Hiromi Ohta -- City Lights

Hiromi Ohta（太田裕美）may have been classified as an aidoru of the 1970s but I think as the 1980s drew upon all of us, she dabbled more and more into the urban side of music.

Case in point: "City Lights", an uptempo song that has that City Pop beat but still has those Ohta vocals to keep things a tad lighter. Written by Keisuke Yamakawa（山川啓介）and composed by Kingo Hamada（浜田金吾）, the latter who has quite the experience with the urban genre, the notable thing about "City Lights" is how Ohta tackles things a bit more forcefully here so I don't hear as much of that creamy lower register in her voice. Nope, it probably wasn't on the level of a single A-side but it's another pleasant example of the singer reflecting a genre that was hitting its stride at the time.

"City Lights" was a track on Ohta's 13th album "Juu-ni Gatsu no Tabibito"（十二月の旅人...December Traveler）that came out, logically enough, in December 1980. Apparently, it had initially originally been meant to be titled "Umi ni Furu Yuki"（海に降る雪...Snow Falling on the Sea）but someone decided on the change. No, it's not an important point but since J-Wiki did mention it, I thought I might as well provide some trivial trivia. In any case, Yamakawa and Hamada were responsible for almost half of the songs on the album.