Discussion topic for Track 2 of Long Long Love Song. You can find a translation of the lyrics on ShiraneHito’s blog.
Please tag references to later songs or outside works with the [spoiler] tag, providing adequate context in parenthesis.
0 voters
Damn, this piece does so many things I’m struggling to know where to start. I can’t imagine a video doing a better job hyping me up than this. I’m feeling like Literary devices->Lyrics->Visuals is a good order for things. (This will take a while 
)
So one of the biggest mechanics of this song is how it builds on how Japanese handles verbs in a sentence. The language is structured to pretty much always have the finite verb at the very end of the sentence. It’s a very common exploit in Japanese writing, as you can flip the meaning of the sentence at the very end or change a statement in the middle of it by observing the listener. (It’s also hard as balls to translate because English usually puts the finite verb around the start of a sentence.) The song uses this in all of the “With X” phrases. The idea here is that, throughout the song, you expect those phrases to be bound together positively as things the narrator has, but instead they are revealed to be things they are giving up. The phrasing “Xと” doesn’t actually mesh with the verb 置いてゆく which is why the final きみと becomes きみを. There’s a bunch of grammar in that, but it basically turns into ‘I’m leaving you along with all these other things.’ The whole song is a really long winded way of formulating that one sentence.
One they accomplish is through another classic literary device: repetition. Indeed, repetition and reflection is a really big thing in this song. As I said the phrasing “With X” repeats a lot; we hear it 19 times with 13 of those being unique. The word 当然, meaning obvious or evident, also comes up twice in relation to two similar statements. As for the reflection, that’s almost the entire song. Looking at the 13 unique things the narrator is leaving behind, we first have a wide range of emotional things then eventually places in the town, and of course the person at whom the song is directed gets mentioned 6 times. They are leaving a town they know extremely well, so they’re reflecting of all kinds of things that means giving up. The start of the song is also filled with reflections of why they wanted to leave in the first place.
So let’s take a closer look at some of the specific lines of the song.
ひとって不完全 それは当然で
あるわけない 破片をただ探してゆく
Shirane’s Translation
People are imperfect, and that is a matter of course
But that can’t be true. They’re just still searching for their fragments.
My Translation
People are incomplete. That is clear.
They just search for missing pieces that don’t exist.
As you can see, we read this line quite differently. This disparity is born from how one applies the “あるわけない” part. On it’s own, this phrase means “Doesn’t exist” or “Can’t reasonably/logically exist.” Shirane read it as a modification of the previous “obvious” statement. I read it as a modification of the fragments mentioned afterwards. What I especially like about this line is that it has a sibling, so let’s look at that one before discussing them.
心は孤独だね それも当然で
体しか繋がれない生き物です
Shirane’s Translation
My heart feels lonely, and that, too, is a matter of course
After all, I’m just a creature with only its body alone
My Translation
The heart is isolated. That is also clear.
Humans are creatures that can only connect through their bodies.
So how do these become so different? It boils down to the original sentence being void of information. The subject of the sentences are just “heart” and “body:” you can’t with certainty say whose. Furthermore, while the body is connected to something, it’s once again not certain what. Shirane said “I read it more to the line “I’m just an empty shell, so only my body is attached (to this world)”,” so our readings are close, but it’s a difference in how we word things.
Now about these two extracts, you can see they’re very close in wording. That is what helped me solidify my reading of the two. I struggled with what “あるわけない” would be applied to because it changes the atmosphere of the line so much, but when I saw that the paired sentence was so undoubtedly negative, I decided that the first one had to be negative as well. That also helped my understand that this narrator has issues.
そうだね 明日はなにを食べようかな
もっと大事なこと 決めたほうがいい
Shirane’s Translation
That reminds me… What should I eat tomorrow?
I think it’s better for me to decide for something much more important
More than anything, this line just reminds me of Clannad but in a twisted way. Nagisa uses food to give herself something to look forward to while this narrator sounds more like they’re stalling or going through the motions of staying alive since they’re obviously tired of how life is in this town.
Now before I start digging into the visuals, there’s an issue I have to address. You might have noticed I’m avoiding gendered pronouns, and that’s simply because I can’t for certain say whether the girl in the video is the narrator or the person getting left behind. At first I didn’t consider her being anyone other than the narrator, but there are a couple of visual cues that threw me of that path.
