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@musicalongaku
"Willow's Theme" from "Willow" (1988).
Composed and conducted by James Horner. Performed by The London Symphony Orchestra and The King's College Choir, Wimbledon.
Yesterday was the late great James Horner's birthday, so happy belated birthday to him.
This is one of my favourite themes composed by him.
Maybe I'll be back to posting more here.
Yumi Tanimura - 「BLUEじゃいられない」 ("Blue ja irarenai") (1990)
Lyrics by Yumi Tanimura. Composed and arranged by Tatsuya Nishiwaki.
Recently I've been listening to Yumi Tanimura's songs and discovered (or rediscovered...maybe I've heard it before) this one, which I have been listening to repeatedly.
It's quite catchy and I like that mix of pop with flourishes of jazz.
Here are some live performances:
ライブビデオ「feel mie 1991-1992」より。8th Single (友達c/w)作詞：谷村有美 作曲・編曲：西脇辰弥
Koichi Sugiyama - 「天空城」 ("Sky Castle") from "Dragon Quest V: Tenku No Hanayome".
Performed by Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra.
Conducted by Koichi Sugiyama.
After hearing about Koichi Sugiyama's passing recently, I decided to listen to his score for "Dragon Quest V" again (the only one in the Dragon Quest series I have on CD).
I'd say this is probably one of my favourite pieces of his from this particular score at least.
The original SNES (Super Famicom) version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXtYhmkr1Fg
It reminds me of a bit of Bach's "Air" from his "Suite No. 3".
May he rest in peace!
Faye Wong - "Miss You Night And Day" (1992)
Original written by Edmonds (Babyface), D. Bristal, S. Johnson
Cantonese lyrics by Li Mou Zhou
Arranged by Yi Cong Tang
Long time no post here...
Here is a cover of "Two Occasions" by The Deele, performed by Chinese singer Faye Wong, also known as "The Diva".
Actually, this is a cover of the extended "live" remix found on the 12" release of the song, to be specific.
Anyway, I really liked it, particularly Faye's vocals.
Original music video (the one I posted extended the video to fit the full song length):
https://youtu.be/0PnhijDQIe0
The 12" original version:
https://youtu.be/KUQLTOp9xXQ
Elsa & Glenn Medeiros - “Un Roman d’Amitié” (1988)
Lyrics by Didier Barbelivien and Diane Warren. Music by Robbie Buchanan.
I think this is my first post of a French (or partly French) song.
I discovered the singer Elsa recently and this is one of my favourite songs performed by her. This may not sound all that special for a ballad produced in the 80s, but I think it’s just really nicely arranged and I think Elsa’s and Glenn’s voices complement each other quite well. It made me think “They don’t make them like this anymore”, however tired that expression may be. I also like the fact that it’s co-written by Diane Warren and Robbie Buchanan, two names I had seen in the liner notes on other albums (Warren wrote several songs for “Chicago 19″, Buchanan was a session keyboard player on many albums). Besides that, the video gives you a nice glimpse of L.A. in the late 80s.
If you’re interested, there’s also a full English version of the song, which changed the lyrics to be about a relationship rather than a friendship. The arrangement also differs a bit (at least the drums and guitars in parts). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kt0E9omsGA
There’s also a version with Ria Brieffies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kt0E9omsGA
I also found this Cantonese cover performed by Pat Chan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrRRwbYhsaY And this cool instrumental cover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tPrvhR5zVo
Okay, enough links for this post. Hope you enjoy it!
Composed and conducted by James Horner.
I’ve been exploring James Horner’s music recently and decided to give the score for this film a listen. Even though it’s probably been at least 20 years since I’ve seen that film, the main themes/motifs just seemed quite recognizable to me.
I believe the track I’m sharing here impressed me the most.
Hope you enjoy it too.
Yumi Tanimura - “Tonight” (1989).
Lyrics by Yumi Tanimura and Seira Asakura. Music by Yumi Tanimura. Arranged by Nobuo Ariga.
Lovely ballad I discovered recently. Sounds a bit like some of those early to mid 80s ballads either written or co-written by David Foster to me. I love how at the end of the last chorus her voice sort of “blends” into the saxophone solo (I hope whoever reads this knows what I mean).
Here’s a great live performance, featuring Masato Honda from T-Square on sax:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ3PFf1sqEY
Another live performance, this time featuring a cover of “When you wish upon a star” at the beginning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ggnoquMLqI
Title theme from “Pool of Radiance” (1988).
Composed by David Warhol
I’m back from my hiatus (or whatever you would call it) and here’s a wonderful track by video game composer/designer David Warhol from the Dungeons&Dragons computer RPG “Pool of Radiance”, released on the Commodore 64 (the version presented here) and a couple of other platforms including DOS and the Amiga.
I discovered this after watching an interview with David on youtube, in which he was asked about the game and its music and he mentioned that he took some inspiration from Richard Wagner. His music was no stranger to me, though I realized that most of the music I knew he was credited for, was actually just arranged or programmed by him.
The Wagner influence got me interested and there certainly is something Wagnerian about this piece, but I think it’s really just a great piece in general, especially for a game made for the C64.
If anyone’s interested, here’s the portion of the interview where he talks about “Pool of Radiance”: https://youtu.be/qwRAQEgPij4?t=50s
I started to discover his other compositions and I’d like to share those too over time.
Sachiko Kumagai - “You” (1996).
Lyrics by Mica Project. Music by Sachiko Kumagai. Arranged by Sachiko Kumagai and Masataka Matsutoya.
Just realized that today is Sachiko Kumagai’s birthday and that I haven’t posted anything here for at least a month.
