Way back in 2002 or so, when I was still living in Japan, I bought an album by Kojima Mayumi on a whim. (Wikipedia article here).
I was, at that time, trying to get more into Japanese music, and would occasionally just by an album on a whim if it looked cool to me. (Looking back, it strikes me now as a huge waste of money, but I was a bit more impulsive in those days.) Anyway, I bought a lot of dud albums in this way, but Kojima Mayumi was one that I really liked. I ended up going back to the store later and buying all her albums that I could find.
Going through my blog archives, I'm a bit surprised to see that I've rarely mentioned her on this blog before, given how much I was into her at one time. (I mentioned her briefly in this post here, but that's it.) Well, time to make up for that. Here's one of my favorite songs by her.
I should also note that I was never successful in getting any of my friends to like Kojima Mayumi. I shared her music with a lot of my friends back in those days, and none of them were ever impressed by it. So, you know, take me with a grain of salt. Maybe this music isn't really that great--maybe it's just me.
But go ahead and give it a listen and decide for yourself.
Since it's Christmas time, it's time to share some Christmas music, right?
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen has always been one of my favorite Christmas songs. A few years ago, when I was still living in Vietnam, I was searching for an online version of that song to share with my kids, and discovered this version. Which I like.
I've never heard of this group before, but their Wikipedia page is HERE.
Yet another song I picked up from community radio (88.1 WWCE). Whenever I hear a song I like on that radio station, I try to make a note of it here so that I don't forget it.
More information about the group can be found on their Wikipedia page HERE.
Yet another song I discovered by listening to community radio (88.1). I liked the sound of it, so I thought I'd make a note of it here so I so I don't forget it.
I'd never heard of this artist before, but she has a Wikipedia page here.
I've considered myself a Temptations fan for a long time. Back in my early days in Japan, someone loaned me a 2-disc compilation of the Temptations greatest hits, which I copied over to MiniDisc (W), and I used to listen to it over and over again.
But, back in those days, it was before Wikipedia, and I didn't know a lot about the history of the band, and I didn't know that the lead singer actually changed in 1968.
Now, the drama of David Ruffin, and how he got kicked out of The Temptations, is easily readable on Wikipedia. (See here and here). I won't recount it all here, but some interesting reading, if you care to follow the links.
The personal problems of David Ruffin and his split with The Temptations are unfortunate (even if it makes for good drama). But still, the man was a very passionate singer. Just look at how much emotion he pours into this song.
I'd never heard of either song before. And I grew up on oldies stations. And Walk Away from Love even made it to number 1 on the R&B charts. (I guess this is an interesting reminder that not everything that was popular back in those days survived into the oldies circuit.)
But now, through the magic of Youtube, both songs are readily accessible. I have to say, I don't care all that much for Walk Away from Love, but My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me) is a keeper.
Wikipedia says: "In the decades since the LP's release, "Jumpin' Jack Flash" became a popular club hit". Huh. Well, I'd never heard it before. Maybe I should have been going to more clubs.
At any rate, I thought it was a fun song, so I'm sharing it with all of you here.
I talk on this blog a lot about my obsession with oldies, and in real life, my constant talking about older songs drives my wife a bit crazy.
But I can also dig some of this newer music you kids are listening to.
We've been doing a lot of family car trips on the weekends, and I've been constantly scanning the radio searching for good music, and occasionally even find music I like.
I thought I would note down a few songs I liked here--mostly just to note them down for myself (so I don't forget about these songs).
Addendum: Now that I'm listening to these songs while I'm sitting at my desk, I do have to admit that I don't find them quite as good as I did when I was driving. Maybe these songs are best enjoyed as cruising songs when you're in the car.
When I first started this Sharing Music I Like project, my intent was to share songs that I've either newly discovered, or songs that were generally obscure.
Now that I'm a few years into this project, however, I'd like to pivot to sharing songs that I've loved for a long time, including songs that are not so obscure.
Which I guess raises the question: how obscure is A Change Is Gonna Come? I mean, on the one hand, it's one of the most beloved soul songs from the 1960s. On the other hand, it never gets any radio play.
