Tomoko Aran -- Drive To Love

My first Tomoko Aran（亜蘭智子） article was "Slow Nights" which was more on the nighttime urban contemporary side of things. But after listening to her BEST compilation, I figured that Aran tended to do more of the summery daytime stuff (which would explain her contributions to those hit songs for TUBE).

Case in point, there is her 3rd single "Drive To Love" from June 1984. As the title suggests, this is a nice car radio tune to have while driving down the major highway from Tokyo to the Izu Peninsula. And this particular song strikes me as being pretty representative of what City Pop was sounding like at around this time in the 80s. Other singers like Yurie Kokubu and Anri（国分友里恵・杏里） come to mind as well.

Also, when I hear this song, I get images from some of the various record covers and other illustrations by Seizo Watase（わたせせいぞう）. For me at least, his pictures just strike me as being the pictorial equivalent of City Pop.

An example of Seizo Watase's work
on a Junk Fujiyama album.