Yuki Koyanagi -- Aijou （愛情）

The reason that I didn't make any entries last night was that I was out with my good friend to catch the great Matt Damon movie, "The Martian". It is basically a sci-fi adventure flick but there's plenty of humour, much of it provided by Damon's stranded astronaut, Mark Watney, and the running gag is the disco music...which is greatly unappreciated by him.

Gotta disagree with Watney on this one. I may not be willing to put on platform boots and dance under a mirror ball, but I have a nostalgic affinity for some of the late 70s disco songs such as "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor and "Hot Stuff" by the late Donna Summer, both of which were featured in"The Martian".

And I couldn't help thinking of Yuki Koyanagi（小柳ゆき）when I heard some of the disco tunes since the singer did a number of covers of the old dance songs including "Hot Stuff". She's got the vocal chops as well for that. However for today, I wanted to feature another original song by Koyanagi, the one that I know as much as I do her debut hit, "Anata no Kiss wo Kazoemashou ~ You Were Mine"（あなたのキスを数えましょう）from September 1999. This would be "Aijou" (Affection) which was released in April 2000 as her 4th single.

Koyanagi pulls out her dynamic disco voice, and it was from "Aijou" that I figured that she could probably do some of the covers of those songs from the late 70s. And sure enough, she did so a few years later with "KOYANAGI the DISCO". But as for "Aijou", it was jointly written by Koyanagi and Yu Higuchi（樋口侑...not totally sure if the given name is correct）, and composed by Kazuhiro Hara（原一博）. The other thing that has helped me remember the song all these years is the music video which had Koyanagi singing some place which looked like the Grand Canyon. Interesting place for a vibrant R&B song but those helicopter swoop views were pretty good. This was the singer's 2nd-most successful contribution to her discography as it peaked at No. 2 on Oricon and became the 26th-ranked song for 2000.