I grew up on oldies stations in the 1980s and 1990s, and I never heard this played on the radio. So my take is that unless you are particularly into old soul music, you might never discover this song. And if so, hopefully this blog post will help you discover this wonderful song.
But what's your take on it, dear reader? Have you heard this song before? How did you discover it? Did you ever hear it on the radio? Leave a comment and let me know.
And does anyone know why this song is never on the radio?
The first time I remember hearing this song, or at least noticing it, was in 2001 when I was re-watching Malcolm Xin Japan.
For whatever reason, Malcolm X is a movie that took me a few times to really appreciate. The first couple times I watched it, I felt a bit exhausted by the long run time of the movie. It's a movie you really have to be in the right mood to appreciate, because the pacing of the movie is slow. But the third time I watched it, I was settling into the slow pacing of the movie, and I began to appreciate just how powerful the movie was.
Now, if you've seen the movie, you know that at the end of the film, the movie essentially just stops so that A Change Is Gonna Come can play. It's the kind of pacing decision that exasperated me the first couple times I saw the movie, but when I re-watched it the 3rd time, I was able to appreciate it. And I noticed what a beautiful song it was.
This was back in 2001, when the Internet was still in its infancy, so it took me some time to actually track down what the name and singer were for this song. There was no Wikipedia to go to, no Youtube to search, and no reddit to ask.
I bought the soundtrack to Malcolm X (which I was actually able to find in a CD store in Japan) solely to get a copy of that song, and then was disappointed when that song wasn't on the soundtrack.
[Note: The Wikipedia article for Malcolm X (soundtrack) lists A Change Is Gonna Come as track 14 on the soundtrack, but it was definitely not on the Malcolm X soundtrack I bought in 2001. Perhaps there were different versions of the soundtrack released? I also don't know why A Change Is Gonna Come wouldn't be included, but perhaps it was a rights issue?]
Anyway, after several Internet searches, I did figure out that name and artist of the song from the end of Malcolm X, and then was able to buy a copy of Sam Cooke's greatest hits in Japan. Then, once I had finally tracked this song down, for several years afterwards, I became a big evangelist for this song.
I shared it with my old Calvin friend Brett, and my JET friend Ryan (neither of them had ever heard this song before, both of them loved it immediately.)
I used this song in my English classes in Japan, and have gone on to use it in my classes in Cambodia and Vietnam. See:
I've decided to subsume my Sharing Music I Like Index into a more general Music Reviews Index. There are a couple reasons for this:
1) Labelling these posts as "reviews" helps fit the current theme of this blog, and allows me to list these posts as one of my Reviews Indexes.
2) It also allows me to include my posts about songs or albums that were a bit more on the critical side--e.g. here, here and here.
My other review projects are comprehensive (e.g. every single book I read or movie I watch has to be reviewed). But in this case, obviously I'm not going to attempt to review every single song I hear. I'll just post about music as I feel like it.
Now that I'm back in America, I'm listening to the the American radio again.
When I first got back to America, I was only listening to NPR in the car. Or sometimes I would use my phone and listen to my podcasts. But the past few weeks, I've started switching over to music stations, because when the wife and kids are in the car, it's nice to have music on for background.
Radio in America has of course changed since I've been gone. Although not as much as I thought it had. I had been under the impression that oldies radio stations were permanently gone from the cultural landscape, but oldies and classic rock stations are actually still around. They've changed, of course. I feel like the Doo-wop songs from the 1950s and early 60s are gone. (e.g. when I was a kid, it wasn't unusualy to hear a song like Bristol Stomp on an oldies station, but you'd never hear this song on the radio nowadays, would you?)
(BTW, I'd completely forgotten this song even existed until Family Guy reminded me of it. But once upon a time, it used to be a staple of oldies stations.)
But while the 1950s seems to have fallen off the radar, oldies stations seem to have increased in their scope on the other side. I've noticed that when I listen to oldies and classic rock stations, songs from the 1980s and 1990s are now considered oldies. Well, fair enough I suppose. Time has moved on. Those songs are objectively old now.
But what does confuse me is how I seem to keep hearing the same songs over and over again. Now that oldies/classic rock has expanded to include the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, I would expect that these stations would have a lot more songs to draw on, and I would hear a new song each time I turned on the radio. But instead, it seems to be the same 10 songs over and over again. Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd seems to be always on. Sweet Emotion by Aerosmith is another one that I think I've heard 3 times this week already.
