Spitz -- Hibari no Kokoro（ヒバリのこころ）

Koshy Koshy from Wikimedia Commons

My last posting on the veteran pop-rock band Spitz（スピッツ）was just a few months ago when I wrote on their 48th and most recent single "Mishiranu Ito"（見知らぬ糸）from 2026. I mentioned that even after all those years, Masamune Kusano（草野正宗）and company still retained that ol' Spitz sound which gained them fame and popularity thirty years ago.

Well, this time around, I'd like to go all the way back to their very first single just to see how it sounded. I'm all for investigating anything under the Early Installment Weirdness tag, and Spitz is no different. In March 1991, the band released "Hibari no Kokoro" (The Heart of a Lark). Before I found out what the word "hibari" meant in this case, I'd wondered half-jokingly whether Kusano had a thing for the Grand Old Dame of Kayo Kyoku, Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）, but such was not the case.

Nope...from what I could glean, Spitz's first is all about transitions: going from winter to spring, going from melancholy isolation to hope and renewal. And apparently, the lark represents a reawakening spirit soaring high into the sky, fresh and vibrant, ready for new adventures. Kusano's vocals are the reassuring anchor for Spitz fans while the melody by him is a bit more into the jangly rock than I usually hear by the band. Some of the music video includes footage taken from a bus of the Ibaraki Prefecture countryside. MV director Tetsuro Takeuchi（竹内鉄郎）evidently failed to get his credits for graduation because he had been busy on this production, but I've got a feeling that he still did OK regardless. Interestingly enough, "Hibari no Kokoro" would be used seven years later as the commercial song for NHK's coverage of the Nagano Olympics in 1998.