Building Form With Layering and Repetition

 Tatsuro Yamashita's music sits as the ground zero for city pop, a genre of Japanese pop music that emerged in the late 1970s and is characterized by its urban feel, wide range of styles, and western influences. Regarded as the "King" of city pop, Yamashita's music stands out from the rest and holds qualities of other genres - jazz fusion and disco. His song "Love Space", the first one on the album Spacy, displays how layering can create complexities within what is an otherwise simple form.

 The form of "Love Space" is AABA - a common musical form. The beginning and end are very distinct, creating a clear prefix and suffix: opening with a vamp and a coda with a long closing section and outro. "Love Space" combines a standard and repetitive form with a fluid feeling from Yamashita's vocals. Following the same chord progressions and phrasing, each period within the A section stays almost the same.

"Love Space's" form is achieved from the phrase structure and layering of the Prefix into the A sections, which is brought back around in the end. At first, it is relatively hollow and exposed; the explicit beat layer with drums and percussion, functional bass layer with the bass guitar, and part of the harmonic filler layer with the piano. 

The introduction establishes the common chordal movement of the song, and repeats itself:

Ab (V) - Ab (V) - Db (I) - Db (I)

Ab (V) - Ab (V) - Db (I) - Ebm (ii)

Different to the introduction, the first two A sections follow the same chord movement - Ebm (ii) - Ebm (ii) - Db (I) - Bbm (vi) - Db (I). These are the three A sections back to back.

A1:

A2:

A3:

The first two A sections also contain almost the exact same instrumental layering, found below in the Auralayer diagram. The biggest differences is the added string part in the second period, and the changing lyrics on the same melodic line. In the diagram, the yellow bar represents the presence of the strings. The rest of the diagram shows the presence of the other instruments up into the auxiliary section that leads into the B phrase.

The added string line in the second A section adds to the sense of progression present throughout the song, and the added layer helps make it feel more fleshed out and complete. This progression and overall tone of the song is emphasized with the repetition from the second period in the second A phrase to the third period in the third A phrase - which is not shown on the diagram but is exactly the same instrumentally to the second A phrase.

Furthermore, the change of lyrics to "la"s in the third and final A section, leading into the suffix, helps to differentiate it to the other two A sections. As the song comes to a close, its layering slowly becomes more exposed and stripped down, until its just a lead saxophone with piano, bass guitar, and drums fading out. 

One other layer that really helps with the momentum is the unstable auxiliary section that acts as a transition from the two A sections into the B section:

The consistent explicit beat layer and functional bass layer tied with the added novelty layer help create a strong analogous feeling to the rest of the song. This novelty layer, comprised of layered background vocals, has not been showcased previously, and thus its introduction is striking. But the other layers lay a foundation of familiarity that keeps the overall feel of the song alive. The sense of instability present arises from the moving string line, otherwise in the background in other places and sparse, brought to the front with synth-y vocals. This instability comes from the frantic feeling made from the strings moving line, and is made more intense from the repeated chord movement of the novelty line: Ab (V) - Bbm (vi) - Ab(V).

One more final element that adds another layer to the form of "Love Space" is the vocal timbre of Yamashita; He makes notable uses of smooth, controlled onsets with a consistent open yet slightly nasally timbre, alongside the use of vocal embellishments  Across the small "a" and small "b" and sections, Yamashita uses these embellishments to emphasize the difference between the two: in small "a", his singing consists of an open, free chest voice with minor vocal bends that switches in the "b" section to a strong belt with a grittier timbre.