Hiromi Iwasaki -- Dream (ドリーム)

Ahhh...about time to bring up another Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）song from her early years. I bring you "Dream", her 7th single from November 1976. With lyrics by the late legendary Yu Aku（阿久悠）, the story may be about that one-sided love of a high school girl or an older woman just starting out in life, but boy, does composer Kyohei Tsutumi（筒美京平）bring on the cool urban contemporary rhythm to give the song that oomph. I kinda wonder at times whether it was with Hiromi-chan that songwriters started to bring in some more soul into the works of 70s aidoru. The added bass by the fellow above does help.

Hiromi does look adorable in the video above. Having started to learn about her in the 80s when she was performing all those lush ballads, discovering these early somewhat funky works by her in the 70s which at times approached City Pop was quite the revelation for me. "Dream" peaked at No. 4 on Oricon and ended up as the 64th-ranked song of 1977.

(Sorry but the video has been taken down.)

This is an aside here but one of the other things that I also remember Iwasaki for is for her appearances on my old favourite Japanese variety show "Hachi-ji da yo! Zen'in Shuugo"（8時だョ!全員集合...It's 8 O'Clock! Everyone Assemble） hosted by the comedy team The Drifters. Not only did she perform her music but she also took part in some of the zany skits and the regular segments in the hour-long program such as the Chorus segment which always had the guys and the guests trying to warp through some challenging Japanese tongue twisters to a funky beat. The two Hiromis, Iwasaki and Ohta（岩崎宏美＆太田裕美）, do their best here.