Taeko Rei -- Furimukeba In The Rain（ふりむけば In The Rain）

Over the years, some readers of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" have thanked me for introducing a number of the songs to them for which I'm very grateful. By the same token, I've also been very grateful to YouTuber Van Paugam for going a bit further and putting up his own City Pop radio channel (that has since been taken down).

That would be especially true tonight since I was listening to his City Pop Radio (and watching the traffic on the Tokyo highway) and came across this singer whom I had never heard before by the name of Taeko Rei（令多映子）. The song performed was "Furimukeba In The Rain" (Turning Around In The Rain) which came from her 2nd album "Taeko" from 1984. Listening to it, I got all sorts of thoughts coming into mind such as the fact that her vocals reminded me of those of fellow City Pop chanteuse Yurie Kokubu（国分友里恵）while the tight horn arrangement had me thinking of what Kahoru Kohiruimaki（小比類巻かほる）would later put together with her songs in the late 1980s going into the early 1990s. The music also had me thinking about the bright synths found in the similar music sung by female singers at the end of that particular decade...that of champagne and painting the town red. In any case, "Furimukeba In The Rain" is a choice find.

From what little I could find about Rei, and her J-Wiki article is apparently quite incomplete, I discovered that she was born Taeko Shibata（柴田妙子）in 1959 and made her debut in 1983. The early part of her career seemed to have stayed within the confines of urban contemporary music before she settled down and retired. However, the marriage didn't quite take and so she returned to the music industry after which she became known as a gospel singer.