空も飛べるはず

There's a quality of determined lightness to this song — the guitar intro has a buoyancy to it, a strumming pattern that feels almost like running before leaping, which is entirely appropriate given a title that translates roughly to "I Should Be Able to Fly." Released in 1994 and later re-embraced after appearing in a beloved drama series, it became a national touchstone of a particular kind of optimism — not triumphant or certain, but tentative and reaching, the kind of hope that acknowledges it might be wrong but chooses to believe anyway. Kusano's voice here is at its most earnest, the delivery stripped of ironic distance, and that nakedness of feeling is what makes it pierce. The production is warmer than some of their work, the bass a bit more prominent, giving the lightness something to push against. Lyrically, it operates in the Spitz mode of concrete-abstract imagery: everyday objects rubbing against expansive metaphors, love rendered not as sentiment but as physical sensation and altered perception. The song belongs to the golden era of drama tie-ins, when a television series could turn a song into a shared cultural memory for an entire generation. You return to it when you need to believe in something — when the mundane feels crushing and you want music that insists, gently but firmly, that transcendence is still possible.