As always, take everything I say with a grain of salt, because I've only been back a short time, and these are just my observations from the past few weeks of listening to the radio. Those of you who've been listening to the American radio for the past few years will know better than me, I'm sure.
Nevertheless, despite my complaints about how repetive the classic rock stations have gotten on the radio, I have encountered a few songs the past week that I've not heard in years, and it's reminded me of how good some of these songs are. And I may start sharing them on this blog as part of my Sharing Music I Like project.
Stay tuned for future posts.
[Clarification: I have, of course, periodically been back in the US over the years, most notably when I came back for 8 months in 2006. But I wasn't listening much to the music stations at that time--I was listening to NPR and to audiobooks. So I hadn't been listening to music stations since the 1990s.]
Update: Further September 5, 2025: I've posted more thoughts on this topic here.
I was substitute teaching the other day, and another teacher was playing this song on his classroom playlist. "That's a cool song," I said. "What's the name of it?"
"Revival," he said.
I'd never heard this song before. But then, I can be a bit out of it sometimes. (And having been out of the country for so long doesn't help.) I'm not sure if this song was every really popular, or not. But I liked it at any rate. So I'm reposting it here, and adding it to my Sharing Music I Like index.
Now that we've moved back to the U.S., we've started attending regular church. (More on this perhaps in a future post) and my Vietnamese wife, who doesn't have any background in Christianity, has decided to learn about the Bible, and has been reading through a children's Bible storybook.
As someone who is a Bible nerd, I'm enjoying this because it gives me an excuse to talk about all the things I find fascinating about the Bible.
It also gives me an excuse to introduce her to some of my favorite music.
When my wife got up to the passion narrative, I introduced her to Jesus Christ Superstar.
Now she's up to the Book of Acts, and recently read the story of Paul and Silas being freed from jail. "You know," I said. "There's actually a lot of really cool music inspired by that story."
I'm also fairly sure that I've Got A River of Life is inspired by the Paul and Silas story, although it seems surprisingly hard to find solid information about I've Got A River of Life on the Internet. (After doing a couple Google searches, I feel the frustration of this redditer.)
Anyway, I've Got A River of Life is another one of my favorite Christian songs.
Searching around Youtube reveals there's a few other good tunes inspired the Paul and Silas story.
Okay, quick poll: Who out there has heard of Boney M.? And how did you hear of Boney M.?
I never heard of Boney M. until I was in my mid-30s in Cambodia. But I'm trying to figure out if that was just me, or if it's normal not to hear about this group.
Several years ago, when I lived in Cambodia, I started to hear the song Daddy Cool frequently.
I had never heard the song before, so I assumed it was a new pop song. (It does kind of have a timeless quality to it, doesn't it? If you didn't know any better, you could kind of assume this was a 2010s pop song.)
Then, one night out at the bar, this song was playing, and I remarked about it to my Scottish friend "Oh, this is that new song I've been hearing lately."
And my Scottish friend said, "This is by Boney M. This is an old song."
Ever since then, I've been trying to figure out if I just missed something when I was growing up, and I should have been familiar with this group, or if rather this group just never got a lot of play back in the United States.
First, some background. According to Wikipedia:
Boney M. is a German reggae, funk and disco music group founded in 1974, who achieved popularity during the disco era of the second half of the 1970s.[1]
Incidently, the group was created by Frank Farian, who would later go onto create Milli Vanilli, and Boney M was like an early version of Milli Vanilli in that the performers that you saw on stage were lip syncing, and not actually the ones responsible for the vocals. See this video here: Boney M: The Original Milli Vanilli
Although the performers certainly put on a show in concert. See this video:
After I learned about Boney M, I started catching references to them everywhere. (See: The Frequency Illusion), and this caused me to think that everyone had known about this group except me.
Or had they?
I started to notice my British co-workers at work making references to Boney M. songs.
...but then, they were British. And Boney M. was a European group, after all. Perhaps this group had gotten more play in Britain then in America?
