Yoko Nagisa -- Ai no Toubousha（愛の逃亡者）

 

Happy Monday! Last month, I wrote up an article on the late Yoko Nagisa's（渚ようこ）"Shin-Koiwa kara Kameido e"（新小岩から亀戸へ）, a song that was reminiscent of 1960s Group Sounds and Keiko Fuji（藤圭子）-based Mood Kayo although it had actually come out in 2016. Intrigued by the song and the source album cover which had me assuming that Nagisa did have her time in the actual 1960s, I pursued some more of her discography.

And so, I came across her 2nd single from April 2003, "Ai no Toubousha" (Fugitive of Love). Now, this isn't to be confused with the other "Ai no Toubousha" which was Kenji Sawada's（沢田研二）November 1974 11th single; completely different animal there. Nagisa's "Ai no Toubousha" doesn't even sound like Group Sounds or Mood Kayo. Instead, it draws its strength from another musical form from the 1960s, Sunshine Pop and Burt Bacharach; in fact, those early seconds remind me of "Up, Up and Away" by the 5th Dimension (I have to do a ROY on that song soon). 

I gather then that "Ai no Toubousha" can fall into the Shibuya-kei genre. In any case, the lyrics were provided by Masaya Nakahara（中原昌也）with the jaunty music and arrangement by Gary Ashiya（ゲイリー芦屋）. The Tokyo-born composer of movie soundtracks, commercial jingles and game music based his stage name on American composer Gary Usher. Born in 1966, he was really into Yellow Magic Orchestra during his junior high school years, but then got into the aforementioned Bacharach and Big Band Jazz going into high school and university.