First, it was this shot that made me stop because I thought she was crying. The text displayed is when the narrator first brings up getting rid of “unneeded baggage,” so if the girl isn’t the narrator this could be a depiction of when she first heard about them leaving.
Furthermore, there are many shots like this where the girl looking directly outward from the screen. This can indicate that the “camera” is not an arbitrary point in space but someone’s eyes that she’s looking into. Though as I said, she could just as well be the narrator. This would, for example, be indicated by the sequence shown after the line about the backpack. We are shown a number of backgrounds where the girl has been depicted previously, but she is no longer there.
With that out of the way, we can look at other cool visuals. This video often wipes the screen with a bright light, and there are obviously tons of light balls floating around. The usage of this that interests me the most is how it creates a loop in the video. We first start on a sky followed by some pans with the girl in them that culminate in the picture first picture I posted. We see the girl in that same position as backgrounds flash behind her, and eventually everything fades to white. The final shot of the girl is also a close up of her with backgrounds going by quickly and then fading into white. When that light dies down we see the same sky that the video started on. With the assumption that the girl is the one being left behind, I feel like these are two depictions of the narrator’s parting as the girl and all those familiar places are left behind. The two versions do have pretty different tones though as the second one is calmer with the girls smiling, but the first one has lots of colors and things that are harder to read.
To conclude, this video has a fuckload of things that I love. Kumaki Anri singing [Ki~Mi~To~] melts my brain every time. I’m also super interested in seeing what’s to come because this seems like an extremely low point to start on emotionally: the narrator just goes on about how life is shit and then fucks off somewhere leaving all they know behind. I definitely don’t have confidence in this person’s ability to survive like that.
I don’t have any huge, fancy words or walls of analytical text describing how good this song is. It’s a very good song, don’t get me wrong; the instrumentation is lovely, the lyrics are beautiful and the singer does a fantastic job, but I don’t think this one had the same impact for me as some of Maeda’s previous offerings. It feels to me like I’ve heard a song like this before, with many of the same elements. I think this is going to be another Key song where I won’t really ‘get it’ until I’ve listened to it a few more times. With that in mind, I want to restate that this is still a well-crafted song, but I’m just not into it at the moment.
But if she is the girl getting left behind, why is she smiling when the narrator says 置いてゆく at the end?
Well you can always come up with an interpretation for why things work. If we are seeing two versions of the narrator saying good bye, we can question why we’re seeing both of them. It’s possible the second one is the narrator’s romanticized version while the first is the one closer to reality.
Gonna bump this topic because Bus Stop is probably my favorite Long Long Love Song track. I imagine some reason for that comes from having heard the song several times already, but most of my enjoyment comes from an admiration of the narrator. Dunno if anyone sees this similarity, but to me they’re like a weird mix of Yuuichi and Tomoyo.
I also love how strangely twisted the song is. There are rare times where Maeda writes something that I agree with fundamentally, and this is one of those times. Feels good to resonate with a story.
Bus stop is amazing, it’s up there in my favourites from this album, especially due to the guitar + violin combo, but what really gets me is the choirs at the chorus following the main beat while the singing voice breaks it with a syncopated “君と” which has a really high pitch that highlights Kumaki Anri’s lovely voice. Such a strong voice syncopation, in particular, isn’t something easy to find in this kind of slow songs with choirs.
To be honest, I’m looking forward to doing a piano cover of this song after Little Busters bookclub is done, or before if we happened to do a Love song one (although I find it unlikely).
Edit: Because double posting sucks, even if it’s 25 days after the original one, here’s a sneaky spacer and a more extensive comment on the song’s musical features which at the end I’ll try to relate to a points that Helios rose on his post.
Now, if I had to define this song concisely, I’d choose the words Harmony and Variety.
The harmony part can be noticed from the moment you realize that there are choirs and a violin in there. That’s generally a good indication that there’s going to be some interesting combinations of notes to create powerful and emotive chords.
Variety is more arguable, but most of it is brought by the piano, violin, and occasionally the guitars.
