Miki Imai -- Caribbean Blue no Yoake （カリビアン・ブルーの夜明け）

(cover version)

I hadn't realized it's been quite a while since I put up my most recent Miki Imai（今井美樹）article. Of course, I've been covering a lot of her big hits over the years but there have been some non-hit non-official singles that have also stayed in my mind as well.

Case in point: "Caribbean Blue no Yoake" (Caribbean Blue Sunrise) from her 1988 album, "Bewith". I first came across this song on one of her concert videos that I have on VHS, and as Imai scampered all over the stage, I kept hearing one of Masami Tozawa's（戸沢暢美）lyrics which went "I'm a hurricane". It was rather ironic since I could never imagine the sylph-like figure of Imai approaching anywhere near even a Cat.1. Still, the lyric embedded itself into my long-term memory all these years. Plus, despite the somewhat now-cheesy-sounding synths, the music by Hideya Nakazaki（中崎英也）still has its Latin charms and has been a nice reminder about how the Imai tunes sounded way back when.

This may have been the excerpt from the video but I can't be certain since it's been such a long time since I popped this one in the ol' top loader. But I gotta admit that Imai looks rather quaint in that sparkly form of Spanx. As for "Bewith", her 3rd album reached No. 1 and it also has one of my favourites, "Natsu wo Kasanete"（夏をかさねて）.