Nobuo Uematsu

• 1. Introduction

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  Nobuo Uematsu was born on the 21st of March, 1959, in Kochi, the capital city of Kochi Prefecture, Japan. He never took a single formal piano lesson. He started teaching himself at age twelve, and by the time he was a young man working in a music rental shop in Tokyo, he had no expectation that writing tunes on the side would become his life's work. A Square employee wandered into that shop and asked if he might be interested in writing some music for their games. Uematsu said yes, mostly as a way to earn a little extra money. He held onto that part-time job at the rental shop for a while longer.

  What followed was nearly two decades at Square, a freelance career that has stretched to the present day, and a body of work so widely heard that Classic FM in Britain began calling him the Beethoven of game music. The questions worth asking are not just how a self-taught keyboardist became the defining voice of one of gaming's biggest franchises. They are also: what does it sound like when someone composes from Celtic folk, Elton John, and Tchaikovsky all at once? And what happens when a composer who once dreamed of being a professional wrestler decides, at the age of 65, to step back from the form that made him famous?

• 2. Final Fantasy and Sakaguchi

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  Hironobu Sakaguchi met Uematsu shortly after Uematsu joined Square in 1986, and their working relationship would anchor both of their careers. Uematsu's first assignment at Square was a handful of tracks for Cruise Chaser Blassty. Sakaguchi then recruited him to score several other games that found little commercial traction: King's Knight, 3-D WorldRunner, and Rad Racer.

  In 1987, the two collaborated on what Sakaguchi originally intended as his final project at Square. Final Fantasy was designed as a last-ditch effort; Sakaguchi was prepared to leave if it failed. It did not fail. The game's success transformed Uematsu's side job into a full-time career and set him on a path to compose music for over 30 titles, most of them in the Final Fantasy series. He scored The Final Fantasy Legend in 1989, marking the first installment in the SaGa series. For Final Fantasy Legend II the following year, he was joined by composer Kenji Ito. In late 1994, he was called in to finish the Chrono Trigger soundtrack after its composer Yasunori Mitsuda was hospitalized with peptic ulcers.

  By the early 2000s, Uematsu began to feel the strain. For Final Fantasy X in 2001, he asked composers Masashi Hamauzu and Junya Nakano to assist him. It was the first time he had not composed an entire main-series Final Fantasy score on his own. For Final Fantasy XI in 2002, Naoshi Mizuta handled the majority of the work, with Kumi Tanioka also contributing; Uematsu was responsible for only eleven tracks. The shape of his involvement was shifting even before he left the company.

• 3. The Black Mages and Live Performance

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  In 2002, two Square colleagues named Kenichiro Fukui and Tsuyoshi Sekito invited Uematsu to join them in forming a rock band that would reinterpret his Final Fantasy compositions. He turned them down at first; his workload was too heavy. After agreeing to perform with them once as a keyboardist at a live show, he changed his mind. A fellow Square employee named Mr. Matsushita chose the name: The Black Mages.

  In 2003, three additional musicians joined the group: Keiji Kawamori, Arata Hanyuda, and Michio Okamiya. The band released three studio albums and performed at a number of concerts, playing hard rock versions of Uematsu's existing compositions. When the group eventually wound down, Uematsu formed the Earthbound Papas in 2011 as its successor.

  Uematsu's music had already been reaching concert audiences around the world before The Black Mages formed. Outside Japan, his Final Fantasy music was performed live for the first time at the 2003 Symphonic Game Music Concert in Leipzig, Germany. The first North American concert, Dear Friends - Music from Final Fantasy, took place on the 10th of May, 2004, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya. A follow-up concert, More Friends: Music from Final Fantasy, was performed on the 16th of May, 2005, at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles. The concert on Voices - Music from Final Fantasy on the 18th of February, 2006, at the Pacifico Yokohama convention center featured soprano Izumi Masuda and pop singer Angela Aki among its star guests.

