Ruiko Kurahashi -- Never Fall In Love

Yup, this is definitely showing my bias, but that's what a blog is for. Ruiko Kurahashi (倉橋ルイ子） is one of my unsung heroes in kayo kyoku. She never became a superstar like Seiko Matsuda (松田聖子) or Akina Nakamori (中森明菜), and most likely 9 out of 10 Japanese people I ask who are even around my own age will just shrug their shoulders in ignorance if I ask about her. And yet, she has a small, very dedicated following in Japan and in Hong Kong. I actually first found out about her through that Chinatown record shop, Wah Yueh. I bought my first album of hers there, and I even bought a bootleg tape of hers that originated in HK.

Her specialty is pop ballads, and far from the frenetic bubblegum pop of the aidoru scene, Kurahashi has had this very languid and breathy delivery paired with more European-sounding melodies, although some of her more uptempo tunes are more into the kayo kyoku vein of the times.

"Never Fall In Love"is a very typical Kurahashi ballad. It came on her very first album release "Without Sugar" in 1981, an album that is now very hard to find anywhere. But I had a very generous friend who was able to burn a copy of it for me and even reproduced the cover. This particular ballad was composed by Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）, one of my favourite guys to make this sort of song and prolific lyricist Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）came up with the words.

The video above has the slightly more oomphed-up City Pop version of the song. Nice, too, but somehow I prefer the original version.