Credits

I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Monday, September 3, 2012

Anzen Chitai & Yosui Inoue -- Natsu no Owari no Harmony (夏の終わりのハーモニー)



Yup, it's Labour Day....time to pack up that barbeque and close down the public pools for another year. The kids are heading back to school and the weather will eventually start to cool down. How about a nice theme song to go with all that?

"Natsu no Owari no Harmony"(Summer's End Harmony) is about as bromantic as it gets. Anzen Chitai(安全地帯) lead vocal, Koji Tamaki(玉置浩二), and his old buddy/boss/collaborator, Yosui Inoue(井上陽水), got together in September 1986 to do this epic heartfelt duet; Inoue took care of the lyrics while Tamaki covered the music. You can almost hear the guys at karaoke just yelling "I LOVE YOU, MAN!"to each other near the coda. The ballad was also part of the large "Anzen Chitai V" album.

And in fact, it was at my old haunt of Kuri where I first heard the song. Mind you, the word "bromance" was still decades from being born.






2 comments:

  1. Hey J!

    I'm lurking around your blog again!

    Haha. I heard this song at a random playlist in youtube. I'm convinced I should have been an adult in the 70's, 80's and 90's. I have different sets of 80's Japan music playlists. haha

    Anyway, this played at random and I was instantly hooked! I don't know if it was the lyrics, melody, Koji's vocals or their harmony that took the gold for me.

    I love this song! Which led me to check on Koji Tamaki's/Anzen Chitai's discography. I have got to say, I am hooked! They're my go to work playlist now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello, Yuie-chan!

      Good to hear from you and feel free to lurk away. For me, it was pretty much the combination of everything that did it. I mentioned above how I used to hear it all the time at my old karaoke bar; well, it made itself the ideal buddy song to sing together...after a few drinks.

      Anzen Chitai was one of my most favourite bands of the 1980s. The arrangement of their tunes really made the band stand out.

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