"Cathy no Uwasa" (The Rumour About Cathy) is Junko Ohashi's（大橋純子） 3rd single from August 1976 and is another marvelous example of that funky style the singer had embraced in her early days. Written by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆） and composed by Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）, I think the song was released in the right month of the year. As people like me know from living in the nation's capital, August in Tokyo is as steamy as an overenthusiastic sauna. I have often described a summer there as "swimming in atmosphere".
And the funkiness of the song reminds me of strutting during the summer in the big city. It fits the City Pop genre but just the arrangement (also by Hayashi) has me thinking about not just the hot months in Tokyo but also in New York or Los Angeles or even my city of Toronto (which isn't exactly freezing in August) back in the day. As for the lyrics by Matsumoto, Ohashi sings about the guilt felt by one "angle" in a love triangle, especially when she and the 2nd angle, Cathy, are both in love with the same guy. Complications ensue.
"Cathy no Uwasa" was also a track on Ohashi's 2nd album, "Paper Moon" which came out earlier in May 1976. The interesting thing about this album is that this was also the first LP for her which contained original songs compared to her debut album of "Feeling Now" which mostly had Japanese covers of American R&B tunes. Also, just a heads-up on the below video, "Cathy no Uwasa" is the 2nd song after her bigger hit of "Silhouette Romance".
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