“Mayonaka no Door – Stay With Me” (the midnight door) was Miki Matsubara's debut single in 1979, when she was nineteen. A woman remembers a winter night when her lover walked out the door; she still can't forget him, and the chorus begs, in English: stay with me.
In 2020 a cover by an Indonesian YouTuber went viral, and the original shot to the top of Spotify's global viral chart, forty years after its release. Matsubara herself had passed away in 2004.
The song is slow and her voice is clear, with a chorus half in English — an easy entry point. The Japanese words are about time and memory: midnight, the door, winter, to forget.