Tatsuro Yamashita -- CHEER UP! THE SUMMER

One of the commenters tipped me off on Tatsuro Yamashita's（山下達郎）latest, "CHEER UP! THE SUMMER" which was officially released in the last couple of weeks. This is his 49th single, and though it's not a groundbreaking tune, it's a groundaffirming song of sorts since this is a Tats tune that is reminiscent of those good ol' days when the singer-songwriter was coming up with those summery City Pop songs from the late 70s and early 80s (although those drums are almost on a techno level of boom). The last time I heard something this Tats-worthy was when Junk Fujiyama came up with "Hoshikuzu no Pipeline"（星屑のパイプライン）.

So far, it's gotten as high as No. 8 on Oricon so another Top 10 hit for the maestro, and it has been used as the theme song for a Fuji-TV drama, "Eigyo Bucho Kira Natsuko"（営業部長 吉良奈津子...Sales Chief, Natsuko Kira）. Yamashita was of course responsible for both words and music, and supposedly his lyrics were inspired by the attempts to cheer up the captain of a high school baseball team after losing a big game which would explain the official music video (shortened here).

At this point, I don't see a full version of the song (ahh...now we do!) but no doubt it will pop up sooner or later. Besides, it's good to see Yamashita still coming up with the happy summery songs after so many years.