Interestingly for Reminiscings of Youth this week, this particular ballad had been mentioned years before I even decided to start the ROY series. When I wrote up Saburo Tokito's（時任三郎）"Kawa no Nagare wo Daite Nemuritai" (川の流れを抱いて眠りたい）back in 2012, I noted that it sounded just like Michael Johnson's "Bluer Than Blue".
"Bluer Than Blue" hit the record shelves and radio stations back in April 1978 and it's one of the first songs to stick in my head as perhaps a prelude to my opening up to music in general going into the 1980s. I hadn't heard of Johnson before and I haven't really listened to anything else by him since but "Bluer Than Blue" contains this beautiful combination of gently rolling piano and shimmering strings that frankly entranced the heck out of me any time I heard it at home or in the car. Randy Goodrum was the one who created this quiet masterpiece and perhaps I can thank him for planting the seed to enjoy AOR/soft rock ballads. I didn't really pay much attention to the lyrics but I'm rather glad that I'm putting this one up this week rather than next week which gets really close to Valentine's Day as a man tries and fails to rationalize his new existence without his old love.
As I said, I used to hear this on the radio all the time so I was surprised to realize that there had been a music video. In fact, this was the eighteenth video played on MTV on its opening day of August 1st 1981. Wow! I know it was the debut day but I hadn't even thought that a video of a 1970s AOR tune would ever appear on the music channel. In Canada, "Bluer Than Blue" hit No. 6 while in the United States, it reached No. 12.
Well, let's see. What was up at the top of the charts on April 3rd 1978?
1. Pink Lady -- Southpaw （サウスポー）
2. Candies -- Hohoemigaeshi （微笑がえし）
3. Masaaki Hirao and Yoko Hatanaka -- Canada Kara no Tegami (カナダからの手紙）
A lot of hits were released in 1978! Pink Ladies’ song is an allusion to a baseball player by the name of Tamotsu Nagai, and the song even sounds like a superhero song. And, speaking of pronouns again, some of the lyrics were recently and for a short time considered offensive because of the use of "Omae" to refer to a baseball player. Candies’ song is also well known and still gets some air time every once in a while. And, then there is Masaaki Hirao and Yoko Hatanaka’s mysterious ballad that led to an increase in Japanese tourists to Canada and that also always seem to be on top ten list. I still wonder what inspired Jun Hashimoto to write this song and hopeful I will one day find an interview of Jun explaining the meaning of this song.
ReplyDeleteIf "Omae" was considered a little offensive, I wonder about how "Kimi wa 1000%" was taken. I always thought that "kimi" was also a little personal as a second-person pronoun.
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