My Showa Pop Songs 30: Into the Dream 1973

I have spent my life searching for something, growing older, yet the meaning of life remains unfound.

🎵 What is it you are looking for? 🎵
When I start singing this, my son harmonizes. When my son starts singing, I harmonize.

And when we both sing the high notes of 🎵 Sa-a- 🎵 together, we immediately look at each other, smile, and say, 'Oh, geez. We're... in sync again.'

Because we are parent and child, our vocal qualities match perfectly.

Even though my son is 30, we still harmonize. I don't understand his work at all, and he finds my elderly worries boring, so mother and son converse through song. This is one of those songs.

I first learned this song when I was 16. A high school girl. I liked the B-side, 'Itsunomanika Shoujo wa' (Before You Know It, She's a Girl), and played it on my guitar while singing.

I thought it was cool to stop the vibration of the strings with my hand, so I practiced it because I wanted to perform it in front of others. I didn't perform it at my own school festival, but went to another high school that was holding theirs on the same day to sing it. Back then, nobody really told you not to do things like that.

Why did I do such a thing?
I suppose I thought this song wouldn't be a hit with the girls at an all-girls school.

At the time, Yosui Inoue's songs were sharp. They shone. I think there is a period in life when one produces their best work. I haven't felt the same level of emotion from any of Yosui's songs since then.

'Yume no Naka e' (Into the Dream) invited us, who were working and studying so seriously and hard, to say, 'It's fine, isn't it? Let's take a break sometimes. Let's dance. Let's stop for a moment and just go to sleep.'

But in reality, the Showa-era me, while singing 🎵 Are you still planning to keep looking? 🎵, never stopped looking. It was an era of competition. I gritted my teeth, shed tears, and hummed this song while doing my best. Like an idiot.

My late mother used to sing 'Gondola no Uta' (Gondola Song) and remember her youth.
🎵 Life is short, fall in love, maiden, before your crimson lips fade 🎵 It's from Andersen's 'The Improvisatore'. Old songs have such dignity.

I sing Yosui.
🎵 But no one knows how short the spring is 🎵
🎵 Your smile has become sadly adult 🎵

My younger sister, who was in love, and I, a college student, are sitting in a coffee shop.
My sister was smiling at me. Soon after, she left for India. My sister, who was working in Tokyo, and I, who was working at a high school, are meeting in a coffee shop. My sister was smiling at me. Soon after, she took her own life.

Even now, I think that whether life is long or short, painful or happy, none of that matters as much as whether or not you have fallen in love.

My sister fell in love. So did I.
That is what gives life meaning.
So, if someone says to you, 'Won't you dance with me instead?', you dance.

Absolutely.

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