Friday, November 20, 2015

Midori Kinouchi -- Yokohama Eleven (横浜いれぶん)




I once wrote about 70s aidoru Midori Kinouchi(木之内みどり)as having sung the first version of "Garasuzaka"(硝子坂)as the title track of her 5th album even before it became a hit for Mizue Takada(高田みづえ)in 1977. Well, the following year, she finally got that big hit with "Yokohama Eleven" in February.


According to J-Wiki, prolific lyricist Takashi Matsumoto(松本隆)had been writing the words for Kinouchi's 5th to 10th singles without any of them becoming smash successes, but a switch over to lyricist Ryo Shoji(東海林良)did the trick with "Yokohama Eleven". The song title doesn't seem to hint at anything within the words of the song aside from the fact that it was the singer's 11th single. Katsuo Ono's(大野克夫)mellow but somewhat peppy melody helped to get the song up to No. 28 on the Oricon weeklies and although it didn't get into the Top 100 for 1978, the song has apparently become one of the signature tunes of that time period.

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