なぜだろう 淚がこぼれた
Through the crowds I walk / the noise of the weary city
And without knowing why / the tears spill out.
Oh Nino, you vulnerable, puppy-eyed ball of melancholy! That shiver in your voice, that little dip as you sing of spilling tears, that brittle tremor, oh, oh!
This song had me at its first chorus. But it had me in tears at Nino's solo verse.
It's just so delicate, so lilting, so expressive and emotional. Arashi may not have composed the melody or written the lyrics, but their voices are the direct vehicles to our hearts, and it's on these beautifully laid bare voices that the full yearning in this song is delivered, from Aiba's muted velvet tones in the beginning to the wistful cooings of "Uuu, uuu..." that melt softly into the hum of strings at the end.
Mukae ni Iku yo is one of the more pensive numbers in Arashi's 2010 Boku no Miteiru Fuukei album, and was sung in concert against a background video of two battered robots walking through deserted landscapes to finally find each other in a tender embrace. It is one of my favorite Arashi songs, and the lack of performance videos of it is one of my most often lamented Arashi things.