I certainly don't remember hearing any Boney M. songs when I was young. And although Boney M. was before my time, I grew up on classic rock and oldies stations, so I surely would have heard these songs, right?
...but then, Boney M. was disco music, and the classic rock stations didn't really play any disco.
I've also started to notice some of my favorite Youtubers referencing Boney M. music. The Boney M. song Rasputin, for example, is referenced in this Contrapoints video, and in this extra history video. And these were American channels, right?
...but on the other hand, maybe the Internet has made this European disco music more accessible to the younger generation than it was to mine.
I don't know. Let me know in the comments what your experience with Boney M. was. I did a quick poll the other day of my sister and my brother-in-law, and they had never heard of Boney M. But then, they're not always an accurate representation of what the average American knows.
Anyway, Boney M.'s music was popular both in Cambodia and Vietnam, so in my years living in those countries, I got a fair amount of exposure to their music. And if you've never heard of this group before, I'd like to share their music with you.
It's not good music, per se, but it sure is catchy. I challenge you, listen to the Daddy Cool videos I linked to above, and then see if you're not humming that song to yourself for the rest of the day.
And then there's the Rasputin song I mentioned above. Also terribly catchy:
Bahama Mama was another popular song I heard all the time in Vietnam--although I do have to say it wasn't my particular favorite, but I did hear it a lot. If you want to check it out, you can find it on Youtube here.
And then the other song that I heard frequently in Vietnam was Rivers of Babylon.
The song, you might recognize, is based on Psalm 137 from the Bible--omitting, of course, the violent ending that is in the original. (In her Introduction to the Old Testament lectures, Christine Hayes notes that people very often quote the opening lines to this psalm, but very seldom quote the ending lines.)
Anyway, as a Bible/History nerd, I always thought it was interesting when I heard this song playing in Vietnam, because most Vietnamese people had no idea about any of the history that this song was referencing. And because I love explaining history to people, I would use it as an excuse to launch into an explanation of the history of Babylon and Judah. (Most of the time people just ignored me.) But still, I found it fascinating that this 2,500 year old history has been popularized on a contemporary pop song.
I was re-reminded of this song by a brief comment Todd in the Shadows made at the end of his most recent video HERE. Which in turn was referencing another Todd in the Shadows video about this song HERE.
Flagpole Sitta (i.e. "I'm not sick but I'm not well") is a song that was on the radio constantly back in its day. Anyone who lived through the 90s remembers it well enough, I'm sure. But enough time had gone by that I had completely forgotten about it until Todd reminded me.
(Perhaps living abroad has made me more prone to forget about these old songs? I suspect I may have gotten more exposure to them if I had been living back in the United States, just from hearing them on the sound system in stores and cafes, etc--See Adam's recent post on this subject.)
But anyway... for whatever reason, I hadn't heard this song in forever, and now that I'm re-listening to it again, I'm remembering how catchy it is. What a great song!
As a result of rediscovering this song, the past couple days I've been singing it to myself constantly. I didn't appreciate how great this song was when it was popular.
Not that I ever hated it. I liked this song well enough when it was on the radio back in the day. (I'd hum along whenever it came on). But I was never huge into it. I couldn't have told you anything about the band, or anything.
As Todd notes in his video, the band behind the song, and especially the singer Sean Nelson (W), was a huge awkward nerd, which is perhaps part of the reason the band stayed at a one hit wonder. But, being an awkward nerd myself, it personally makes me feel all the more simpatico with him, and appreciate his persona all the more.
See, for example, this interview with him, in which he comes off looking like you're totally average intellectual, and not like a rock star at all. Which makes him all the cooler, at least in my book.
Addendum: I'd forgotten, but Wikipedia reminded me that this song was also used as the theme song of Peep Show. See my review of Peep Show HERE.
Man, look at these guys throw themselves into this song! How could you not love this?
I'm pretty sure I heard this song on classic rock stations in my youth, but it didn't make an impression on me at the time. But I've rediscovered this now thanks to the Internet, and I dig it.
Classic rock and oldies stations were great for introducing my generation to the music of the 50s and 60s, but one of the disadvantages of growing up on these stations is that you don't get a sense of how the music was evolving over time. The songs were all just played randomly on these stations, and in my young brain they just all got labelled under the generic term "oldies", so I didn't appreciate how the artists were playing off of each other.
