Junko Ohashi -- Moetsukite（燃えつきて）

I listened to Junko Ohashi's（大橋純子）"Hot Life" album with her band Minowa Central Station（美乃家セントラル・ステイション）from April 1980 last night, and though I can't really say it's a classic (mind you, I've always admired the cover), there are a few tracks that I like, one being "Canadian Lullaby"（カナディアン・ララバイ）, her 14th single.

There were two bonus tracks added onto the original album and they were the songs that made up her 16th single from October 1980. "Moetsukite" (Light My Fire) was the A-side from that 45" record and it is one of the other entries on the album that I enjoy. The B-side, incidentally, was "Drop"（ドロップ）.

As much as some of us have come to know Ohashi for her disco side of City Pop such as "Telephone Number" (i.e. the AWOOOO song), "Moetsukite" goes more for the sultry and exclusive bar atmosphere of the genre. There's more of a low-but-constant heat for this song about being passionately in love...perhaps another one of those illicit affairs that further ramps up the temperature. Once more, Ohashi's vocals make all of the difference here.

Proven veterans took care of "Moetsukite". Yu Aku（阿久悠）was behind the lyrics, Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）took care of the music and Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）arranged everything. According to the J-Wiki article for Ohashi herself, the song was the image song for the movie "Shogun"（将軍）. I'm kinda wondering if that was indeed the NBC multi-night adaptation of the James Clavell novel starring Richard Chamberlain.