There have been plenty of Japanese singers usually associated with summer sun and beaches that actually have recorded songs for the Yuletide. For example, Anri（杏里）has done "Christmas Calendar" and of course, Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）has come up with the ultimate J-Xmas tune, "Christmas Eve", as a result of a "Take That" moment against those who had scoffed at him for being just a summer dude.
Therefore, it shouldn't come as any surprise that the band Southern All Stars（サザンオールスターズ）, as summery as they have been, has also come up with their own Xmas songs. For one thing, leader and vocalist Keisuke Kuwata（桑田佳祐）created "Merry X'mas in Summer" during his mid-1980s Kuwata Band project.
Sure enough, Southern All Stars recorded "Christmas Time Forever" as the final track for their hit September 1992 album "Yo ni Man'you no Hana ga Sakunari"（世に万葉の花が咲くなり...Many Flowers Blooming in the World）. It's completely SAS with Kuwata's vocals (he wrote and composed the tune with Tommy Snyder helping out on the English lyrics) and those keyboards by his wife Yuko Hara（原由子）but there are those jingle bells and a certain Xmas hush in the arrangement by Takeshi Kobayashi（小林武史）. Plus, it looks like they brought in the kids as well.
"Christmas Time Forever" was used as the 1992 campaign song for Marui Department Store, but though I couldn't find any sign of that commercial on YouTube, I did find the official music video. As for the album, "Yo ni Man'you no Hana ga Sakunari" was at No. 1 for four weeks in a row throughout the month of October 1992 and it quickly became the No. 7 album of the year. In terms of Oricon's all-time rankings, the album is currently No. 99. "Namida no Kiss"（涙のキッス）is also a track on it.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to provide any comments (pro or con). Just be civil about it.