Now, however, I think I have a better appreciation for how much these guys transformed the original song.
I think it's cool how they took a well known song by the Supremes, and turned it into heavy rock.
It's interesting to note, according to Wikipedia, that the Supremes' original came out in 1966, and the Vanilla Fudge version came out just one year later in 1967. So this song wasn't even that old when they remade it.
[Sidenote: Is it just me, or where there a lot more covers going on in the 60s? I'm thinking of things like Johnny Rivers' cover of "Baby I Need Your Lovin" or Joe Cocker's version of The Letter, etc. With all these musicians listening to each other and covering each other, it gives me the impression that the music in the 1960s was much more of "a scene" than it is today.]
But secondly, I just love how these guy take the comparatively light little Supremes' song, and just play it for all its worth.
In fact, the Ed Sullivan show version isn't even the full song. They had two versions--a short 3 minute one for radio play, and a full 7 minute for the album (W).
Addendum: I'm posting about this now (because I have a few free minutes this morning, and I happened to remember this.) But I rediscovered this song a couple years ago. I forget how I rediscovered it. (Does anyone remember how they found most of the random stuff they happened to find on the Internet?)
According to Wikipedia, this version featured prominently in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which I still haven't seen, but I have seen some short clips of the movie on Youtube. Was that how I rediscovered this song? I don't remember. Or maybe I heard about it indirectly from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood--e.g. seeing a video from someone who was using this song because they had seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Who knows. I mean, I hate to think that I'm so superficial that I'm discovering my music through the latest Tarantino movie, but... I guess maybe I am.
Okay, okay, one more, and then I'll take a break from this project for a while. (The wife and kids have returned after their week away, so it's back to the usual chaos over here.)
And then there in any given year there is always Enka. Enka has been called “Japanese Soul” or “Japanese blues”, the idea being that it is distinctively ethnic Japanese music like Soul or Blues was once distinctively African American music. The most common description, and one I tend to agree with, is that Enka is “Japanese Country.” In the sense that it is popular in rural areas, in that old people love it and young people hate it, and in that it is always popular and always on the charts but the sound never seems to evolve from year to year, Enka is perhaps most similar to Country music.
Of course all of these descriptions are based on Enka’s place in Japanese culture, and not the sound of the music itself. It is always difficult to describe a musical sound with words, but the best description I can give is to imagine traditional Japanese music fused with the big band sound of the 1920s. I’m told Enka actually originated in the 1920s, and that before it degenerated into sappy love songs, it was actually a form of protest against the imperialist government of the time. But that’s in the past. Just as country music in the US, Enka is only sad love songs today. Japanese young people hate it, but many foreign people, including myself, find ourselves strangely drawn to the distinctively Asian sound, which, if one can forgive the sometimes over the top big band sound, has a sort of mystic beauty to it.
Enka (演歌) is a Japanese music genre considered to resemble traditional Japanese music stylistically. Modernenka, however, is a relatively recent musical form, which adopts a more traditional musical style in its vocalism than ryūkōka music, popular during the prewar years.[1]
As I noted in 2005, young people in Japan hate enka. The most uncool thing you could ever do as a Japanese youth is to be caught listening to enka. (Part of this hatred stems from over-exposure. They're just sick of their grandparents playing enka all the time.)
I never hated enka that much, but I was never a huge fan either. Most of the enka songs didn't grab me.
But this one I thought was catchy.
If memory serves, the first time I heard this song, I didn't fall in love with it. I first listened to it when I was going through the collections of yearly billboard hits. At that time, it didn't strike me as anything worth noticing.
But, then I was out with some older Japanese co-workers, and one of them sang this song on Karaoke. And I thought, "Ah, I know that song. I have it on the yearly billboard collection albums. Actually, now that I'm listening to it, I can see how it is kind of catchy."
The lyrics of this song are very simple. The Japanese vocabulary, at least for the chorus, is all easy low-level words, and it's so slow that it's easy to understand everything. So this also appealed to the Japanese language learner in me.
The song is someone singing about a break-up, and the chorus goes, "Darling, why, why did you leave me?" (As I said in 2005, enka is mostly sappy love songs).
