Southern All Stars -- Ai no Kotodama 〜Spiritual Message〜（愛の言霊）

 

The last time I wrote up on the legendary band Southern All Stars（サザンオールスターズ）was back in late 2022 when I posted their "Christmas Time Forever". After that, there came their "cameos" on Reminiscings of Youth articles, so it's nice to have Keisuke Kuwata（桑田佳祐）, Yuko Hara（原由子） and company return to the byline.

Frankly, this SAS song was something that I had forgotten in the years since I first heard it some decades ago. And that's most likely due to the fact that I never saw the NTV 1996 drama "Toumei Ningen"（透明人間...The Invisible Man） starring SMAP's Shingo Katori（香取慎吾）as the title character. I do remember catching the commercials promoting it though because Katori was popping up nude (tastefully, though); I heard rumours that parts of his body had to be insured. Anyways, "Ai no Kotodama ~Spiritual Message~" (The Power of the Words of Love) was the ending theme.

As well, it was also used as the campaign song for au LISMO, the KDDI cellphone service and now as I remember it, "Ai no Kotodama" seemed to be the favourite on that Saturday night celebrity karaoke show, also on NTV. And perhaps that was no surprise since the show depended on the rankings of which one of them was Oricon where it scored a No. 1 following its release as SAS' 37th single in May 1996. It would rank in at No. 7 on the yearly charts. But still, for whatever reason, compared to some of the other hits by Southern All Stars, "Ai no Kotodama" never quite sank into my memories or psyche.

Maybe it was because the song just tried to cram itself with a ton of different influences. Usually I appreciate a mixture of genres but I think it was kinda like listening to the equivalent of a kid tossing everything but the kitchen sink into the closet when he hears his mother storming up the stairs to see if he actually cleaned up his room. "Ai no Kotodama" has got elements of dance club, Japanese festival, Indonesian rap, jazzy scat and English. Plus for the longest time, when I heard the song, I'd been under the impression that Kuwata was singing in French in parts. According to the J-Wiki writeup on "Ai no Kotodama", Kuwata had wanted to trip the light fantastic with his voice via all these different languages and sounds.

In the end, my ears and head were filled with this fruit salad in rum-spiked gelatin that incorporated virtually every single fruit on Earth in existence, and so I kinda went "Well, I'll just have to take it really slowly with this one here...small bites over many days". Basically, it's gonna have to grow on me. But in any case, "Ai no Kotodama" is also a track on the band's 12th original album "Young Love" from July 1996. It was also another chart-topper and like the single, it would also come in at No. 7 on the yearly charts.