Lilac is a song about getting older on an ordinary morning commute, and I love how unglamorous it lets itself be. The singer is on platform three waiting for a semi-express train, groggy and a little sick of himself, and he sums up the season as "すっぱい春とライラック" (a sour spring and lilac). Not sweet, not tragic. Sour. That one word does a lot of work.
The early verses play with a pun you would miss in translation: dust is 埃 (hokori) and pride is 誇り (hokori), so the old memories at the back of the shelf are covered in dust yet still shine with pride. Then the self-mockery kicks in. He thought of himself as "主人公の候補" (a candidate for main character), but now feels like a role with no name, one that would not even get a spin-off. That is a very funny and very sad line at the same time.
The middle gets blunt. "夜が嫌い" (I hate the night) and "君が嫌い" (I hate you) arrive with no softening at all, followed by "優しくなれない僕です" (I'm someone who can't be kind). It is a sulky little tantrum, and the song does not pretend it is anything nobler.
What turns it around is the image of rain: "雨が降るその後に" (after the rain falls) green things grow, so maybe nothing is meaningless. By the end he goes from wanting to love himself to "愛せてる" (I'm able to love myself), a small grammar shift from trying to actually doing it. Learners, watch that ending: 愛してる is "I love", while 愛せてる uses the potential form, "I'm able to love". Fittingly, the whole song is about that gap.
Mrs. GREEN APPLE is a Japanese pop-rock band from Tokyo, formed in 2013 by vocalist and songwriter Motoki Ohmori. They made their major-label debut in 2015 with the mini-album Variety on EMI Records.
Since the start of 2022 the band has been a trio: Ohmori, guitarist Hiroto Wakai and keyboardist Ryoka Fujisawa.