT, and I really mean a lot. Meanwhile, Su-metal moves in a way that synthesize both sides (i.e: Moa uses her right side, Momo her left side, and Su directs her moves the front, almost like 1+1=2). It's more usual for them to move in complete synchronization or slightly delay Su-metal's moves until she eventually catches up (like in MAYA and many many other songs). In any case, she moves in the same direction as Momo and Moa.

I am not done with the video but just watching your face reacting to the song "3:48-4:08" pays the whole video 😂😂😂😂

It's Babymetal, Only the Fox God Knows

博士こんばんは。 この歌詞は個人的には日本の中学生だったら理解できる歌詞だと思うんですよ。

The only song I can see dealing with the band or the space around Babymetal has to be The One.

⚡ 💕 🍑 / 🙏🏻 The lyricist for 'Believing' is PERI-METAL (??) who isn't credited on any other BABYMETAL songs. Of course she was only 15 years old at the time, but Su had an extensive interview with Minewaki Ikuo (President of Tower Records). This was just before she graduated from Sakura Gakuin. They talk a lot about her general attitude that things will tend to work themselves out. That's not to discount the enormous effort she's willing to make to ensure that happens. : )