Mami Tanaka/Junichi Inagaki & Anna Tsuchiya -- Namida no Lonely Boy（涙のロンリー・ボーイ）

 

It's been quite the rabbit hole over the past few weeks regarding singer-songwriter Maimi Tanaka（田中マイミ）. I first found out about her as the executive behind the theme song for the shopping emporium Don Quixote in Japan, and then I discovered that she once had a discography and a clientele of other singers including former Pink Lady Keiko Masuda（増田恵子）.

Admittedly, her own discography is very small compared to the list of songs that she provided other singers. However, one song from her own list when she was known as Mami Tanaka（田中真美）was the pleasant title track from her sole 1981 album "Namida no Lonely Boy" (Lonely Boy in Tears). Written and composed by her, it's got the amiable country twang in the arrangement. Not sure how it did on the Oricon charts.

It's an obscure song to be sure, so I was surprised that it was selected as one of the tracks on Junichi Inagaki's（稲垣潤一）fifth album of his series of duet albums titled "Otoko to Onna 5"（男と女5...Men and Women 5）released in September 2015. With Nobuyuki Shimizu（清水信之）as the arranger, this version of "Namida no Lonely Boy" has a more 50s or 60s pop feeling filtered through some percolating synths. 

Inagaki's partner for "Namida no Lonely Boy" was none other than actress/singer/model Anna Tsuchiya（土屋アンナ）. I knew about her when I was living in Japan as someone with the personality of a tough lady who didn't suffer fools at all, but I'm a little surprised that she had yet to appear on "Kayo Kyoku Plus". She was mentioned once before in passing because I had done an article back in 2014 for Ringo Shiina & Neko Saito's（椎名林檎・斉藤ネコ）"Heisei Fuuzoku"（平成風俗）which was basically the soundtrack to the 2007 "Sakuran"（さくらん）, a movie starring Tsuchiya herself. In any case, although the above video has the full version of the duet, the music video below is truncated.