Junichi Inagaki -- Dramatic Rain （ドラマティック・レイン）

While the aidorus such as Matchy（近藤真彦）, Toshi-chan（田原俊彦）and Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子） were bouncing all over the TV with their daytime happy music, the shibui folk like Akira Terao（寺尾聰）and Yoshitaka Minami（南佳孝）were providing the nights with their brand of whiskey-friendly City Pop. Then, there is of course Junichi Inagaki（稲垣潤一）.

With the looks of a particularly sober-sided section chief in a corporation, Inagaki has been part of the backbone for the moonlit side of City Pop. He has sung his share of sunny tunes throughout his nearly 32 years in the music business, but I usually think the word "night" when it comes to him. And it seems like he had a need for precipitation in his early singles as well. Case in point, his 3rd single was "Dramatic Rain" from October 1982, just a couple of singles away from his debut earlier in that year, "Ame no Regret"（雨のリグレット）. Mind you, for the genre, there's nothing like the wet stuff spattering away on those expensive bar windows overlooking those city streets to provide a certain amount of atmosphere to the proceedings.

I first heard "Dramatic Rain" on that 2-CD BEST album from 1990 of his, "Transit" and came across it again via one of my latest Inagaki purchases, "Rainy Voice" from 2007. The lyrics were provided by Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and the music was by Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）. It proved to be his very first hit as a singer, reaching No. 8 on Oricon. The song also came as a track on his 3rd album from 1983, "Shylights".