ReMix:Final Fantasy VII "Tifa's Love" 4:32

djpretzel's note: For 20+ years, I've been the only one writing summaries for mixes. This marks the first time we're deviating from that, as Larry "Liontamer" Oji joins the fun. Beautiful mix, with superb lyrics + Tiggs' vocal work is stellar!

A perfect follow-up to her "Empress Waltz" (which is a must-listen, by the way), we've got Rebecca Tripp once again, this time with a scaled-back (yet no less lovely) FF7 collaboration featuring an emotive vocal performace of Rebecca's original lyrics by Tiggs!

RebeccaETripp explained her vision for this very relaxing, measured, and earnest piece and strongly praised Tiggs' key role:

"This is my arrangement of "Tifa's Theme" from Final Fantasy 7, originally composed by Nobuo Uematsu. The vocals were performed by Tiggs. Her voice is beautiful! Please check out more of her work! She's done a lot of awesome arrangements. She's a force of nature! :D

With this one, I was sort of imagining what a FF7 musical might be like. The lyrics are supposed to reflect on Tifa's inner feelings and memories as she nurses Cloud back to health. Tiggs' voice is very lovely for this role. This is my third (and hopefully not last) time working with her!"

Tiggs (Victoria Rose Maxfield) was grateful for the team-up, and we'll hopefully hear this daring duo in action with a feature mix once again!

"Thank you again for having me on here! <3 Definitely not our last! <3 <3"

I wouldn't be me and I wouldn't be a judge if I didn't note that there were some sample articulation and recording imperfections that were minor. Nonetheless, they didn't detract from so many great interpretation techniques; Rebecca's instrumentation had an intimate, more delicate sound that was even more emotive than the source, while you also have the added dimension of Tiggs' singing and Tifa's hopeful message to Cloud found in the lyrics. I definitely appreciated the spotlight on Victoria's voice work, which reminded me of DragonAvenger's great performances (we'll miss you on the judges panel, BTW, Deia; thank you for everything!), while also standing apart with some awesome operatic flourishes. Nice work, y'all!

As mentioned in the writeup for "Empress Waltz", I intentionally held off on queuing up Rebecca's work for a while to give her 70th posted OC ReMix that extra dose of grandiosity and celebration befitting International Women's Day, but that also meant that we had a man-made drought of her work during 2021. Now that we're onto ReMix #71, I'm fairly confident that nothing but time is in the way of Ms. Tripp climbing the mountaintop and planting her artistic flag as OCR's first-ever 100-track contributor. Enjoy the journey! :-)