Rumiko Koyanagi -- Lady Lonely（レディ・ロンリー）

 

Since the above video fades away rather abruptly, I'm wondering if we only got three-quarters of the song but I'm still enjoying it. When I heard Rumiko Koyanagi's（小柳ルミ子）"Lady Lonely" for the first time, I began getting images in my head about wandering the streets of Roppongi or Akasaka back in the 1970s when the economy was pumping away as well as the hips at the discos there. I can certainly understand the new City Pop fans when they say that they would love to go back in time to Tokyo of that decade.

And this is very much the 1970s style of City Pop with the disco strings and horns, the bouncy bass and the dancing Fender Rhodes behind Koyanagi's high-toned vocals. I almost absentmindedly asked myself what the table charge at the nearest Roppongi dance hall was. Written by Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）and composed by Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）, "Lady Lonely" (and yeah, despite the fact that Koyanagi sings "lonely lady" throughout the song, the title is accurate), was a track on her May 1979 album "Spain no Ame"（スペインの雨...The Rain In Spain）.

Come to think of it, there is something in the funky arrangement for "Lady Lonely" that hits me as if this could have been a good theme song for an action show starring Koyanagi herself as a female tough-as-nails detective in the hard city. For some reason, I'm thinking of either the Japanese equivalent of "Policewoman" or "Get Christie Love". Indeed, I'm showing my age here.