Now, getting more into detail, I’d like to talk about choirs. Choirs are a very underestimated “instrument” once we get outside of pure choir songs. This is due to them normally not adding too much to songs in the form of melody or chord establishment, as other instruments are usually way better or more used in those fields, however, when properly used, choirs have an awesome feature: enhancing other musical voices (as in other instruments or the lead voice) and have their own melodies have a different feeling by adding notes that complement the melody either harmonically (creating chords in combination with other musical voices) or melodically (counterpointing and syncopation). All of this while remaining a low profile “instrument”. If you listen to some gospel songs you’ll easily identify this feature, but to make this concept easier to understand, I’ll try to illustrate it with a very clear example: Evangelion’s opening.
I’m basically referring to the lines “Zankoku na Tenshi no you ni, Shounen yo Shinwa ni nare” and “Zankoku na Tenshi no TEEZE, Madobe kara yagate tobitatsu”, the first at the very beginning of the song and the latter 1:06 minutes into the song.
Sure, the lyrics are different, but the melody for the lead voice in those two lines is almost the same. Pay attention to how in the first lines, the choirs are giving more force to the lyrics by creating a strong harmony in the first syllable of each bar, providing a musical bed for the rest of the syllables in that bar to develop, and create an amazing (and small) suspended chord that will be resolved by the instruments playing after. The overall feeling of this bit is tension and majestuosity form the strong harmony undisturbed by other instruments.
The second set of lines I mentioned have instruments playing too, so the choirs are a bit more difficult to discern and they’d have a much bigger problem creating a feeling of harmony like at the beginning of the song, so they shift their strategy to go with the much happier feel that the song has at that point. Instead of going for harmony, now they aim for melody. Instead of starting the first notes at the beginning of the bar, they wait half a beat to start their notes (syncopation). This is surprising to the listener and gives a feeling of a faster piece of music with more tension. They do this for two notes and hold the second one up until the of “TEEZE” to keep the harmony with the lead voice. Then, for the second part of the verse, they go with shorter groups of 3 notes counterpointed and syncopated to the lead voice, which create dynamism.
All this goes to say, that while the lead voice has essentially almost the same melody, the feeling it gives is completely different.
Going back to Bus Stop, choirs are used in different ways, but let’s take a look at a specific example:
At 0:44 you can find this:
Does it feel similar to Evangelion?
Bus Stop is a slow song, and slow songs are boring as fuck unless you spice it up a bit. So how does Maeda keep this interesting? Let’s look at the first part of the sentence.
To start off, the lead voice is kinda off beat. If we organize the lyrics by groups of two syllables, the first one falls off beat and the second one has a stronger accent and falls in a beat. Although not very strong, this syncopation already gives something interesting to keep dynamism up. Now let’s thrown in choirs into the mix. Remember those lead voice syllables that were accentuated and fell in the beat? Well, choirs are going to give them steroids to make them even better. The choirs will play notes that fall directly on those same beats, something that will make the lead voice feel stronger and more emotive due to the creation of chords between the voice and the choirs (and the violin too). This is what Maeda does right: simple stuff but still getting the best out of those choirs.
Now we shift to the second half of the sentence. Musically speaking, this part will close the phrase (a smaller structure within a piece. In this case, this phrase starts at around 0:35). There are many ways to close phrases, but here, Maeda opts for a simple resolution to the tonic note of the key signature the song is playing in (that’s the note that gives the name to the key). So how does Maeda transition to unexpected/unstable syncopation to the most stable and resolved note of the key?
Instead of groups of two syllables, the rhythm of the lead voice changes to create two three-syllable groups that, while still maintaining up to some point the same rhythmic mechanic of the first part with a now weaker syncopation, they give more flexibility to shape the harmony of the melody into a resolution down to the tonic note. Hence, the melody focuses on the notes rather than the rhythm, so to compensate, the choirs take the rhythmic part and sing small groups of notes that, while strongly syncopated to the beat, mirror the lead vocal melody with groups of 3 notes that play as an echo. Also, since they are slightly off beat and play just after the lead vocal, this gives room to sync the last note of the choirs with the last tonic note of the main melody: "よ/yo". This makes the last note of the choirs also create a strong harmony which helps resolve the phrase with more power.
Of course, during the chorus, there’s a harmony hell between all instruments, and choirs play a big part in potentiating the lead voice thanks to the fact that, after all, both are human voices so they feel similar. Also, since other instruments are taking the rhythmic part of the chorus and the transitions between it and the other musical phrases, the choirs can entirely focus on harmony.
