We have the apple pie up there which means that this is another All-Points Bulletin article, the first one for 2026.
Last September, YouTuber Neff Sang contacted me regarding a few Chinese covers of Japanese songs that he couldn't identify so he asked us for some help. Eventually, most of them were identified. However, he's contacted me in the last couple of days for a song by Cheng Lin（程琳）that was released above in 1983 which can be found at 21:57 of the above video containing the album "Little Conch"（小螺号）. The song title is 「春水湾湾」but he would like to know what the original Japanese song is.
Neff gave me an additional tidbit in that the original song was created by Kunihiko Suzuki（鈴木邦彦）. He's also provided the same song down below albeit under a different arrangement although he's stated that it was also from the same year of 1983. Unfortunately, I couldn't identify the song but if any of you take a listen and can identify it, please let us know.
Since 春水湾湾 is a cover of Japanese song, I wonder what was the reason the original song title was not printed on the album as in 春水湾湾 is a cover of (XYZ song)?
ReplyDeleteIt just wasn't common for this to happen at the time. I have several other cassettes, many with covers of non-Chinese songs, and rarely did they ever print the original album title.
DeleteIt is interesting because it seems that most of these singers at least mention or indicate somewhere that they are covering a Japanese song, but then they do not mention what specific song they are covering?
DeleteCorrect, majority of the time it was like this.
DeleteSome that were themes originating from films/TV shows would state which one it was from, and sometimes would include the songwriting credits, but it wasn't always consistent.
Some would use the actual name, such as saying "武川行秀曲" meaning "Music: Yukihide Takekawa", while some would simply say "日本歌曲" meaning "Japanese Music".
The ones that included which film/TV show it originates would have something like "日本电视片《排球女将》主题", meaning "Theme to the Japanese TV show "Moero Attack".
Additionally, many would be more obvious since they'd have a note saying "Sung in Japanese and Chinese"
But sometimes, there was no indication or credits that it was actually a cover as well.
I suspect sometimes it was more down to people simply not knowing who the original singers were, or what the song was originally called. (One of the singers for example stated how the songs she covered were ones she heard from a South Korean radio station, and recorded on a tape)
This also made me think of a weird occurance of a Japanese name being given, but not actually being what the song's usually known as.
This was the song "One Rainy Night in Tokyo". In the cassette, it's labeled as "雨夜东京" and "東京も今夜雨だ", despite the Japanese title being the English title. (searching the supposed Japanese title it provides doesn't give the song)