Kiyotaka Sugiyama & Omega Tribe -- Alone Again

I don't think I ever got a photo of an Omega Tribe（オメガトライブ）album to store as an article thumbnail so I'm quite happy that I could get a shot of the actual Aqua City shopping mall in Odaiba, Tokyo.

As for Kiyotaka Sugiyama's（杉山清貴）old band, their "Aqua City" was their debut album from September 1983. Initially when I saw the title for one of the tracks, "Alone Again", I had assumed for a few seconds that the band was actually doing a cover of the 1970s hit by Gilbert O'Sullivan but then again, that song had the extra word "...Naturally" in the title.

Nope, "Alone Again" by Omega Tribe was written by Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）, now the most prolific lyricist in Japan, and composed by Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）who could probably be credited for giving the band its mellow sound. He was the one, after all, who came up with "Summer Suspicion", Omega Tribe's debut single which was also recorded onto "Aqua City".

Listening to "Alone Again", it has all of the tropes that got me interested in Omega Tribe in all of its incarnations in the first place: smooth vocals, mellow beat and that summery sheen. Couldn't have asked for a better song for a young couple strolling on the beach at dusk while holding hands. And I gotta say that the folks who set up the concert above for Sugiyama and the band planned the setting, including the lighting, just right for the song. As for "Aqua City", it peaked at No. 4 on Oricon.