It's been a good long time since I put up a Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）song, and so I'm going to go with this one that I left out of my two articles on his first BEST album, "Oh! Yeah!" which came out in 1991.
I remember nikala mentioning "1985" as being one of her favourites, and it does have a power all its own. Originally from his debut album, "K.ODA" (December 1986), this was also his first single which came out the month before. During his days with his old band, Off Course, a lot of their big hits had to do with the bittersweet loss of love portrayed against some lovely and soft folk-pop melodies. That same style of lyric is here with "1985" but Oda's melody here is completely different.
It starts off with an eerie synthesizer which strikes me as if the camera were flying through the night and entering the window of a tenant somewhere in the big city. But then suddenly an electric guitar just explodes through the air in a sudden burst of violence...perhaps the young man inside has just had a huge flare of frustrated temper with things thrown. I'm painting a rather melodramatic scene here for this Oda ode but his lyrics are describing the feelings of a particularly haunted man despairing over the loss of his love which probably occurred some time ago. I can almost hear that Poe raven crying "Never more" as the song is playing.
The song was a modest success, getting as high as No. 15 on Oricon. It was also used for a Dai-Ichi Life Insurance commercial...couldn't find the video on YouTube but that was likely one intense song for such a product.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to provide any comments (pro or con). Just be civil about it.