Dragon Ash -- Let yourself go, Let myself go

 

After writing about actor Ikko Furuya（古谷一行）and one of his songs yesterday, I was reminded that his son, Kenji Furuya（降谷建志）, was also the vocalist and songwriter for the band Dragon Ash. There were those years in the late 1990s and early 2000s when this hip-hop/rock group frequently showed up on television, especially the music ranking shows.

Several of the comments for the music video of Dragon Ash's 4th single from March 1999, "Let yourself go, Let myself go", took on the glow of nostalgic swooning. I have never been a hip-hop fan myself but I can understand those fans' feelings since I used to see an excerpt of the video on a weekly basis for months, perhaps as much as a whole year. As the thumbnail shot shows, the excerpt was always of Furuya bouncing up and down in that blue hat and winter jacket and/or driving in his beloved Ford Mustang according to the J-Wiki article on the song.

In all honesty, I listened to "Let yourself go, Let myself go" in its entirety for the first time only yesterday since I'd completely forgotten about the band and its magnum opus in the years since then. Again, my knowledge of hip-hop on either side of the Pacific is minimal at best, but I find the song to be one of the more melodic examples of such a song, especially getting near the end. In fact, I was wondering whether "Let yourself go, Let myself go" was burgeoning on becoming a hip-pop ballad.

From what I could understand of Furuya's lyrics, they seem to be about moving forward from a bad time, perhaps judging from the title, the sad end of a romantic relationship. I did pick up on a few phrases hinting at stopping to smell the roses and walk into a better and more hopeful future. "Let yourself go, Let myself go" peaked at No. 4 on Oricon, going Double Platinum and ending the year as the 26th-ranked single. It was also a part of Dragon Ash's 5th album "Viva La Revolution" which was released in July 1999. It hit No. 1 on the charts and became the 13th-ranked album for the year breaking two million copies in sales.