Akiko Matsumoto -- Tasogare My Love (たそがれマイ・ラブ）

 

This is something that I've been planning for since earlier this year, but it's been almost a year since the Japanese music world had lost singer Junko Ohashi（大橋純子）on November 9th 2023 at the age of 73. I will be tackling her "DEF" album from the late 1980s tomorrow on the anniversary of her passing but since today is the day for the Urban Contemporary on KKP, I decided that I would also write about a couple of cover versions of her famous hits that I found in the past few months as a tribute.

The first one comes from an unlikely source. Although Akiko Matsumoto（松本明子）started out as one of the cheekier aidoru in the 1980s, I and probably most people have seen her more as a monomane artist and all-rounder tarento on television. But here she is, singing Ohashi's 1978 "Tasogare My Love" (Sunset My Love) on her one and only album "Kutouten"（くとうてん...Punctuation Marks） from 2013 to celebrate at that time her 30th anniversary in show business..

For a lady who's known for her vocal and physical wackiness on the tube (although I got to see a much more down-to-earth side to her when I met Ms. Matsumoto in person years ago), her take on "Tasogare My Love" was surprisingly heartfelt and assured. The original song has been given a bit more of a bossa nova ballad arrangement here and Matsumoto's delivery is suitably relaxed. Overall, though, I shouldn't be too surprised at a comedian covering one of the old kayo kyoku since last year, I covered another comedian doing the same with a City Pop tune. As was the case with the original, Yu Aku and Kyohei Tsutsumi（阿久悠・筒美京平）were responsible for words and music respectively.

As an aside, "Telephone Number" by Ohashi was covered by Junk Fujiyama earlier this year in his album "Shoukei Toshi ~ City Pop Covers"（憧憬都市）, so take a listen to that one, too.