“Pretender” (2019) is about a love that was never meant to be. The singer is with someone he loves, but he knows he isn't the one for them — he can only pretend, playing the role of a lover in a story that will end. He'd like to be born into a different world where they could be together; instead, he says goodbye.
The band Official HIGE DANdism (“Higedan”) wrote it for the film Confidence Man JP, and it became one of the defining Japanese hits of the year.
The lyrics use everyday spoken Japanese — casual pronouns, natural sentence endings — so it's a great B1 song for hearing how Japanese people really talk about feelings.