ZARD -- Goodbye My Loneliness

Once I knew that my time in Japan was numbered back in late spring of 2011, although I didn't go on a frenzied dash in the CD shops, I started to make a more concerted effort in getting some of the discs that I wanted to bring back home with me. A few more Yuming albums here, some Taeko Ohnuki releases there, for example. Still, there were a fair number of CDs that I couldn't obtain in time. One was a BEST collection for the band....or perhaps to be more accurate....the singer called ZARD.

I only found out recently that ZARD was not so much a group, but really the vocalist Izumi Sakai（坂井泉水）surrounded by musicians who went in and out since she debuted in 1991. But no matter the fluidity of the lineup, the music of ZARD was something that almost attained a certain ubiquity during their career of the better part of 2 decades. Once in a while, one of their songs would come on out in the karaoke box, the CD shops or on the television as part of a commercial or a show. It was a bit ironic since Sakai was known to be one of the most media-hesitant celebs in recent memory. According to Wikipedia, she made only 7 television appearances, so I'm sure whenever news came out that she would be making that rarer-than-rare appearance on a program like "Music Station", the network would pretty much go nuts on the advertising.

In any case, there is one CD single that I did pick up by ZARD, and that was the one for her debut single, "Goodbye My Loneliness" that was first released in February 1991. It was made as the theme song for a Fuji-TV drama, "Kekkon no Riso to Genjitsu"（結婚の理想と現実...The Ideals and Reality of Marriage）, and it was from the commercials for the upcoming show that I heard the song. What attracted me to it? Well, first of all, it started off with a down-to-earth pop/rock riff that sorta reminded me of John Waite's "Missing You" or any of those introspective 80s power ballads sung by folks like Bryan Adams and Corey Hart (yep, just to remind you, I am Canadian). And then there was Sakai's voice...it was strong but at the same time, it seemed to not want to demand a whole lot of attention. Both music and vocals were coolly low-key. Apparently, the producer for the show heard the demo tape for the song, and just decided that Izumi, who had written the lyrics, was also the one to sing it. Tetsuro Oda（織田哲郎）, who had helped in a number of hits by summer band TUBE and who would later assist in rocker Nanase Aikawa's（相川七瀬） career, took care of the melody.

The song's success also started low-key by starting out at No. 28 on Oricon, but within a month of its release, it peaked at No. 9, which is never a bad thing for a debut single. It ended the year as the 69th-ranked song.

I had always wondered about that name, though. Well, apparently, according to Sakai herself, the music producer Daiko Nagato（長戸大幸） was the one to come up with it since he had liked the sound of words such as "blizzard", "wizard" and "hazard". In another interview, she mentioned that bands whose names started with the letter "Z" tended to have a harder edge. I'm not sure if either Sakai or Nagato had been fans of Led Zeppelin or ZZ Top.

ZARD -- Goodbye My Loneliness