Junichi Inagaki -- April

Obviously, it's April. Still not quite the spring temperatures we've been hoping for but at least it's sunny out there. Plus, the unusual start isn't just in a meteorological sense; apparently we can now have April Fool's fall on the same day as Easter Sunday. I only hope that there wasn't anything nasty in those chocolate Easter eggs for the kids.

Well, to commemorate the arrival of the fourth month, here is "April" by J-AOR crooner Junichi Inagaki（稲垣潤一）. Only that it's not really an AOR number. This was the flip side to Inagaki's 24th single "Ichi Das no Iiwake"（1ダースの言い訳）from December 1991, and the song by Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and Yasuhiro Kido（木戸やすひろ）has that 60s doo-wop feeling compared to the Motown sound brought about by "Ichi Das". Both songs also existed as separate tracks on his 6th album from March 1986 "Realistic".

Although I mentioned that there was a bit of that doo-wop in there, the arrangement by Masaaki Omura（大村雅朗）includes some synth-y keyboards which rather brings "April" into the 1980s especially during the instrumental.