Akemi Ishii -- SHAKE UP - Dakishimete （抱きしめて）

If it's a spicy Latin number in Japan in the 1980s, then it's most likely Akemi Ishii（石井明美）. The summer is slowly but steadily ebbing for another year, so it's time to get another hot song up before it gets too far into September. I found out about "SHAKE UP - Dakishimete" (Hold Me) when I bought Ishii's 3rd album, "Fanatique" some years after its release in November 1988 which came out after the song had come out as her 6th single a few months earlier in August.

Written by Ishii and composed by Masayoshi Takanaka and Masahiro Takatsuki（高中正義・高槻真裕）, I prefer the short and sweet and spicy original version rather than the extended remix which came out on "Fanatique". As was the case with a lot of remixes of songs on both sides of the Pacific during that decade, there was a lot of jittery repetition of certain words or phrases, and with the longer remix of "SHAKE UP", there was only so much of Ishii's repeated "hip" (sounds like hiiiiip, hiiiiip, hiiiiip) I could take. But whether they were real horns or some good synths, I did like the brass section blasting away during the bridge.