I have scanned the pages of ARENA PLUS Vol.7 magazine and replaced the original Japanese text with my translations. First off, here are the Q&A pages with the members!

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TOMOMI

Text:

HARUNA

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RINA

Text:

MAMI

Text:

Rina wrote:Secretly tell just this magazine a secret you haven't talked about until now!
I've secretly been attending a French language school.

Here is the full band interview in the ARENA PLUS Vol.7 magazine along with full page scans!

Their new album 『YELLOW』 released on 3.2! The girls continue to push forward even after celebrating their tenth anniversary in 2016. The cute, cool, exclusive pictures and interview are must-sees!

SCANDAL has welcomed this commemorable year, their 10th anniversary. The album 『YELLOW』 that serves as a work for their anniversary year is work chock full of their charm.

In this magazine we have prepared words for each of the letters of 〈Y〉〈E〉〈L〉〈L〉〈O〉〈W〉, and have carried out an interview in order to explore their feelings towards their album to their feelings towards the future. Along with the cute, cool, exclusive pictures, a highlight is their answers for a questionnaire that the editorial department prepared.

――〈Y〉 is for 〈YEAR〉, since this year is your tenth anniversary year.

HARUNA: We've certainly said often that it's our tenth anniversary. As for ourselves, it still doesn't feel like it is. We've cherished each year and have achieved many things each time, so nothing has changed this year as well...

RINA: This year is our 〈year of thanks〉 towards tenth year. We want make it a year where we want to send out something that's even more fun with our music to everyone, and to make the people around us happy.

MAMI: 2016 kicked off to a good start, with our first solo live of this year held at Budokan. The things we can do increase one by one every year, and it feels like we've finally come this far in our tenth year, so I think we were able to kick off to a start where we could properly feel that.

TOMOMI: Bands that debuted at the same time and were the same age have broken up, and conversely bands who have done copy bands of us have debuted. Looking at those changes, there are many things that make us realize that 10 years have passed. The faces of all kinds of people we've met before come to mind.

――The word 〈YELL〉 as well. What encouraged you?

RINA: The number one thing has to be the reactions of our listeners. It has become our biggest driving force for whatever we do. Like, "If we release this kind of song, we get this kind of reaction. Okay, next let's try this by hand." We always cherish the voices of our audience and decide on our next approach like that.

――〈E〉 is for 〈ENGINE〉. When did your engines start during production?

RINA: When we were recording 「Heaven na Kibun」, it felt like we went into a different gear than usual. When we rewatched the footage from when we debuted the song at 【COUNTDOWN JAPAN 15/16】 at the end of last year and thought back upon our feelings, we felt that we were able to perform combined with a channel we hadn't been in until now. Song-wise we incorporated grunge and finished it up cooly. We had a new challenge for the vocals as well. It's a song that started up a new engine for us.

HARUNA: When MAMI sent us 「LOVE ME DO」, there was an excited feeling and it seemed like it'd definitely be interesting if we were to do this kind of American pop music. Rather, if we were to do a song that sounds like one a girl group would do, there was an excited feeling of thinking it'd definitely be interesting. I got pumped up and wanted to step it up as a vocalist! It seemed like it was that kind of song.

TOMOMI: For 「Konya wa Pizza Party」, I saw that MAMI had sent over a song when I woke up in the morning. Listening to it, I snapped awake and the lyrics 〈A pizza with lots of tomato sauce on it〉 came to mind. My engine started up when I wrote one chorus within about an hour after that.

――What song would you want to do during an 〈ENCORE〉?

MAMI: We've essentially played 「Happy Birthday」 during encores. We began playing it from around the Osaka performances on our world tour last year. We felt, "Since it's complete, let's try playing it right away!" That's why it has an encore impression to it...

RINA: We played 「Chiisana Honoo」 at the end of our main set during our arena tour. 「Room No.7」 is our first instrumental track, but because it's a fast-paced song I think it would get things going if we played it as the first song of the encore.

――Speaking of 〈ELECTRIC〉, is there a song where you're like, "Listen to this song's electric guitar!"?

MAMI: The most emotional one right now I'd say might be 「Chiisana Honoo」. We put in sounds that explode emotionally at the end. That might be a bit different from the other songs.

RINA: It has a feeling of us going with our feelings, such as how we used choking.

MAMI: I didn't do choking from the 20th fret on. I kind of did it like, "I'll go up to here!" (laughs).

――〈L〉 is for 〈LANGUAGE〉. What lyrics were you particular about?

RINA: From around the album's production time, we had a rough theme of making this album with a happy feeling to it. Since we had been wanting to write bright lyrics, it came about naturally. This means that we think that we can definitely perform the songs on 『YELLOW』 no matter how old we are. I think we can take them anywhere and can perform them realistically even many years later. [The album] has many realistic lyrics like that.

