Credits

I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Mariya Takeuchi -- Futari no Vacance (二人のバカンス)




Kinda felt bad about not including Mariya Takeuchi(竹内まりや) in that 80s Playlist from New Year's Eve, so I dug up her discography and came up with this sunny blast from the past, her 5th single, "Futari no Vacance" (Vacation for Two). It was released back in July 1980 with Takeuchi writing the lyrics and Tetsuji Hayashi(林哲司) coming up with the music.

As a lot of the veteran fans of her know, early Mariya music tended to dip into a couple of eras of American popular music: the girl pop of the 50s and 60s or the contemporary disco/AOR of that time. "Futari no Vacance" is definitely more in the latter category. It doesn't particularly go straight up to my personal top of her hits but it's still pleasantly reminiscent of some of the music here that I used to listen to on FM radio back in my junior high school days. Again, the Doobie Brothers and Mike Post, the composer of choice for a lot of the beloved action/drama US TV series of the 80s, rather emerge in the old memory circuits when I hear this. In fact, if it weren't for the Japanese lyrics, I think the song would be just as much at home on an American AOR compilation disc as much as it would be on a J-AOR CD.


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