Yuko Asano -- Tobidase Hatsukoi （とびだせ初恋）

As I intimated for my other article on actress Yuko Asano（浅野ゆう子）, I first got to know her through all those sparkly trendy dramas that she starred in the late 1980s and early 1990s such as the one above, "Dakishimetai!"（抱きしめたい!...I Wanna Hold Your Hand）. With the face and body of a model but with the temperament of a good buddy, it was no surprise about how popular she became as the face of the trendy drama. Plus there was that whole Double Asano fad whenever she appeared with fellow thespian and fellow beauty Atsuko Asano（浅野温子）, although they weren't related to each other...Yuko Asano was actually born Yuko Akazawa（赤沢裕子）in 1960.

So I had to play some catchup when I discovered that she had once owned a career as an aidoru in the early 1970s. In fact, I managed to find a short version of her debut single "Tobidase Hatsukoi" (Jump Out, First Love) from May 1974. Yep, she's doing the cute teenybopper thing but the thing that floored me was that she was just at the higher end of 13 when she released this song! I'm looking at that video above and trying to wrap my head around the fact that she was just barely into adolescence as she was go-go dancing.

Mieko Arima（有馬三恵子）took care of the lyrics while Makoto Kawaguchi（川口真）composed the light and fluffy tune. Of course, her biggest hit would be "Sexy Bus Stop"  a couple of years later.