When I heard this song performed in Karaoke in Japan, it was mostly done tongue-in-cheek--i.e. the attitude was "won't it be funny to sing along to this ridiculously maudlin song about a tearful break up".
And I've always thought the song was supposed to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek from the beginning--that is, I imagine the singer was in on the joke. But I don't really know. (There's a Wikipedia article about this song in Japanese, but my Japanese isn't good enough to read it. So I'm just imagining.)
Anyway, once I noticed how catchy this song was, I brought it into my regular rotation. I put in on my mixed tapes that I used to listen to while driving around. And I also used to try this song out a lot when doing karaoke.
Like a lot of these old songs, what initially caught my attention is how dated the music is. Just listen to that old Doowop sound. I mean, they do not make music like this anymore, am I right?
I really like old retro sounding stuff. I hear this song, and I can imagine early 1960s Japan: teenagers cruising around in old cars, drinking soda down at the drug store, the juke box, the whole thing! It's all wrapped up just in that one song. The song can be like a little time machine.
I put this song on the mixed tapes that I used to drive around with, and I listened to it many times over.
And the more I listened to it, the more I got caught up in its melody. It's not just some cheesy retro song. I mean, it is a cheesy retro song, but it's also just a really catchy tune.
I didn't realize until just now (while writing this post) that this song was actually considered retro even at the time it was recorded. According to the description on the video linked above:
The King Tones are a four-member Japanese music group that has been active since February 1960. While having representative songs such as "Good Night Baby" and "Kurai Minatono Blues", they sang songs from the late 1950s to the early 1960s and have maintained the chorus style of Doo Wop since the group's formation. They also cover many Western music such as songs by The Righteous Brothers and Otis Redding and The Platters' "Smoke Get's In Your Eyes" and "Only You".
In 1968 they signed an exclusive contract with Japan Gramophone (later Polydor Records) and made a major debut with "Good Night Baby," released in May of the same year. It was a big hit from the end of the year to the spring of the following year. In 1969 Atco Records picked it up for distribution in the USA.
The group members were Sumio Kasho, Yutaka Kawashima, Masato Uchida, Kunihiko Narita and Susumu Ishii.
Huh, so I guess this group was like the Japanese version of "Sha Na Na". I never knew that until just now.
I mean, it's true that I did get these songs from the CD collections of the yearly billboard charts. But once I found the songs that I liked, I then put them onto mixed tapes which I listened to while driving around. And sometimes I would misremember that year that I got each song from.
P.S.
I completely embarrassed myself by attempting to sing this song at Karaoke one night. This was back in the days when I was trying out Japanese songs at Karaoke. When I selected this song, I had in my mind the beginning of the song, which was nice and slow and simple, and completely forgot about all the high notes in the middle of the song. Completely forgot about them, that is, until I was in the middle of the song, and then attempted to do those notes anyway, and my voice just cracked, and it was awful.
My Japanese friends just nodded, and commented that the song was utainikui--difficult to sing.
Sinn Sisamouth[a] (c. 1932 – c. 1976) was a Cambodian singer-songwriter active from the 1950s to the 1970s. Widely considered the "King of Khmer Music", Sisamouth, along with Ros Serey Sothea, Pen Ran, Mao Sareth, and other Cambodian artists, was part of a thriving pop music scene in Phnom Penh that blended elements of Khmer traditional music with the sounds of rhythm and blues and rock and roll to develop a Cambodian rock sound. Sisamouth died during the Khmer Rouge regime under circumstances that are unclear.
In my article about Japanese oldies, I wrote that young Japanese people have absolutely no interest in old Japanese pop. But the same is not true of Cambodia. Sinn Sisamouth and the other pop singers from the 1960s are still really popular in Cambodia. You could hear their music everywhere when I lived there.
I remember, in Phnom Penh at night, the tuk-tuk drivers used to sleep on the sidewalks next to their tuk-tuk. They'd put on the radio as they went to sleep, and it used to play Sinn Sisamouth songs. Many times walking home from the bars, I remember hearing the Sinn Sisamouth songs on the sidewalk as I walked past.