This is probably one of her best ballads. It was used as an ending theme for the anime series “Aka-chan to boku” (”Baby and me”).
Here’s an English translation of the lyrics: http://randomnessthing.com/2009/07/29/beat-of-the-day-you-by-sachiko-kumagai/
Happy Birthday to Sachiko!
Elika - 「 あなたのいた風景」(”Anata no ita fuukei“) (1991).
Lyrics by Erika Shimakage. Music by Shinya Naitou. Arranged by Daisuke Ikeda.
Today is Elika’s birthday, so I decided to share a rare promotional video for one of her songs. It was released as a single, as well as included on her 1991 album “Shiny Girl”. It’s a nice ballad.
Unfortunately there’s no full version I could link to.
Anyway, Happy Birthday, Elika!
Midori Karashima - “Silent Eve” (1991).
Music and Lyrics by Midori Karashima. Arranged by Kei Wakakusa.
Merry Christmas! Here’s a Christmas-themed song that I originally discovered many years ago during the early years of youtube.
Yui Nishiwaki - 「風の住む星」(”Kaze no sumu hoshi”) (1993).
Lyrics and music by Yui Nishiwaki. Arranged by Michiaki Katou.
A really nice song by yet another Japanese songwriter I discovered in the related videos to a video of Sachiko Kumagai’s “Kaze to kumo to watashi”, which I covered in my previous post.
This is the B-side of her 5th single. It reminds me of late 80s AOR or Adult Contemporary and the middle part reminds me of some of Chicago’s mid to late 80s songs in particular.
For some reason it was used for a potato chips commercial of all things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=706g8hF4pFk The single reached number 14 on the Oricon charts, according to Japanese wikipedia, and judging by the amount of hits on youtube it is still kind of popular.
Sachiko Kumagai - 「風と雲と私」(”Kaze to kumo to watashi” = ”The wind, the clouds and I”) (1994).
Lyrics by Mica Project. Music by Sachiko Kumagai. Arranged by Sachiko Kumagai and Hiroshi Shinkawa.
One of Sachiko Kumagai’s most popular songs, the opening theme for the TV drama series “Natsuko no sake” (”Natsuko’s sake”... sake, the rice wine). She also composed all the instrumental music for it.
Apparently, due to to the fact that it was for a popular drama series, the song ended up being her only hit on the Oricon charts and peaked at position no.10, if I’m not mistaken.
Here’s the drama series opening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7HvzLcN1JQ
A clearer version of the song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPrxzQUsJ40
ELIKA - “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree” a.k.a.「幸せの黄色いリボン」(”Shiawase no kiiroi ribbon” = “Yellow Ribbon of Happiness”) (1991).
Music and Lyrics by Irwin Levine and L. Russell Brown. Arrangement by TOSHITARO (Toshitaro Hiejima).
Discovered this rare gem on youtube yesterday.
I’d already known this from elika’s 1991 cover songs album “Solo”, which also includes songs like “You Can’t Hurry Love” and “When You Wish Upon a Star”. But I would have never imaged they actually did a music video (or PV, promotional video, as they call it in Japan) for this song.
The video has barely anything to do with the song, but the Western setting is really fun. Elika’s English pronounciation is also fine, even if isn’t flawless. At least you can tell what she’s singing about, which is not always the case for a lot of Japanese singers.
The video’s uploader also uploaded some other elika videos, including some video where she just talks about something. They’re all in Japanese without subtitles, but you might find them interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-RyiZSBl0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFwbjnbEcfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmXg81z5Vxc (this one shows her album discography up until 1991)
Yumi Tanimura - 「ラッシュ・アワーのアダムとイヴ」(”Rush Hour no Adam to Eve” = “Adam and Eve of the Rush Hour”) (1992).
Lyrics by Yumi Tanimura. Music and arrangement by Tatsuya Nishiwaki.
I recently discovered another singer-songwriter, Yumi Tanimura, and this is one of my favourite songs by her so far. She seems to quite popular and this is one of the many great live performances I found.
Enjoy!
There’s a different upload with on-screen lyrics, if you’d like to read / sing along: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXgJl8IX9h8
Sachiko Kumagai - “Shadows and Lights” (1993).
Lyrics by Mica Project. Music by Sachiko Kumagai. Arranged by Sachiko Kumagai and Masataka Matsutoya.
From Sachiko Kumagai’s 2nd album “Far beyond the rainbow”.
I bought this album and the two albums that followed this one recently, and this track is probably one of my favourites by her. She has a talent for finding these nice melodies and harmonies and then making these rich arrangements (often together with Masataka Matsutoya).
I also found out (thanks to the credits in the booklets) who is behind “Mica Project”.
It is actually a group of writers, consisting of (at least for the 2nd album):
Shun Taguchi, Yasuko Itoh, Toshie Ohta, Rie Shibata, Kayo Yoshimoto and Yumi Matsutoya (one of Japan’s most popular songwriters, actually and who worked with Sachiko Kumagai several times)
I may post some more of my favourites by her, if available online.
Robert Schumann - “Novellette op. 21 nr. 1“ (1838). Performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy.
I saw this Japanese coming-of-age film called “Chizuko’s Younger Sister”, also known as ふたり (”Futari” = “Us Two”) today and one of my favourite scenes was when Mika (the titular younger sister, played by Hikari Ishida) played this particular piece on piano at a house concert.
I was really captivated by it (and she actually looked like she knew how to play it, mostly).
So I decided to share it on here. I haven’t listened to Schumann in a long time, but I’ve always admired his work.
Today also happens to be my birthday, and this might be fitting piece, or not.
Anyway, enjoy!