TOMOMI: I personally think that there are no limits on this album, but there's a bit of a sense of discomfort the lyrics. Rather, we wanted to put in words that would become hooks. In 「Sunday Drive」, for example, 〈Route 66〉 is in the lyrics, and since it was a word that I had always wanted to use but still hadn't, I wrote it in consciously. When you find new words to use, you must jot them down and accumulate many favorite words.

RINA: It's the same for 「Heaven na Kibun」. I started by just wanting to use the word 〈heaven〉, and it turned into that title and melody. Thinking up of those made for very fun, creative days.

――〈L〉 is also for 〈LOVE〉.

RINA: We have a song called 「LOVE」.

HARUNA: There's also 「LOVE ME DO」.

MAMI: We wanted to make harmonious love songs. We had sung love songs before, but many of those have a sort of lost love feeling to them. Since our band mood was happy this time, we challenged ourselves to making happy love songs.

TOMOMI: We've previously had many bitter love songs, haven't we? But in human affection there are passionate ones as well as neutral ones. We thought, "How about depicting that neutral part?"

HARUNA: I think there was a previous time where we yearned for 〈lost love〉.

RINA: We yearned for it? (laughs)

HARUNA: Didn't we have a time like that? Like, wanting to experience that, and yearning for that heroine of the story feeling. I feel that that song representation was easily born.

MAMI: Suddenly hearing it and being able to empathize certainly might be more like 〈lost love〉.

TOMOMI: Although you might be singing a song about bitter love again.

RINA: 「LOVE ME DO」 is also a harmonious type [of love song], but it's a bit sad.

MAMI: It's a song about two people cherishing the present. You don't know what happened in the past and you don't know what will happen in the future. But, it's wonderful if you can love the present.

――〈O〉 is for 〈ONLINE〉. Do you send songs through e-mail?

HARUNA: We're basically online. We record us humming on a voice memo and send that e-mail out. We also send demos.

MAMI: I constantly send out [demos] of me playing and singing along. We also have a way of writing songs where I conversely receive messages saying 〈I completed lyrics like this〉 and I add on a song to them.

RINA: Firstly, just the four of us exchange things back and forth. After finishing them to a certain extent, we have our staff listen to them.

――Are there those who are fast at replying or slow at replying?

RINA: When we begin production, we leave things open such as our cell phones and LINE screens. That's why when we send something, it's all marked as read simultaneously.

TOMOMI: If you're working until morning, the number of views conversely decrease. You know who has fallen asleep (laughs).

――〈W〉 is from 〈WARNING〉. What's a moment during production where you thought, "This is great"?

RINA: On this album we were more particular about sound making than ever before. We went to many places overseas on our world tour, and we came to have a longing for that feeling of sound that Western music has. We again aimed for and challenged ourselves with trying to make that. One thing we did was making the temperature crisp like that of the US and recording. We tried to get the environment as close as possible. Although we were recording in the middle of winter, we turned up the air conditioner high and got rid of moisture. Among the freezing cold, we persevered and recorded. The sounds really were different for the stringed instruments, but the sound of the drums was remarkable. The cold at that time was surely a 〈WARNING〉 (laughs).

MAMI: The AC's lowest temperature is 18°C/64°F, so we lowered it down to that. It was [so cold indoors] that we were like, "Isn't it warmer outside?"

――Well then, lastly is 〈WISH〉. What kind of prospects for the future are you imagining?

HARUNA: We did a world tour last year, and we've come to think that we'd like to play lives in many countries and places overseas. We held an arena tour from the end of last year to the beginning of this year. In Japan as well, without deciding the locations, we want to play at live houses and at even bigger venues. This is always true for us, but our wish for us to remain as [a band] that can perform anywhere will continue on without changing. By reaching our tenth year, we want to aim to be a girl band that can continue on even further.

MAMI: Last year we had our first world tour and our first arena tour--we got to experience many things for the first time. From here on, we must continue to do those first time things as something ordinary. Because we've done all those sorts of big things as commemorations, they've been like rewards. We hope to always do things like that.

TOMOMI: I want us to become a band, unchanged, that stands on the stage of whatever country and no matter what place. We've had troubles overseas as well, but we have strong minds that don't get discouraged.

RINA: Our arena tour was done in the same sense that TOMOMI talked about. It felt like we found something that made us say, 〈This is it!〉 We'll improve ourselves even more. The band 〈ZELDA〉 is in the Guiness Book of Records as being a girl band who lasted for 17 years without taking a break or quitting. However, when compared to guy bands, 17 years is very short. First, we'll do our best to catch up to those 17 years. After that, we hope to extend our future even more.