Yumi Matsutoya -- Rondo（輪舞曲）

My affinity for the albums of Yuming（ユーミン）generally started to fade from around the mid-1990s. However, some of her singles from that decade still managed to draw attention from me.

One of those songs was "Rondo". The actual kanji is pronounced "rinbukyoku", but I think that we can all agree that the English title rolls off the tongue much more mellifluously. In any case, I was curious about what a rondo was, and according to Wikipedia, it refers to a 17th-century instrumental musical form, which admittedly didn't clarify things too much for me.

However, the above video by Musica Universalis helped quite a bit.

Getting back on track, I've usually enjoyed an uptempo Yuming song as a listener, but with "Rondo", it's one of her songs that can get me shimmying in my chair. I'm not sure if her melody actually fits the definition of a rondo, though. Perhaps she may be referring to the roundabout adventure of love, ever repeating, although the lyrics also focus on the beginning of a new and happy marriage. The music video shows this as well at a typical Japanese reception but with an extra layer of chaos as a layer of civility is slowly peeled away. Meanwhile, Yuming herself is the performing calm within the storm and she even ends up leading the participants in dance.

"Rondo" was released as Yuming's 27th single in November 1995 and it was also used as the theme song for the Akiko Matsumoto（松本明子）show "Tatakau Oyome-sama"（たたかうお嫁さまま...The Battling Bride）from that same year. It peaked at No. 2, selling close to 600,000 copies, and was a track on her 27th album "Kathmandu" from December. That hit No. 1 and eventually became the 15th-ranked album for 1996.