social.noyu.me

here are three 山下達郎 (Yamashita Tatsurou, though more often rendered in English as ”Tatsuro Yamashita”) albums (see alt text) that have been getting us through this very difficult month, even before things got very weird

all highly recommended

easy listening but real good

eagle-eyed readers will note that our profile picture on this account (in fact, our profile picture basically everywhere for now) is a crop from the last of these, the “Big Wave” soundtrack. there's a metaphorical significance we won't get into. but we do love that one a lot.

(re: https://social.noyu.me/@hikari/statuses/01K1WHEM6ERAJWXCPK7YMXTME7)

one of the reasons this selection of albums is so comforting to us is that, while only Big Wave we knew before last month, each of the other albums have a hit single we've loved for years

when you've been going through an incredibly horrible period in your life triggered by neurosis over your own identity, especially the idea of “when” certain things “started”, comfort music to turn to that you've loved “forever” is a very, very, very valuable thing

and frankly, Yamashita Tatsurou's music isn't just comforting, it's straight up just really really good. it's kind of the perfect thing for gently wandering out of a crisis, even if we, tragically enough, were also listening to it while gently wandering into a crisis too

we will also note in passing we have no idea how you obtain these albums legally, despite our best efforts; they used to be on YouTube but, at least in our region, every last good upload seems to have been nuked from orbit, and we can't even buy the albums on iTunes somehow

which is an understandable tragedy when it's Japanese music that's only comprehensible to a Japanese audience, but this music is… perhaps the most anglophone-friendly Japanese music ever, I'll say that; and Mr. Yamashita is not exactly an obscure artist, he is a giant

we'll shut up now, but we'll repeat our strong recommendation of these albums, especially of course Big Wave, and the song “Merry-Go-Round” (from Melodies), and the song “Ride on Time” (from “Ride on Time”), but it's all really good stuff and very very comforting :)

cya

ah right, one final aside: yes, Big Wave is a soundtrack album, not a normal music album. but it's a soundtrack album more famous than the movie it is ostensibly from, because the movie is just a clip-show of surfing footage (we believe); and… you'll never guess who did the OST

🎵 We've got summer right here in our hearts
🎵 And we move with the tide
🎵 We just float in the sun 'til the big wave comes
🎵 And we ride, ride, ride

we will have to apologise profusely and appropriately and make fitting amends in another time for how we have alas been forced to post our way out of a crisis, but we hope this particular thread is something we'll never need to delete

one more little aside because it's so incredibly funny it must be pointed out

Yamashita Tatsurou is Takeuchi Mariya's husband

yes, the “Plastic Love” one

Yamashita Tatsurou was also the

producer of “Plastic Love”

a good friend of ours said it's the “city-pop marriage” :)

oh, and if we remember correctly Yamashita Tatsurou has himself done his own cover of “Plastic Love”!

we can't justify this feeling at this time but we do think this might be one of those rare cases where reality sort of… lets the good things happen that should happen

🎵 magic ways my friend
🎵 you love the girl with magic ways, and it’s true
🎵 i might as well give in
🎵 you cast a spell on all my nights and days
🎵 with your sweet magic ways

“so, hikari, why do you like yamashita tatsurou's music so much?”
“well, i always loved it an immense amount, but then it got me through a very difficult time in my life, and through that i found i loved it yet more immensely”

🎵 I've always lived my life in fantasy
🎵 No chance to take, no heart to break
🎵 But now you take my hand and
🎵 You make me understand that two dreams can join together

🎵 It's morning
🎵 And as I wake, I see your eyes
🎵 They are my reason, they are my answer now
🎵 Because I love you
🎵 The one who made my dreams come true

i think gentle love songs are a very, very important genre of music, regardless of how you want to interpret them, perhaps especially because of the ambiguity: you can read the “you” and the “i” a million different ways, and in the space of the past month, we probably have

not music we like because we're deluded, not music we like because we're not deluded, not music we like because we know that attempting to answer such a question creates delusion, but music we can like, essentially, regardless of mental state, get lost in without getting lost

we surf through the sea of meanings we attach to these songs, and the waves become a haze that splashes over us, but doesn't get us particularly wet, it just keeps us cool. that, i suppose, is one of the reasons we might be attached to “Big Wave” especially. one of a million.

an important bit of context is that when we started listening to Yamashita Tatsurou music to get us through this, this was like a week before the psychotic break's shit hit the fan, we just had… neck pain, sleep deprivation, and summer humidity, and needed to walk through it

and while with the benefit of infinite hindsight i wish we had been able to get more sleep that particular week, i can point out the music probably was, in fact, keeping us sane even at that point, so i can't begrudge its role there either

i guess Big Wave really is just our favourite album of all time, huh. that's not even a statement we would disagree with if asked about it a year ago, or five years ago, i think

🎵 Out there in the ocean, that's my… silhouette
🎵 Out there waiting where the mountains move
🎵 I'm all alone
🎵 But I'm at home
🎵 Living with nothing left to prove

🎵 We've got summer right here in our hearts
🎵 And we move with the tide
🎵 We just float in the sun 'til the big wave comes
🎵 And we ride, ride, ride!

🎵 Looking for the pieces of a shattered dream
🎵 Running out of places to be free
🎵 Nowhere to go
🎵 I only know
🎵 I hear the thunder calling me

🎵 We've got summer right here in our hearts
🎵 And we move with the tide
🎵 We just float in the sun 'til the big wave comes—

🎵 —and we ride, ride, ride!

oh yeah, we believe Yamashita might be a Telecaster guy too? he has several guitars of course, but… it does make a certain sort of make sense…

wait holy shit we … did have a coherent little city pop arc way back when… we just had no fucking self-confidence? we are reading on wikipedia right now that the three city pop artists we collected albums from at that time knew eachother? our taste made sense?? goddamn

aha, right, you know how we said we can't get these albums legally and digitally? well, maybe as a download, sure. but they're all still in print on Compact Disc, and cdjapan will happily sell us them, and the other two city pop albums we own, we own on CD… guess we'll have to…

see, the city pop albums we currently own on CD are

Variety by Takeuchi Maria (needs no introduction)

&

MIGNONNE by Ohnuki Taeko, and that's why reading she was Yamashita's old bandmate and did lead vocals on an early version of The Theme From Big Wave just stunlocked us

this isn't making sense in a schizophrenic way, it's making sense in a “hikari_no_yume has historically been terminally unable to believe her musical taste would make sense to outsiders” way