Carlos Toshiki & Omega Tribe -- Aquamarine no Mama de ite (アクアマリンのままでいて)

After Tokyo gets snow in November for the first time in 54 years and following our first hit of winter some days before that, summer is basically a very fond memory for a lot of folks on either side of the Pacific.

So it wasn't too difficult a decision to bring this song in. Plus, it is most likely the first time in "Kayo Kyoku Plus" history that I've used the same video for two different articles on the same day. Yup, I just used the opening credits of 1988 trendy drama "Dakishimetai!"（抱きしめたい!...I Wanna Hold Your Hand）for a different purpose in my previous article on Yuko Asano's（浅野ゆう子）debut single, but for her, it is specifically for the theme song used for this show.

With perennially evergreen 80s summer boys band Omega Tribe taking care of "Aquamarine no Mama de ite" (Stay Aquamarine), this time it's indeed Brazilian-born Carlos Toshiki Takahashi (カルロス・トシキ・タカハシ) captaining the ship vacated by Kiyotaka Sugiyama（杉山清貴）. This is Carlos Toshiki & Omega Tribe's (カルロス・トシキ&オメガトライブ) 2nd single under this band name released in August 1988.

Listening to Carlos Toshiki and remembering Kiyotaka Sugiyama, I realized that the former has a slightly more ethereal quality in his delivery which seemed to take his contributions to Omega Tribe to a more atmospheric level. I kinda feel like that symbolic City Pop airplane taking off. But it's anchored nicely by that snazzy arrangement of synths, guitar and horn section (Jerry Hey helped in that) that Tsunehiro Izumi（和泉常寛）composed.

As for Masao Urino's（売野雅勇）lyrics, I'm not crystal clear on the meaning although the impression that I'm getting is that some fellow is still admiring a former flame from afar. Perhaps that flame was burning a little too brightly for the protagonist and he now has to keep his distance despite retaining some residual feelings.

"Aquamarine no Mama de ite" got as high as No. 3 on Oricon and ended up as the 51st-ranked single of the year.