Megumi Hayashibara & Chieko Honda -- Tokyo Boogie Night

 

I was exploring this song under the assumption that veteran singer and seiyuu Megumi Hayashibara（林原めぐみ）had given her contribution to the City Pop realm because of that title "Tokyo Boogie Night".

Well, I was definitely wrong there. "Tokyo Boogie Night" is more of an 80s pop-rock thriller that started life as a duet between Hayashibara and her fellow seiyuu, the late Chieko Honda（本多知恵子）, as a theme song for the OVA "Kido Senshi SD Gundam Mark III"（機動戦士SDガンダム MK-III...Mobile Suit SD Gundam Mark 3）which I think was released in 1990. If anyone can confirm or deny this particular release year, that would be greatly appreciated. It's got the high energy and feeling of crisis that would befit something as action-packed as a "Gundam" series.

The song was written by Natsumi Watanabe（渡辺なつみ）and composed by Kazuhiro Hara（原一博）. Hayashibara would provide her own solo version of "Tokyo Boogie Night" under the added label of "New Recording" in 1992. Instead of "Gundam" though, this version was used as the theme song for Hayashibara's own half-hour radio program on anime, "Hayashibara Megumi no Tokyo Boogie Night"（林原めぐみのTokyo Boogie Night...Megumi Hayashibara's Tokyo Boogie Night）, which began in that year and has continued since then every Sunday morning starting from midnight on TBS Radio. The "New Recording" was included on her March 1992 album "Whatever" which peaked at No. 18 on Oricon.

Ten years later, the 2002 version of "Tokyo Boogie Night" was recorded with a slightly different arrangement which included strings for Hayashibara's 10th original album "feel well". The album peaked at No. 7. The 2002 take has also been used as the ending theme for the seiyuu's radio program. Maybe it doesn't fall into the City Pop category but I can still imagine bombing down the nighttime streets of Tokyo on a motorcycle while listening to it.