I came across this Candies（キャンディーズ）song with a bit of spice when I was exploring this compilation album titled "Utahime Chronicle 1968-1984"（歌姫クロニクル~1968-1984~...Songstress Chronicle）. Exploding out of the gate with this brass that sounds as if it were introducing a super sentai series, "Heart no Ace ga Detekonai" (Show the Ace of Hearts) was Candies' 8th single from December 1975.
With lyrics by Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）and music by Koichi Morita（森田公一）, "Heart no Ace ga Detekonai" is one woman's determined efforts to get that man of hers. Considering that it was released a few weeks before Christmas, perhaps the song had that much more oomph since I think the Yuletide in Japan has as much (or even more) of a romantic dimension as Valentine's Day. One can only imagine what might happen nowadays at a bonenkai where the alcohol is liberally flowing.
The song made it as high as No. 11 on Oricon and finished 1976 as the 87th-ranked song. It was also a track on Candies' 6th album from April 1976, "Haru Ichiban"（春一番）. Of course, the trio's following single with the same title as the album would become one of their signature songs.
Hi, J-Canuck.
ReplyDeleteI definitely have to give Candies more attention eventually. I hear some people saying that Perfume is a contemporary take on Showa aidoru acts, like Candies. Althogh I certainy agree that Perfume's image is not so far away (the girls even said in an interview that they are prohibited from changing the colour of their hair, because the black hair links them to the image of Showa era aidoru), Yasutaka Nakata's sound can take them into an edgier path.
Back to Candies, The brass at the beginning surely sounds like a super sentai series, and the frantic strings are just great to hear (a typical characteristic of 70s pop music). The only song I remember from them is "Yasashii Akuma", which is also somewhat spicy, if I'm not mistaken.
Hi Marcos.
ReplyDeleteY'know...when I saw that concert footage above, my mind automatically went to a AKB48 performance at their old place in Akihabara that my friend and I caught one Sunday. Just all those guys sweating and jumping to the girls up there on the stage...
I can definitely see the connection between Perfume and Candies. In fact, the first article I wrote for the blog that got a major amount of hits was for Candies' "Haru Ichiban". I tracked down the source of the hits to a geek site where the author was talking about Perfume and by chance, he came across my article and linked the two together.