• 4. Musical Influences and Style

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  Elton John is the musician Uematsu cites as his single biggest influence; he has said he wanted to be like him. The Beatles, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Simon and Garfunkel, and progressive rock bands also shaped how he hears music. From classical music, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky stands out as a significant reference point. Uematsu has said that 1970s bands including Pink Floyd and King Crimson influenced his Final Fantasy scores directly.

  The range of his output is unusually wide. His compositions move across stately classical symphonic writing, heavy metal, new age, Celtic and Irish folk, contemporary jazz, and hyper-percussive techno-electronica. The score he wrote for Lost Odyssey alone moves between classical orchestral arrangements and techno tracks within the same game. He has described a distinctly Japanese quality in his more melancholic pieces, even though he does not consciously compose for any particular national audience.

  His influences have sometimes been scholarly. The lyrics for "One-Winged Angel" from Final Fantasy VII were drawn from medieval Latin poetry, specifically the same texts Carl Orff used when composing Carmina Burana: "Estuans Interius", "O Fortuna", "Veni, Veni, Venias", and "Ave Formosissima". Time magazine named him one of its "Innovators" in its "Time 100: The Next Wave - Music" feature. He has also been described as the "John Williams of the video game world." Uematsu has noted that he draws more creative inspiration from walking his dog than from listening to other composers' music.

• 5. Classic FM and Cultural Impact

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  "Aerith's Theme", which Uematsu wrote for Final Fantasy VII, entered the Classic FM (UK) Hall of Fame at number 16 in 2012. It was accompanied in the chart by "Dancing Mad" and "To Zanarkand." That year marked the first time any piece written for a video game had appeared in the Classic FM top 300.

  The response in subsequent years was stronger still. In 2013, music from the Final Fantasy series rose to the third position in the Classic FM Hall of Fame. Uematsu's work returned at number seven in 2014, number nine in 2015, and number 17 in 2016. The station took to calling him the Beethoven of game music, a designation that reflects how far his work had traveled from the rental shop in Tokyo.

  "Eyes on Me" from Final Fantasy VIII, featuring Chinese pop singer Faye Wong, sold 400,000 copies and became the first song from a video game to win at the Japan Gold Disc Awards, taking "Song of the Year (International)" in 2000. "Liberi Fatali", also from Final Fantasy VIII, was played during the women's synchronized swimming event at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. A symphonic fairy tale called Merregnon: Heart of Ice, scored by Uematsu and recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, is set to be released by Decca Records on the 19th of June, 2026.

• 6. Later Work and Health

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  Uematsu left Square Enix in 2004 and established a production company called Smile Please. Two years later, in 2006, he founded Dog Ear Records as a music production company and record label. He cited two reasons for leaving: the company's offices moved from Meguro to Shinjuku, a change he was not comfortable with, and he felt he had reached an age where he needed to take his life into his own hands. He has continued composing for Square Enix as a freelancer.

  He also maintained a close working relationship with Sakaguchi's studio Mistwalker, composing for Blue Dragon in 2006, Lost Odyssey in 2007, Away: Shuffle Dungeon in 2008, The Last Story in 2011, and Terra Battle in 2014. He composed the main theme for Super Smash Bros. Brawl in 2008 and provided the full score for the 2009 anime Guin Saga, the first time he had scored an entire animated series.

  In September 2018, Uematsu announced a hiatus to recover from work fatigue that had led to his hospitalization. He composed the main theme, "Hollow", for Final Fantasy VII Remake in 2020. Sakaguchi noted that Uematsu's score for Fantasian in 2021 could be his last major game work given his health situation. On the 15th of October, 2024, Uematsu posted a video to the Fantasian Twitter account announcing it as his last project as a video game composer. He later clarified on his own Twitter account that he was not retiring entirely, but would no longer take on full soundtracks because of the time commitment, though he remained open to composing individual pieces such as theme songs.