Arrietty's Song

Who's that guy on bass?

This isn’t my song. It was sung by Cécile Corbel and co-written by her and Simon Caby for the film The Secret World of Arrietty, produced by Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli.

This is the title track, Arrietty’s Song, a remix with Vito on fretless bass. In the original mix, the bass was virtually inaudible. It’s one of those tracks where everything else shines, but it needed an awesome-sounding bass vibe to hold the bottom together. Fretless bass is perfect.

The rest of the track—instruments and vocals—is awesome. It didn’t need killer bass chops; less is more…although I did sneak some passing notes and a couple of simple licks and slides in where the song told me it wanted them.

I can’t listen to the original mix any more. It sounds naked without the fretless.

Arrietty’s Song
Cécile Corbel, Simon Caby

I’m fourteen years old, I am pretty
I’m a teeny tiny girl, a little lady
I live under the kitchen floor
Right here, not so far from you

Sometimes I feel happy, sometimes I feel blue
In my dreams, oh, I wish I could

Feel my hair blowing in the wind
See the sky in the summer rain
Pick a flower from the garden for you
Beyond the lane there’s another world
Butterflies floating in the air
Is there someone out there for me?

And so life goes on day after day
With knick-knacks on the floor, nooks and crannies
I live in a tiny world (I live in a tiny world)
But out there someone waits for me

I wish I had someone to watch over me
In my dreams, oh, I wish I could

Someone watching over her

Feel my hair blowing in the wind
See the sky in the summer rain
Pick a flower from the garden for you
Now I know there’s another world
Butterflies floating in the air
There is someone out there for me

The cat is helping

Feel my hair blowing in the wind
See the sky in the summer rain
Pick a flower from the garden for you
Now I know there’s another world
Butterflies floating in the air
There is someone out there for me

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Cécile is a musical genius. She wrote all the music for the film, and it’s all superb. She sang the songs in English for the English language release of the film, and in Japanese for the native Japanese release. She speaks neither language; she’s française.

High-quality 2D animation hand-drawn by humans is a dying art. In its heyday, Disney Studios produced some superb work. These daze Disney is a woke joke. But Miyazaki-san’s Studio Ghibli still produces masterful works. No annoying AI involved. The detail is almost photo-realistic. Each cell is meticulously hand-drawn and painted, frame by frame. The animation is brilliant, and so are the stories.

In a world where the vast majority of films produced by the big Hollywood studios are the moral equivalent of viper vomit, this relatively tiny Japanese studio making films with breathtaking artwork, great music, and superb stories has become the nexus of cinematic integrity. These aren’t “cartoons”, folks. It’s state of the art human-produced animation. I vote for quality with my wallet.

There’s lots to like about the film besides the eye candy and the music. Like all the films produced by Studio Ghibli, the story has substance. The villain of the piece is the house maid, Hara, brilliantly voiced by Carol Burnett. Tom Holland voices Shawn, the young man with a fatal heart condition…but no spoilers.

If you haven’t seen the film, it’s worth seeing.