Lullabies aren't just for children.

Turning Familiar Hits into Sleep Music

One Direction, The Chainsmokers, Backstreet Boys—*sasayaki lullaby* is a sleep playlist featuring whisper-voiced rearranged covers of iconic Western pop songs that everyone knows. Created in collaboration with Sony Music Japan International, it was launched on March 18, 2022, to coincide with World Sleep Day.

Issue

What’s Missing from Japanese Sleep?

The short average sleep duration among Japanese people has long been a concern. The increased time spent at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic has further encouraged staying up late, disrupting not only daily routines but also sleep patterns. However, what Japanese people seek from sleep is not so much “length of time” as “a refreshing awakening” and “a sense of recovery from fatigue”—in other words, quality. As an approach focused on improving quality rather than quantity, we turned our attention to the power of music.

Creation

Into the Realm Between Wakefulness and Sleep

When you listen to a familiar classic song sung in a whispering voice, emotions gently resurface from the depths of your memory. The project was born from the hypothesis that this drowsy sensation promotes a comfortable transition into sleep. The core concept of 《sasayaki lullaby》 is to recreate the primal effect of lullabies using modern pop music.

One Take, One Shot

The songs were meticulously arranged through repeated fine-tuning so they could drift gently in the space between wakefulness and sleep. The music video was shot in a single take from a fixed camera position, without any scene changes. The footage, featuring only intentional subtle fluctuations, gently lulls the viewer into a pleasant drowsiness.

Five Consecutive Weeks of Releases Starting on “World Sleep Day”

As the first installment of the project, One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful” was released on March 18. Over the following five weeks, one song was released each week, and in the final week, the five tracks were compiled into the EP *sasayaki lullaby Vol. 1*. The project was rolled out on various music streaming platforms and YouTube, presented as “a lullaby for everyone in this new era.”