GLAY -- Winter, again

"Winter....again?" It's a common utterance by we folks in Toronto around this time whenever we get a major snowfall. The Holidays have long passed us but we're still several weeks away from spring and even then, there is no guarantee that warmer days and no shoveling of the white stuff will have arrived by March 21st. Strangely enough, though, as I am writing this, we have been going through an unusual short spell of warm weather so that very little of the snow remains...although what is left appears like gray/black globs.

Ah, my first paragraph was merely to introduce another big GLAY hit, "Winter, again" from February 1999. And this was a huge success for the rock band fronted by TERU. It not only hit No. 1 for 2 consecutive weeks but it was the 2nd-ranked single for 1999, only beaten by a trio of dough balls. In fact, "Winter, again" is currently the 59th-ranked single in Oricon history. In terms of sales, it is the band's biggest hit, selling approximately 1.65 million copies. The song is also included on GLAY's 5th album, "Heavy Gauge" from October 1999. This was also another huge hit, hitting No. 1 on the weekly charts, becoming the No. 8 album of the year, and currently 50th place in terms of the top albums in Oricon history.

I'd known about this song for years but not being a GLAY fan, I had never really listened to it in its entirety until recently. Thanks to the wonders of YouTube, though, I finally heard it and saw the video of the guys performing in the middle of a winter wonderland (or endurance challenge, depending on how long they had to stay out there), and actually realized that it was a pretty decent song especially during the refrain.

The words and music were created by guitarist/keyboardist TAKURO and although the lyrics talk of a man waxing philosophical about his own snow-covered hometown and wanting to show his significant other (who may be temporarily or permanently parted from him), the music makes me think of a Canadian police procedural show that has been getting some success recently, "Cardinal".

Instead, it became the cool jingle for Japan Railways. One other interesting trivia tidbit that I got from the J-Wiki article (although I couldn't find the original source for this information, I found out that this info has been making the rounds on other sites remarking on the song) was that TAKURO had based the delicate intro on the opening to the massive hit theme song from "Titanic", "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion.

Ironically, although GLAY did make an appearance on the Kohaku Utagassen that year (their final time of 3 times), they didn't perform "Winter, again" but instead it was a tune called "Survival" which was also included on "Heavy Gauge". Maybe they couldn't do an adequate job without all of the snow around them? But then again, Saburo Kitajima（北島三郎）was still appearing on the Kohaku...couldn't NHK have lent the guys some of that billowing paper snow?