"When you talk about the Final Fantasy series, the series started selling better after 7, and that was the base idea for the center of the set list for the LA concert"
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Commerce is sitting in the front row, and Uematsu is candid enough to admit it. He’s talking about art the way working musicians often have to: not as an abstract canon, but as a set list built for a real room, a real audience, and a real budget. Final Fantasy VII wasn’t just a creative pivot for the franchise; it was the moment the series became a mass-cultural export. If you’re programming an LA concert, that inflection point isn’t trivia - it’s your gravitational center.
The specific intent is practical: explain why the concert leans heavily on VII and the post-VII era. But the subtext is more interesting. Uematsu is drawing a line between popularity and legitimacy without pretending they’re the same thing. “Started selling better after 7” carries an implied before-and-after that fans feel in their bones: earlier games are beloved, but VII is where the global audience arrived, where nostalgia is densest, where recognition is instant enough to turn a symphonic performance into a communal singalong.
Context matters here: game music concerts aren’t just about fidelity to the score; they’re brand rituals. In Los Angeles - a city that runs on entertainment IP - the set list becomes a kind of curated memory lane. Uematsu’s remark also quietly acknowledges the bargain composers make with fandom: you may have deeper cuts you’d like to champion, but the loudest applause (and the ticket sales) belong to the era that broke through. It’s not cynicism; it’s a professional reading of culture as it actually behaves.
The specific intent is practical: explain why the concert leans heavily on VII and the post-VII era. But the subtext is more interesting. Uematsu is drawing a line between popularity and legitimacy without pretending they’re the same thing. “Started selling better after 7” carries an implied before-and-after that fans feel in their bones: earlier games are beloved, but VII is where the global audience arrived, where nostalgia is densest, where recognition is instant enough to turn a symphonic performance into a communal singalong.
Context matters here: game music concerts aren’t just about fidelity to the score; they’re brand rituals. In Los Angeles - a city that runs on entertainment IP - the set list becomes a kind of curated memory lane. Uematsu’s remark also quietly acknowledges the bargain composers make with fandom: you may have deeper cuts you’d like to champion, but the loudest applause (and the ticket sales) belong to the era that broke through. It’s not cynicism; it’s a professional reading of culture as it actually behaves.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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