Wink -- Yakan Hikou ~Never Marry A Railroad Man~ (夜間飛行 〜Never Marry A Railroad Man〜)

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm4343205

This year Wink completes 25 years, and, as always, an anniversary compilation, called “‘Selection’ ~25^th Anniversary Self Selection~” was released to “commemorate”. While I was checking the tracklist to see if this compilation was worth buying, I found some very interesting songs by the charming duo. I only own a singles compilation (the great “WINK MEMORIES 1988-1996”) so this new release adds some very cool Wink songs to my collection, like album tracks and b-sides, which is a fair enough reason for buying this.

As any fan of the duo is aware, Wink is well known for covering Western Italo dance/Eurobeat songs from the 80s, especially the “Stock Aitken Waterman” (SAW) inspired brand of Eurobeat, like “Turn It Into Love” by Kylie Minogue, “Boys Don’t Cry” by Moulin Rouge, “Take Me To Heaven” and “I Can’t Deny A Broken Heart” by Annica, “Where Were You Last Night” by Ankie Bagger, “Cross My Broken Heart” by Sinitta, “Love In The First Degree” by Bananarama, and so many others that it would cost me a lot more time and space to write. But Wink (not really Shoko and Sachiko, but the team behind them) also turned a lot of non-Eurobeat songs into pure Eurobeat, as we can see in their renditions of the late 70s disco “Special To Me” by Bobby Caldwell, the 60s folk “500 Miles” by Hedy West (but popularized by Peter, Paul and Mary), the 70s bubblegum pop “Sugar Baby Love” by The Rubettes, the late 80s funk/R&B “Baby Me” by Chaka Khan, the 80s pop-rock “You Got Me In Trouble” by Debbie Harry, and the rock “Never Marry a Railroad Man” by The Shocking Blues, for example. This last one is today’s featured song, which I surprisingly found on this new Wink’s anniversary compilation.

Here's the audio from a live performance of the song. It's featured in the "Wink First Live Shining Star" live album, released in May 1990.

With “Yakan Hikou ~Never Marry a Railroad Man~”, Wink, like I said before, transforms a non-Eurobeat number (in this case a rock song) into a late 80s SAW inspired Eurobeat piece. The result turned out great, as the typical Eurobeat arrangement full of melodic synths made this a very special cover. I don’t really know why, but, combined with Wink’s soft vocals and the song’s original melody, this dance arrangement ends up turning this piece into a melancholic song that differs a lot from the original one. Maybe that’s just me, but it’s very strange that Wink’s early discography, although “dance” in its essence, almost always seems kind of melancholic to my ears. All in all, I find it great, because cheerful aidoru music was not rare at the time (as it isn’t nowadays), while more serious and melancholic aidoru songs were never the big trend (besides Wink and Akina Nakamori [中森明菜], of course).

And here’s the original “Never Marry a Railroad Man” by The Shocking Blues for comparisons. The single was originally released in 1970 and sold over a million copies (source: Wikipedia).

“Yakan Hikou ~Never Marry a Railroad Man~” was originally released in Wink’s third album “Twin Memories” in December 1989. It reached #2 on the weekly Oricon charts and sold 454,450 copies, becoming the #17 best-selling album of 1990 (source: generasia). As I said earlier, this song is also featured in Wink’s latest compilation, called “‘Selection’ ~25^th Anniversary Self Selection~”, which was released in June 2013. The original lyrics and music were written/composed by Robbie V. Leeuwen. As for the Eurobeat arrangement, it was made by Takao Sugiyama (杉山卓夫) while the Japanese lyrics were written by Yuko Morimoto (森本抄夜子).

And here's some pictures of my own copy of “‘Selection’ ~25^th Anniversary Self Selection~”.