Music of Final Fantasy X

Final Fantasy X Original Soundtrack
Studio album by Nobuo Uematsu, Masashi Hamauzu, Junya Nakano
Released	August 1, 2001 May 10, 2004 (re-release)
Length	Disc 1: 66:47 Disc 2: 64:05 Disc 3: 60:39 Disc 4: 74:50
Label	DigiCube (Japan) Tokyopop (North America) Square Enix (re-release)
Producer	Nobuo Uematsu

Final Fantasy X Original Soundtrack (ファイナルファンタジーＸ　オリジナルサウンドトラック, Fainaru Fantajī Ten Orijinaru Saundotorakku) is a soundtrack album of music from Final Fantasy X composed, arranged and produced by Nobuo Uematsu, Masashi Hamauzu and Junya Nakano. Vocals are performed by RIKKI for "Suteki da ne", Bill Muir for "Otherworld", and choruses for "Hymn of the Fayth". It spans four discs and 91 tracks, covering a duration of 4:32:26. It was first released in Japan on August 1, 2001 by DigiCube with catalog number SSCX-10054, and was re-released on May 10, 2004 by Square Enix with catalog number SQEX-10013.[5]

In 2002, Tokyopop released a version of Final Fantasy X Original Soundtrack in North America entitled Final Fantasy X Official Soundtrack, which contained 17 tracks from the original album on a single disk. This release had the catalog number TPCD-0211-2. Additionally, in 2001, prior to the game's release, Square released a promotional disk titled Final Fantasy X Promo CD, which contained edited versions of "Other World", "To Zanarkand", and "Battle 1". The disk covers a length of 7:08, and was only released in Japan.[6]

Final Fantasy X Original Soundtrack reached #4 on the Oricon charts, and sold 140,000 copies as of January 2010.[7][8] The album was moderately well received; while some reviewers felt it to be an "absolutely amazing" soundtrack, others only found it to be a "satisfying" work.[5][9] Some reviewers felt that of the three composers, Uematsu's pieces were the weakest, citing them as having a tendency to be "buried" under the compositions of the others. The same reviewers, however, noted that some of the best pieces on the soundtrack, such as "To Zanarkand", were the work of Uematsu. Hamauzu's contributions were seen as some of his best work, and reviewers felt that both he and Nakano brought a "myriad of new flavors" to the soundtrack which were very well received.[5][9] Final Fantasy X Official Soundtrack, although not re-released after the Original Soundtrack was brought to North America, was seen as a good sampler of the music from the full soundtrack.[6]

Track listing

feel/Go dream: Yuna & Tidus is an EP containing tracks composed by Nobuo Uematsu and inspired by pieces from the game. "feel" was based on the "Hymn of the Fayth", while "Go dream" was based on "Tidus' Theme". Music arrangements were done by Masashi Hamauzu, Tsuyoshi Sekito, Junya Nakano, and Masayoshi Kikuchi. Vocals are performed by Mayuko Aoki for the track "feel" and Masakazu Morita for the track "Go dream". A remix of "feel" was included as a bonus track in the Vocal Collection of Final Fantasy X. It was released in Japan by DigiCube on October 11, 2001, bearing the catalog number SSCX-10058.[10] The EP reached #13 on the Oricon charts.[11]

Piano Collections Final Fantasy X is a collection of music from the original soundtrack arranged for the piano by Masashi Hamauzu, and performed by Aki Kuroda. Hamauzu intended the process of arranging the pieces to "consider the groundwork of individual compositions in order to transform these pieces into piano arrangements" rather than simply playing the themes on a piano as they originally sounded.[12] It spans 15 tracks and covers a duration of 56:43. It was first released in Japan on February 20, 2002 by DigiCube with catalog number SSCX-10064, and was re-released on July 22, 2004 by Square Enix with catalog number SQEX-10028.[13]

Piano Collections Final Fantasy X reached #89 on the Oricon charts and sold 2,900 copies.[14][15] It was very well received, with reviewers finding it to be a "great" album, and stating that it was superior to most video game soundtracks, both piano or otherwise.[13][16] They especially praised Hamauzu, terming him a "very skilled arranger and performer".[16]

Final Fantasy X Vocal Collection (ファイナルファンタジーＸ　ボーカル・コレクション, Fainaru Fantajī Ten Bōkaru Korekushon) is a collection of vocal arrangements of pieces from the game arranged by Katsumi Suyama along with radio drama tracks, performed by the game's characters' voice actors in Japanese. It spans 14 tracks and covers a duration of 42:21. It was released in Japan on December 18, 2002 by DigiCube with catalog number SSCX-10073.[17] The album was poorly received by critics. They found the album, while it had "pretty good" vocals, to have overall poor sound quality and a clichéd musical style. While "not a horrible album", they found that the collection was overpriced and under-produced.[17] It reached #69 on the Oricon charts, and sold over 11,700 copies.[14][18]

"Suteki da ne" is one of the main theme songs of Final Fantasy X and the vocal version of Yuna's character theme. It was written by Nobuo Uematsu and Kazushige Nojima and was sung by Japanese folk singer Ritsuki Nakano, known as "Rikki", whom the music team contacted while searching for a singer whose music reflected an Okinawan atmosphere.[19] "Suteki da ne" is sung in its original Japanese form in both the Japanese and English versions of Final Fantasy X. The song's title translates to "Isn't It Wonderful?" in English, and its lyrics were written by scenario writer Kazushige Nojima,[19] while Uematsu composed the instrumentals and Shirō Hamaguchi arranged the instrumentals. Like the ballad from Final Fantasy VIII, "Suteki da ne" has an in-game version used in cutscenes together with an orchestrated version used as part of the ending theme.

The song was released as a single by DigiCube on July 18, 2001, and re-released by Square Enix on July 22, 2004. The disk also contains an instrumental version, an unrelated song entitled "Gotsuki-sama ~UTIKISAMA~" ("The Moon"), and a vocal version of Aerith's theme song from Final Fantasy VII titled "Pure Heart". The single covers a duration of 20:35. The original release has a catalog number of SSCX-10053, and the re-release has a catalog number of SQEX-10029.[20] The original release of "Suteki da ne" reached #10 on the Oricon charts, and sold 130,000 copies.[14][21]

There is also an "autumn version" of the song, also performed by Ritsuki Nakano, released by Universal on October 3, 2001 on the "KANARIA" minialbum together with six unrelated tracks.[22] The release has a catalog number of UMCK-1056. This version of the song, as well as all versions on the single, is also found on the Final Fantasy Single Collection bootleg CD, released by EverAnime with catalog number GM-496, by Archer Records with catalog number SA-007[23] and by Miya Records with catalog number MICA-0068.[24] An official English translation of the song was created for the Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy concert series and was first performed in Chicago by vocalist Susan Calloway on December 12, 2009.

"Otherworld", the opening theme of Final Fantasy X, was composed by Nobuo Uematsu with lyrics by Alexander O. Smith. It was sung by Bill Muir, the frontman of xtillidiex (pronounced "Till I die"), a death metal band active in Tokyo at the time. The song was already fully formed when Smith was tasked with writing lyrics for it based on a guide track. Smith's lyrics were loosely based on "The Song of Wandering Aengus", a poem by W. B. Yeats. Smith mistook a guitar solo section of the song as another part that he had to fill with lyrics, and so he wrote in a spoken words part in "one of those Limp Bizkit-style breakdowns". Uematsu liked the result and included it in the final song.[25]