Karaoke Challenge: Happiness by Arashi

"Happiness" by Arashi is in many ways a simple song about simple happiness, as this line expresses:

今は名もないつぼみだけど、一つだけのHappiness (ima ha na mo nai tsubomi da kedo, hitotsu dake no Happiness, "Now it's a nameless bud, but it's a singular happiness")

It encourages positive thinking throughout:

上手く行くことを想像すれば (umakuiku koto wo sōzō sureba, "If you imagine things going well")　いつの日か　変わる時がくる (itsu no hi ka kawaru toki ga kuru, "someday they will change")

If you change your perspective, things will eventually be okay :-)

To be honest, I don't usually like this kind of simple, happy song. Life, for me anyway, isn't really like this. 踊り子 (Odoriko, Dancer) by Vaundy and other songs with lyrics you can really sink your teeth into are more my style.

But there is something about this song "Happiness" that makes you feel good in a certain way; you feel like you can just ignore all the problems around you and sing about how good you feel. It might feel a little fake—or, more generously, be its own particular kind of happiness, as the line suggests—but it's catchy.

There's also the fact that Arashi stayed together for more than twenty years, despite all the trouble in the industry around them—that they said there's no Arashi without all five members, and that they made decisions together. The boy band matured into a "man band" when they stuck together, which feels significant in itself. I do appreciate that friendship and camaraderie over so many years, into their forties even.

Also, my kids love this song. My youngest (now three) sings and dances to it and wants to play it over and over. So I thought I should learn to sing it for him. Today's songs, like うっせぇわ (Usseewa), my thirteen-year-old tells me, are dark, while the J-pop of the 2000s and 2010s, including "Happiness" by Arashi and fluffy songs by AKB48, get you to move your body and... stop thinking for a bit. 

But it's hard for me to listen to fluffy pop songs from this time without thinking that something is brewing underneath... It's almost like, the more cheerful the song, the more I wonder what unshared, ignored darkness lurks behind it. I feel that way about SMAP and Arashi under the Johnny's (Johnny Kitagawa) umbrella and about much American pop from that era as well. "Happiness" reminds me of Justin Timberlake's "Can't Stop the Feeling!" It's naive, or a form of escapism: pretending everything is okay when maybe it isn't, like a bright shining light casting an equally dark shadow.

Here I am singing it, a cappella. I struggle with the high parts, and my accent is still very non-native. If you have any tips on pronunciation, please feel free to comment here or on Threads.