Wasn't exactly doing any Boxing Day shopping this morning because I wasn't looking for any sales, but I did go downtown to pick up some new earphones for my relative's new Fii0 portable cassette player. They aren't cheap but they are working swimmingly much to everyone's satisfaction as they are enjoying their old enka songs on some ancient audiotapes.
It is Friday so no enka today. Instead, we have our usual urban contemporary numbers to consider, and to start off the final Friday for 2024, we have Masaki Ueda's（上田正樹）"Chiisana Uchuu". This could translate directly as "A Small Space" but that really doesn't reflect the singer-songwriter's feelings in his lyrics. At first, I had assumed that the song which occupies a track on his October 1978 album "Push & Pull" was supposed to be another happy-go-lucky tune involving a romantic couple. Instead though, it actually talks about one guy's joy at presumably moving into his own pad and treating the view of the night sky outside his window as his framed universe. So I gather that a more proper emotional translation can be "My Little Piece of Heaven".
For such a lyrically stationary tune, "Chiisana Uchuu" is a pretty pleasantly traveling disco-laced City Pop tune that brings more images of flying through space over Tokyo or bombing down the expressways criss-crossing the megalopolis. Enjoy the strings, Ueda's soulful vocals, the galloping rhythm and the guitar solo. I usually associate the singer with blues and/or soul, but he does pretty well with the disco, too.
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