Masanori Sera & Twist -- Anta no Ballad（あんたのバラード）

 

Oh, good heavens! It's been almost nine years since I've put up an article involving a Masanori Sera & Twist（世良正則＆ツイスト）song. Indeed, back in 2013, I put up their famous "Moero Ii Onna"（燃えろいい女）. Well, I was reminded of another one of their hits which came right at the beginning thanks to an appearance by the band on a recent episode of "Uta Con"（うたコン）. 

I'd heard of "Anta no Ballad" (Your Ballad) before just from Sera's melody and voice but I never put 2+2 together in terms of identifying the song and band, but that appearance on "Uta Con" finally cemented things. This was Twist's debut single from November 1977, and it's this down-home bluesy rock love song with lyrics also by Sera, driven by those gravelly and smoky vocals of his. 

When he was in his senior year at the Osaka University of Arts, the singer wrote up "Anta no Ballad" and an acquaintance of his who was working at a music instrument shop at the time recommended that the song be entered into the Yamaha Popular Song Contest, according to an article in the Sankei Sports newspaper (via J-Wiki). Well, that acquaintance was right on the money, since it won the Grand Prize there and Sera and Twist got to go to the World Popular Song Festival also sponsored by Yamaha.

"Anta no Ballad" earned another Grand Prize there, too, which led to their official debut. The song managed to break the Top 10 at No. 6 and ended up as the 25th-ranked single for 1978, selling between 500,000 and 750,000 records. It was also included on the band's self-titled album which was released in July of that year and hit No. 1 on Oricon. Finally, "Anta no Ballad" earned Sera and Twist their invitation to perform at the Kohaku Utagassen.

I also found one other interesting point about the choice of title, vis-à-vis one important word in it. The second-person pronoun "you" can be expressed as "kimi"（君）, "anata"（あなた）or "anta"（あんた）among other ways (and these three ways are very intimate). However, according to Sera, when it comes to blues music, only "anta" has the right feeling.