It’s time to take on variety. Variety is a bit trickier to pull off in slow songs like this one since if you overdo it, you take away the protagonism from the lead voice and the message of the song. The main to mechanisms Bus Stop has to create this variety to make the song interesting are the piano and the violin. Let’s start with the piano.
The piano is an instrument the main characteristic of which is versatility. It can play almost every note in the audible spectrum and can create pretty much any imaginable rhythm that you can throw at it, provided that the notes don’t have to be playing for way too long, It can also strike various notes at once, which enables it to create interesting chord progressions and chords that you didn’t even know existed or sounded good. To top it off, you play it with two hands striking different notes, so playing two musical voices on a piano is the norm, although the number can go up to 5 if you’re a genius.
What do I want to say with this? Mainly that a piano is a caged beast when playing just accompaniments, and that makes for very good melodies rising up from accompaniment chords, something that adds a lot of color to a piece. And that’s what the piano feels like in this song. In general, it sticks to playing chords that support the chord progression of the song, but as soon as it can, it starts accentuating some notes or creating weird chords with notes that fall off the key signature. This is something that doesn’t follow the general scheme of the song, yet it sounds good, colorful and, most importantly, fresh. This freshness is what creates the variety that slow songs so much need, and since they are just mere deviations from basic chord progressions, they aren’t strong enough to eclipse the lead vocal.
These piano characteristics can be appreciated easier at the beginning of the song, from the point it’s just the voice and the piano to the beginning of the first refrain. At first playing those melodies that deviate a bit from the main chord and from 0:36 onwards, playing colorful arpegiated chords with many off-key notes. During the chorus, it plays almost inaudible high pitched notes that add up to that harmony hell I talked about before.
The violin can’t do quite so much, but it might be the best instrument at something in particular: expressing. If you’ve ever had the chance to play a note on a violin and had a slight idea of how a guitar works, the first two things you might have noticed are:
How the fuck am I supposed to make the bow play a decent note?!
How the fuck am I supposed to know which note I’m selecting if there are no frets?!
This means that a violin, unlike a piano, isn’t an instrument with a fixed arrange of notes. It can virtually play an infinite number of them within its playing range, and there are a lot more ways to play a single note compared to a piano depending on how you handle the bow against the strings. You can change the volume mid-note, play vibratos (this thing)… Basically, you play fewer notes, but those notes count way more.
The violin in Bus Stop plays an additional melody to the lead vocal while keeping a low-profile by not deviating much from the chord progression. Instead, the violin plays with what it can do best: it keeps doing crescendos and diminuendos and giving each of the more accentuated notes a lot of expressivity using the vibrato technique. The variety is accomplished with these quiet-loud-quiet modulations that draw attention into and away from the violin.
And if this resource got boring, Maeda did something that is always appreciated in violins: playing staccato notes (very short notes) after the first chorus, where we see the violin branching into the staccato-playing accompaniment violin and another violin that keeps with the same kind of melody as before.
There’s also a guitar, but it’s just used to establish chord progressions, the key signature of the song and other minor boring stuff that doesn’t deserve being analyzed due to its low impact compared to the other elements of the song.
So overall, what we have here is four main instruments doing what they were designed to do, without going over the top with what they can actually do. It’s a simple design that works in harmony and puts together a great sounding song. It’s because of this that I like to refer to this song the quartet-orchestra.
That said, I didn’t even cover half of the song with my analysis, that’s how complex it becomes when you put all these simple things together.
Something that musically relates to this is how everything apart from the lead vocal work to potentiate it, creating a common ground for all the instruments to follow, yet, every now and then, an instrument will jump out and state what it has to say, then retreat back to where the others are. Then, a different instrument will take its share of protagonism, then retreat back again, and so on. This is similar in that there’s something common that goes with the flow of the song, like those 19 repetitions working to the general idea of leaving things behind, and every time an instrument shines, it’s reflecting every one of those things being left behind, the same way as with every unique repetition of the phrase.
It’s not very significant, but the following is a nice realization. Incidentally, if you count the number of times that the instruments play funnier-than-normal things, the count adds up to around 20 times (leaving a +/-3 margin due to subjectivity), a number that’s close enough to the repetitions you mentioned. Although this is most likely purely coincidental.
