Taeko Ohnuki -- Nanimo Iranai （何もいらない）

I pulled this one out of Taeko Ohnuki's （大貫妙子）2nd solo album, "Sunshower" (1977) for which I highlighted a couple of tracks all the way back in the very early days of this blog. Along with a number of albums that I bought in my last few years in Japan, I did a fair bit of rushing through "Sunshower", and although I immediately fell in love with "Summer Connection", it's taken time and a few more rounds of listening to the album to discover my appreciation for the other tracks.

As with all of the tracks, Ohnuki wrote and composed "Nanimo Iranai" (I Don't Need Anything), a cool and light disco-soul City Pop song in which the singer-songwriter described her true feelings about life and society around her. As I mentioned in one of the other articles featuring her, she was never all that much of a fan of city life (ironic, considering that all of her early albums are listed in "Japanese City Pop"), and in "Nanimo Iranai", she wanted to give voice to the feeling that she rejected the environment she was living in (namely, Tokyo). Ohnuki wanted to have the rain wash away everything so that things could start anew. Of course, that didn't happen but she did the next best thing which was to eventually move out of the metropolis.

Still the song is another breezy sign of summer and there's a great guitar solo at the end.