The Japanese House reveals the meaning behind ‘Maybe You’re The Reason’

It's an existential crisis turned love song, Amber Bain tells NME

The Japanese House released her debut album ‘Good At Falling’ last month, and it’s a heady electro-pop dissection of falling out of love and learning to be alone again.

Stand-out moment ‘Maybe You’re The Reason’ is an existential crisis set to whopping synth melodies and an even bigger chorus. Written while she was in a still relationship with ex-girlfriend Marika Hackman, the song started life exploring her own search for purpose in life. “Should I be searching for some kind of meaning?” she asks in the song.
“Apathy’s a funny feeling”

“I wrote this short story, and there were a few lines in it that I thought were really good,” The Japanese House – aka. Amber Bain – explains. “I started writing this song about having an existential crisis, and not knowing what my purpose was, or why I was existing. I couldn’t come up with a chorus for ages, and ages. Then I think Marika came to see me while I was in the studio, and I was like, maybe I should make this into a love song? ”

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‘Maybe You’re The Reason’ morphed into a song about having a person to keep you anchored, but when the pair split up further down the line, its meaning shifted again for the musician.

“For me, that song has really changed in terms of what it means to me now,” Amber says. “Obviously my relationship ended, and I had to learn to make myself the reason that I exist.”

In ‘Maybe You’re The Reason’ video, meanwhile, The Japanese House mopes around an empty apartment overlooking a city of high-rises; she soon starts noticing helpful shadow hands trying to nick her cigarettes. She’s soon joined by an identical clone who only leaves Amber Bain once she’s – literally – embraced herself.

“For the video, it’s basically two of me,” Amber laughs. “I had to get a body double, which was very strange. They managed to get a body double very quickly!”

“It was very weird,” she adds miming a dramatic double-take. “We were just walking around like that”

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