Meiko Nakahara -- Yoru wa Musical（夜はMusical）

Matt K. let me know about this song by Meiko Nakahara（中原めいこ）. As we City Pop fans know, she was one of the mainstays for music of the genre throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s.

Well, according to the first song on Side B of the original LP for her May 1985 album "Chaki Chaki Club", Nakahara can take things back a few decades into jazz. And so she came up with "Yoru wa Musical" (The Night is a Musical), another one of her creations with Jun Sato（佐藤準）handling the arrangement.

Sounding a bit like "As Time Goes By" from "Casablanca" here and even Carly Simon's "Nobody Does It Better" there, Nakahara looks perfectly at home behind the ivories in that really swanky club somewhere in Ginza, Roppongi or Akasaka. It's nice to know that she can also handle a good torch ballad from the old days. My only experience in actually seeing a musical was on those two cruises in the Caribbean a few years ago, but if I can ever see one downtown at Massey Hall or The Princess of Wales Theatre, I would pay my way to see "Crazy For You", that tribute to Gershwin. I even bought the soundtrack years ago, but I've yet to see it in person.