The TUBE -- Sailing Love（セイリング・ラヴ）

When I was listening to Come Along Radio's "City Pop Summer Mix #3" the other night, I encountered a song that I had never heard before but identified it unmistakably as a TUBE tune. My assumption was that it was one of their later singles going into the 1990s.

Once again, I was wrong. In fact, "Sailing Love" was the first track on the band's first album "Heart of Summer" released all the way back in July 1985. Furthermore, TUBE wasn't TUBE at the time. Nobuteru Maeda（前田亘輝）and the guys were known as The TUBE...I gather that in the name of Japanese formality, they wanted that definite article.😏

Written and composed by longtime TUBE associate Tetsuro Oda（織田哲郎）with Shuusuke Nagato（長戸秀介）also working on the lyrics, "Sailing Love" was a pleasant "How do you do?" to the listeners of this new band bringing that sunny summer beach time fun that would characterize the TUBE sound for years to come. "Heart of Summer" peaked at a respectable No. 29 on Oricon and it would include their debut single "Best Seller Summer" which had been released in June 1985 with a No. 13 ranking.

It wouldn't be a "Kayo Kyoku Plus" summer without a TUBE song. Hope the boys are still cheering up the fans in Japan and elsewhere somehow during this pandemic.