Because his influence on Cambodian music was so great, Sisamouth is still a household name in Cambodia and remains popular to this day.[27] He is extensively profiled in the 2015 documentary film on the history of Cambodian popular music, Don't Think I've Forgotten, in which several interview subjects describe Sisamouth as the most important Cambodian musician of all time.[12] The film takes its title from a Sisamouth song.[13][28] Often called the "King of Khmer music," "the Cambodian Elvis," or the "golden voice," his lasting cultural impact is difficult to overstate.[29][30][31][32]
I regret to say that I never got as deep into Cambodian oldies as I did into Japanese oldies.
I intended to, at first. When I first arrived in Cambodia, I bought a few CDs of Cambodian oldies, and I used to listen to them in the evenings. But I never really learned the names of the songs, or (with a few exceptions), most of the singers.
But, I did have a couple of CDs, and I did enjoy some Sinn Sisamouth music during the time I lived in Cambodia.
It's a bit difficult for me to track specific songs down on Youtube now, because I don't know the names of the songs I used to listen to. (I never learned how to read Cambodian script).
...this song was on one of the CDs I bought. I thought it was a really beautiful song. I used to listen to this song at night, while looking out at Phnom Penh from my balcony, and just watching the city at night.
Here's another one I recognize, and remember fondly:
...now, because I never learned Cambodian, I can't understand any of these songs. I have no idea what the lyrics are, or what the title means. I just like the sound of them.
By the way, the scratchy sound quality of the recording is true of all old Cambodian music. All of the CDs I bought of old Cambodian music had this scratchy quality to them. According to Wikipedia, the masters of the recordings were lost or destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. I'm not sure how much better they would have sounded if the master had been preserved, or if some of that sound is also due to the quality of the original recording.
But to my mind, on a quiet night when you're looking over the city, the scratchy staticky sound of these songs kind of adds to their romance.
First up is "Ue o muete Aruko" by Sakamoto Kyu, better known in the US as "The Sukiyaki Song". If this song sounds familiar, it is because it was the only Japanese song to chart on the US Pop charts. Not only that, it made it all the way to #1 in 1960, pushing out "It's my Party and I'll cry if I want to." (There was also a really lame English cover of this song in the 1980s by the American group 4PM-which might also be why the tune sounds familiar).
Sakamoto Kyu: Actually Sakamoto Kyu is the one person on this list who needs no introduction. If you’ve been in Japan for any length of time, you’re probably already heard his famous “Sukiyaki Song” several times by now. And you already know that this song has nothing to do with Sukiyaki, but that the Japanese title “Ue o muite arukou” was too difficult for American DJs to remember. So I won’t patronize you by recounting how Sakamoto Kyu was not only the sole Japanese artist to break into the US pop charts, but that his song made it all the way to the number 1 slot for two weeks in 1960, edging out “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.”
But I never made a "Sharing Music I Like" post about Sakamoto Kyu. Partly because he seemed too obvious. I mean, the whole point of these posts is to share music that people might not otherwise be familiar with, and everyone already knows Sakamoto Kyu, right?
...or do they?
Let me start at the beginning.
The first time I heard of Sakamoto Kyu was very shortly after I had first arrived in Japan. Some of the older men from the office took me out drinking, and they mentioned Japanese music, and they said, "Of course, you know the Sukiyaki song."
I said I did not.
"Of course you know it. Everyone knows it. It's very famous in America."
Nope, I'd never heard of it before.
And then they played it for me.
"Ah, yes, yes, I have heard this song before. I didn't realize this was a Japanese song."
To me, the song was immediately recognizable as something I had often heard before on oldies stations, but I had never thought much about before, and never realized what it was.
I suspect the same is true for you as well, but, I don't know, give it a listen and let me know. Have you heard this song before?
The history of this song is that for a brief time in 1963, it got all the way to number 1 on the U.S. Billboard charts. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the only Japanese song that ever made it onto the U.S. charts at all, let alone all the way to number 1!
It also topped the charts in many other countries, and became a global hit.
Now, if you've ever lived in Japan, you know that the Japanese are obsessed with Japan's image in the rest of the world. So they are extremely proud that one of their songs made it to number 1 on the global charts. And consequently, you hear this song a lot in Japan. It's kind of like an unofficial national anthem over there.
