Precious Burden, Amayadori, Jidai... The Power of Songs: Memories of 25 Years Ago and Around That Time

When listening to a song, the circumstances, background, and emotions of the time you first heard it can vividly come back to life.

I wanted to listen to "Precious Burden" (1998) by the Swedish singer Sophie Zelmani, with her fragile, poignant, whispery voice, and I have been playing it in my car during my commute for a while now.

This song was apparently written by Sophie for a close friend who had lost her mother, and when I asked ChatGPT to translate it, the Japanese lyrics were as follows.
It feels like a letter from a best friend to a departed mother, and also like a prayer.

When my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, introduced me to this song, it had only been a few years since he had suddenly lost his father at the age of 18, and he told me that this song had been a great comfort to him.

Thinking of him at 18, crying while held by the song, my heart ached deeply as well.

I have been listening to it every day lately, but the heartache I felt before is gone, and I am simply healed by the gentle singing voice.

Furthermore, after that, while I was listening mainly to Yuming and Kazumasa Oda during my commute, Spotify recommended Masashi Sada's "Amayadori" (1977) to me.

I previously wrote about the story of my husband and me performing "Amayadori" at our wedding on note, and this is exactly that Amayadori.

*No video

I haven't sung it since our wedding 22 years ago, but I remembered it all perfectly and sang along with Masashi Sada in the car.

There is no shortage of episodes, such as many people like Yutaka Ozaki and Masaharu Fukuyama covering it, Joji Abe listening to it every day while in prison, or audiences at live concerts who were laughing out loud at first ending up wiping away tears at the end.

At our wedding, too, friends who were listening and laughing half-jokingly at first ended up listening quietly by the end, and some even told us as they were leaving, "I cried to this song. It was moving," which actually touched us in return.

I have been wondering for 20 years what it is that attracts people to it so much.

But I do feel that this is what it means to touch the heart.

Spotify also played "Jidai" (Miyuki Nakajima), sung by Hideaki Tokunaga on his cover album "VOCALIST" (2005).

My newborn eldest daughter would have what is called "twilight crying" where she wouldn't stop crying in the evening, and it was a magic song that would make her cry herself to sleep when I rocked her and played Tokunaga-san's "Jidai".

I don't know if it was the healing effect of Tokunaga-san's singing voice, but the children usually calmed down.
I was very grateful for "VOCALIST" and the albums that followed during my child-rearing years.

Unexpectedly, by listening to music related to my time as a girlfriend, my wedding, and then my baby, one after another, it became an opportunity to look back on the various things from 25 years ago and the few years that followed.

It is quite moving to realize that the busyness of those days, the ups and downs of my heart, and the changes in myself have now become very much a thing of the past.

I was giving it my all, somehow.
Perhaps this is how life gradually begins its descent down the mountain.

......No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
My youngest was eight years old.
Let's keep giving it our all and pushing forward recklessly. We're not on the downhill slope just yet.