Celine Dion -- To Love You More

 

Perhaps it was a thing back in the mid-to-late 1990s for some Japanese dramas to take on a theme song performed by a Western singer or band instead of a Japanese act. In 1994, Mariah Carey became the latest American singer to join the J-Xmas Music Hall of Fame (yes, I'm being sarcastic here) with her "All I Want For Christmas Is You" becoming a huge hit in Japan as it was used as the theme song for the Fuji-TV drama "29-sai no Christmas"（29歳のクリスマス...My 29th Christmas）. Then in 1996, British sophisti-pop band Swingout Sister provided the TBS drama "Mahiru no Tsuki"（真昼の月...Midday Moon） with the introspective "Now You're Not Here".

In between those two shows, though, there was another Fuji-TV drama in 1995 called "Koibito yo"（恋人よ...The Lovers） starring Honami Suzuki（鈴木保奈美）of "Tokyo Love Story" fame and Goro Kishitani（岸谷五朗）whose wife happens to be the lead singer of pop/rock band Princess Princess（プリンセスプリンセス）, Kaori Kishitani, nee Kaori Okui（奥居香）. I only remember the first episode in which the two leads end up falling into a pond so for at least one scene, the two are wearing warm white bathrobes looking like they were supposed to be acting in a Stanley Kubrick movie. Then, there was the final scene in the final episode which was extremely bittersweet. Did quite well in the ratings, I hear.

Apparently, according to the synopsis on J-Wiki, Honami and Goro's characters were supposed to be getting married to other partners at the same wedding hall but they both found out that their significant others had been doing some cheating in the past. Still, the couples got hitched but in a plot twist that would happen on a J-Drama, they ended up living next to each other. Then the cracks in the relationships start appearing.

However, in a nice example of synergy, the theme song and the show helped each other out. For one thing, "To Love You More" was sung by Celine Dion. As you have probably gleaned from the above paragraphs, I didn't really bother with the drama for the most part, but I did end up getting the CD single by Dion for about 500 yen. It was only released as a single in Japan in October 1995, and it remained at the top spot on Oricon for a number of weeks, selling 1.5 million copies. By the end of 1996, it was the 20th-ranking single of the year. Of course, in the following year, Dion had an even bigger hit thanks to "Titanic".

I could use the term baroque to describe the pop here but I also think that there is also something very courtly and countryside about "To Love You More", thanks to the grand and dramatic contributions of the band KRYZLER & KOMPANY with Taro Hakase（葉加瀬太郎）on violin. And what can you say about Dion herself? The song was created by another Canadian legend, David Foster, with Edgar Bronfman Jr. under his pen name of Junior Miles. From what I've read on the Wikipedia article for "To Love You More", the song didn't do too shabbily overseas either.

KRYZLER & KOMPANY -- Haru（春）

 

Indeed, we are all waiting for spring...especially this year. It looks like Tokyo has been enjoying some cherry blossoms in places such as Ueno Park although folks still can't spread out the blue sheets and enjoy a picnic there because of COVID, but I'm hoping that this will be the final time for this situation. Perhaps in 2022, things will be back to normal.

During the interview on "Tokyo House Party", I didn't get a chance to talk about it but if there had been some extra time, I would have explained a bit about that 1981 summer trip to Japan which totally changed my life because of all of the fascinating things which I saw and experienced, and that included the five days that we spent in Tokyo. One example was touring the Toshiba Science Centre with one of the exhibits being a light and laser music show with the music being a technopop version of Vivaldi's famous "Spring"...and the conventional version is something that you can hear above.

Of course, having become a recent convert to music in general but particularly within the technopop genre thanks to Yellow Magic Orchestra, I was awestruck by a techno version of "Spring", a song that I had already known quite well because of how often it was being played on TV and radio back then.

Well, I've found another cool and funky version of "Haru" which is the Japanese expression for Vivaldi's "Spring", and there's enough in the bloops and bleeps in there that I also think that it's fairly technopop, too. This time, this cover is provided by the classical pop string trio KRYZLER & KOMPANY, and to use one of Rocket Brown's favourite expressions, it indeed cooks happily. "Haru" belongs to the trio's 1991 2nd album "KRYZLER&KOMPANY #" which also contains their take on "Beautiful Dreamer", a song which I already wrote about earlier.

K&K's "Haru" does feel like a roller-coaster ride through Tokyo and just like for those amusement park ride enthusiasts (of whom I am not), it's a pity when it abruptly ends at just under 5 minutes.

KRYZLER & KOMPANY -- Beautiful Dreamer

 

I'd heard this song all throughout my life in various forms on TV, but the first time I found out its title was, strangely enough, in Tim Burton's "Batman" (1989). "Beautiful Dreamer" was used as the Joker's theme (as heard from 1:32 in the above video) with arrangements ranging from pompous to tinny.

From what I read at Wikipedia, "Beautiful Dreamer" was created by American songwriter Stephen Foster and published posthumously in March 1864 (Foster had passed away earlier in January that year). Apparently, it was about a lovelorn fellow serenading/bereaving a lover who may have already departed this mortal coil.

Of course, "Beautiful Dreamer" has popped up here and there over the past century-and-a-half, and I found this happily waltzing version by this trio known as KRYZLER & KOMPANY. I'd first heard about this group that has been described in J-Wiki as a New Age band (though they can also do classical and fusion) through the pages of "Eye-Ai" a few decades ago, and it consisted of violinist Taro Hakase（葉加瀬太郎）, bassist Yoshinobu Takeshita（竹下欣伸）and keyboardist Tsuneyoshi Saito（斉藤恒芳）.

Hakase is someone that I saw frequently on television to the extent that I considered him to have TV personality status, and his wife, Mayuko Takada（髙田万由子）, is indeed a tarento herself. The violinist formed KRYZLER & KOMPANY with Takeshita and Saito in 1987 while attending Tokyo University of the Arts. The name of the trio supposedly originated from Fritz Kreisler, an Austrian-born violinist and composer who lived from 1875 to 1962. Initially, K&K was arranging some of the classics for their recordings but they gradually came to create their own original works.

According to Hakase's Wikipedia page, K&K reached a certain rock star status and their February 1991 second album "Kryzler And Company #" sold around 81,000 copies and reached No. 30 on Oricon which isn't too bad at all for a string trio. Their version of "Beautiful Dreamer" is on this album as well, and as I said above, it fairly waltzes across the soundscape with the soul of a late 80s AOR ballad. I think that there's even something Christmas-y in the arrangement as well. 

Their initial run was between 1990 and 1996 starting with their debut single which was their cover of Kreisler's "Liebesfreud" under the Japanese title of "Ai no Yorokobi"（愛の喜び） after which followed another seven singles. In addition, there were also seven albums including their most recent 2015 "New World" when K&K got together again during that year. That particular album hit No. 48 on the charts.