Yumi Matsutoya -- Voyager, Part 1

For quite a few years, Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）, aka Yuming（ユーミン）, released albums which had some pretty striking covers, including the one for the last album I wrote on her, "Mizu no Naka no ASIA e"（水の中のASIAへ）. It didn't hurt that Yuming herself was fairly photogenic herself although her face didn't appear on the cover of every album. And that is the case here with her 15th original album "Voyager" though she's still on the album. On her Internet radio program's July 2013 broadcast, the singer-songwriter did mention that the woman swimming in that pool among the skyscrapers was indeed herself. The buildings, or one of them anyways, was the now-defunct Shinjuku branch of Do Sports Plaza. Incidentally, the late Storm Thorgerson, one of the members of the art design group Hipgnosis was responsible for the design of that cover.

(cover version by Caramel Chord)

The December 1983 release of "Voyager" began Yuming's trend of putting out albums around the end of the year...that is, until the February 1997 release of her 28th album "Cowgirl Dreamin'". And it all starts off with "Girlfriends"（ガールフレンズ）, a rousing mid-tempo number that could make itself very comfortable coming out from a car tape deck of the time with the convertible roof down. I'm not sure if my image fits her lyrics, but listening to it, I'm thinking of a woman just fresh from a romantic breakup meeting up with her gal pals once again after a long absence at one of their apartments and simply living and laughing it up like old times.

(cover by Otokogumi)

Not sure if "Kekkon Roulette"（結婚ルーレット...Russian Roulette Marriage） approaches the level of City Pop, but it feels close enough to urban contemporary, and in fact, I think it nears the type of music that Yuming and her husband, Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）, were making by the end of the 80s. It's a bouncy tune whose lyrics frankly mystify me somewhat since I'm not sure whether the singer is trying to describe the whirlwind that makes up a courtship or if she's saucily relating an S&M session.

Track 3 is "Aoi Fune de"（青い船で）, a languid and wistful ballad that has the English subtitle of "Spaceship Earth". As that subtitle hints, the song is about someone telling a significant other how lucky that they are together as they travel on this huge vessel hurtling through the universe. I especially like the arrangement in this and how the strings suddenly take on this feeling of hope breaking through the clouds as the song nears its end.

(Sorry but the video has been taken down.)

"Tropic of Capricorn" is a track that hints at the excitement and mystery of traveling abroad, and the way Yuming sings the song, it sounds like the heroine involved here feels a bit of out of control...and perhaps she likes it that way.

Two other tracks on "Voyager" have already gotten their own articles on KKP, and they are "Dandelion ~ Osozaki no Tanpopo"（ダンデライオン〜遅咲きのたんぽぽ）and "Toki wo Kakeru Shojo"（時をかける少女）which were also sung by 80s aidoru Tomoyo Harada（原田知世）. I didn't put up Yuming's version in the article for the latter song so here it is as the final track.

And that is the final song for this article. However, considering how good "Voyager" is, I will have to come up with Part 2 in the next few days. Also, you can listen to the samples of the album at iTunes.