Mizue Takada -- Namida no Jiruba （涙のジルバ）

Although I first heard Mizue Takada（高田みづえ） via an audiotape of kayo kyoku songs that I had brought back from Japan ("Watashi wa Piano" and "Ai wa Imagination"), the 1981 Kohaku Utagassen broadcast here in Toronto in January 1982 was my first time to actually see the singer in the flesh. The song she came out with was "Namida no Jiruba" (Tearful Jitterbug), an interesting mesh of 70s aidoru pop with a bit of the synths that were starting to be used with the 80s aidorus.

Written by Kyoko Matsumiya（松宮恭子）and composed by Tadashige Matsui（松井忠重）, Takada's 14th single isn't quite up there with the first two songs I mentioned, and the song itself only went as high as No. 22 on the Oricon weeklies. However, hearing the actual song on YouTube instead of the rushed and shortened Kohaku-orchestrated version has given me a bit more of a higher impression, and it stands out from the Latin of "Watashi wa Piano" and the ballad "Ai wa Imagination".

As for the title, there seemed to have been a bit of a Lego approach to coming up with song titles back then. "Namida no..." was a popular "brick" to use, and "jiruba" may have been a trendy word to use at a time when all those dancers in Harajuku were applying some of the old dances around that time.