Media Diary 13: Shoji Meguro

I'm an avid listener of video game soundtracks. A great soundtrack can really bring a game to a whole other level, and in some cases has even inspired me to continue playing an otherwise bad game. Half my playlists are composed of video game ost's, with my largest game-related playlist currently consisting of nearly thousand tracks. Although I listen to soundtracks from various different games, on all these lists there is one particular name that keeps repeating over and over again: Shoji Meguro.

Shoji Meguro is a Japanese composer and a game director, who is most known for his work in the video game studio Atlus, especially their game series Persona. Meguro's works tend to be inspired by jazz, rock, j-pop and electronical music. His range is quite wide: within the same game there might be badass rock music for intense fight-scenes, and then two minutes later catchy pop tunes for the everyday activities.

While most video game soundtracks tend to consist of instrumental tracks, Meguro actively uses vocals in his. Since the games he works on are japanese, he uses English lyrics so the vocals do not distract the players from the gameplay, although considering the popularity of Meguro's work outside Japan, the vocals being too distracting is not a problem for English speakers either. Persona 5, for example, received multiple award nominations in the west for its music back in 2017.

Here are some of my personal favourites from Meguro: 

Beneath the Mask, from Persona 5, is a fan favourite. It plays during evenings in the game, most often starting whenever the player gets home at night. It has a very calm and comforting feeling to it, and that's exactly why it's on nearly all of my "music to relax to" playlists.



It would be criminal to talk about Meguro without mentioning Mass Destruction. It's the main battle theme of Persona 3, which means that it plays during every random encounter of the game. I have over 80 hours on this game, and a good amount of those have been spent listening to this song, yet I still haven't grown tired of it. Somehow the non-sensical rapping and catchy singing just really pumps me up like no other.

  

Heartbeat, Heartbreak from Persona 4 is a typical example of Meguro's more pop-inspired style. It plays during the afternoon sections of the game when the player is free to run around town, and thus is light-hearted but not too upbeat in its style. Like with most of Meguro's tracks with vocals, the lyrics are sung in broken English (as the singer is Japanese), but that never bothers me, as it's intended to be background music.



Lastly, here is something little different. In the game Catherine, Meguro rearranged well-known classical pieces to fit in the game's horror-esque puzzle gameplay segments. These tracks are all incredibly beautiful in my opinion, and work well to make the game's already chaotic atmosphere feel even more threatening.