As for my own memories of this song, I grew up on oldies stations myself, but I feel like this song was played on oldies stations more in the late 80s and early 90s. I feel like by the late 90s, this song had dropped off of the oldies rotation.
I don't know. Take me with a grain of salt because my memory's not always that good. But I feel like in 2001, when I first heard this song in Japan, I had the feeling that this was an old song that had once been on the radio frequently, but that I hadn't heard for a few years.
Now, with the decline of oldies stations, I wonder if this song has completely disappeared from the pop culture consciousness.
A couple years ago, I was talking to a British colleague who was about 15 years my junior. We were talking about Japanese music, and I mentioned this song to him. He didn't know what it was, and I said to him, "You'd recognize it if you heard it. You'll definitely recognize it when you hear it." And then I pulled it up on Youtube, and played it for him, and he listened for a minute or so, and then said, "Nope, nope, I've definitely never heard that before."
So perhaps this song has just faded into the past.
For that matter, I wonder how this song is doing in Japan nowadays. It's been a long time since I've left Japan, and things have probably changed.
In 2001, when I arrived in Japan, this song was already pretty old, but the Japanese workplaces were dominated by people in their 50s who still remembered this song fondly. Now probably all of those people have long since retired. And since (as I wrote before) Japanese young people have no interest in older music, perhaps this song is forgotten in Japan as well.
Who knows?
If you happen to stumble across this blog post, dear reader, whoever you are, let me know in the comments what your experience with this song is.
...anyway, back to the song itself.
The Japanese title of the song is Ue o Muite Aruko. When the song got popular in the US, it was renamed The Sukiyaki Song. Sukiyaki is a Japanese food. The song has nothing to do with Sukiyaki, but it was thought that Americans wouldn't be able to remember Ue o Muite Aruko but they could remember Sukiyaki.
"Ue o Muite Arukō" (pronounced [ɯe o mɯite aɾɯkoꜜː]) was written by lyricist Rokusuke Ei and composer Hachidai Nakamura. The lyrics tell the story of a man who looks up and whistles while he is walking so that his tears will not fall, with the verses describing his memories and feelings. Ei wrote the lyrics while walking home from participating in the 1960 Anpo protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, expressing his frustration and dejection at the failed efforts to stop the treaty. However, the lyrics were purposefully generic so that they might refer to any lost love.[3][4]
Interesting! I never knew that! (Wikipedia wasn't around when I first arrived in Japan, so there was no way of knowing these things.)
The American audiences for this song, of course, had no idea what any of the lyrics meant. It's a perfect demonstration that if the melody of a song is catchy enough, no one cares about the lyrics.
And, I myself admit to finding the song very catchy.
I mean, the melody of the song has early 1960s written all over it. It's a very simple song that probably couldn't have been composed in the second half of the decade. But for a simple early 60s song, it's really catchy. I had this song constantly on rotation on my mixed tapes while I lived in Japan, and I don't know how many times I sang along to it while driving through the Japanese countryside.
When my Japanese supervisor found out I was interested in old music, he gave me a copy of a CD of Sakamoto Kyu's biggest hits.
This was the first Japanese music I acquired, and for the first few months I lived in the Japanese countryside, it was one of the only CDs I had. So I listened to it over and over again.
Aside from The Sukiyaki Song, Sakamoto Kyu's other big hit was Ashita ga Aru:
Ashita ga aru is a really fun bouncy, joyful song. I heard this song a lot when I lived in Japan.
According to the Wikipedia article, in 2001, the year I arrived in Japan, there was a cover of this song which went to number 1 on the Japanese billboard. I didn't realize that until just now (amazing the things you can learn from Wikipedia!) but that probably accounts for why I heard this song everywhere during my first few years in Japan.
Namida-Kun Sayonara was another song off of that album that I found really catchy.
When I went through my phase of trying to sing Japanese songs at Karaoke, Namida-Kun Sayonara was one of my regular songs. (It was slow and simple enough that, I thought, I could manage it in Karaoke.)
Boku no Hoshi was another one of my favorites. I thought this song was really beautiful, and I used to love playing it while driving through empty dark roads in the Japanese countryside.
