Pollyanna (I Believe in You)

In 1989, Shigesato Itoi asked Keiichi Suzuki to write pop music for a video game. Suzuki was a founding member of the Moonriders, an experimental rock band known across Japan for pushing boundaries. But the Famicom was not a concert hall. The NES sound chip could play only three notes at the same time — two square waves, one triangle, and a noise channel for percussion. No strings. No chords that breathed. No room for the layered arrangements Suzuki had spent years learning to build.

Suzuki wrote "Pollyanna" anyway. The melody moves through square waves with a clarity that feels almost too simple, as if it could have been whistled by a child walking home. The triangle wave supports underneath, and the noise channel taps out a rhythm that never crowds the melody. There is no harmony in the way a pop song would normally carry it. Instead, the notes trust each other to hold the space.

Itoi had asked Suzuki to base his compositions on pop music and to write songs with real lyrics first, then strip them down to instrumental versions for the game. This was rare in Famicom games at that time. Most game music was built from the chip outward. Suzuki worked the other way — he imagined a voice singing, then took the voice away and left what remained. What remained was a melody that moved like someone believing in something they could not see yet.

"Pollyanna" plays as the protagonist walks through towns and fields in Mother. It loops, as all game music must, but it does not wear out. The optimism in the melody is not loud or insistent. It does not tell you to be hopeful. It just keeps moving forward, three notes at a time, and assumes you will follow. In a later interview, Suzuki reflected on the constraints of the NES sound chip, noting that he could not create some of the sounds he wanted. He did not say this bitterly. Constraint, in his hands, became a kind of clarity.