Eri Nitta -- Hoshi wo Sagashite（星を探して）

I've been meaning to write another article on 80s aidoru Eri Nitta（新田恵利）since I've had her smiling visage at the upper right for over a week now.

And I couldn't have asked for a better Nitta number! In fact, I don't quite know how long ago it was, but I distinctly remember someone contacting me as to the identity of this particular tune and maybe even the identity of the singer through a snippet via an MP3 file. That was the case even though there is no record on the blog of an All-Points Bulletin being put out. Yet, I also think I was able to dig out the song for the fellow some way.

In any case, this is "Hoshi wo Sagashite" (Find A Star) which was a track on Nitta's debut album "ERI" which was released back in May 1986. The album was also a No. 1 hit for the aidoru. Plus, "Hoshi wo Sagashite" is a hit with me. The song rather reflects a couple of tropes that Marcos V. and some others plus myself have hashed over through other articles with one being a singer who may not have the most proficient vocal chops but does have some good songwriters surrounding him or her. And that one composer/arranger for this song was the great Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）. Launching with a synthesizer whose sound that I had never heard before, the arrangement approaches an unusually lusher AOR sentiment with an undercurrent of bossa, and I thought it would be something that Miki Imai（今井美樹）, who debuted in 1986, would sing. Mieko Aoki（青木美恵子）was behind the lyrics.

The second trope is that a number of aidorus of the late 80s seemed to get some of that lusher arrangement when compared to their sempai in the early part of the decade. I'm not sure why but perhaps when the massive aidoru group Onyanko Club（おニャン子クラブ）made its presence felt from the mid-1980s, the individual members, their managers and other powers-that-be may have demanded that they be given their chances at hopefully hit-making songs, and so the pressure was on to the songwriters of that time to come up with even more distinctive tunes. Time to hit the mizuwari and tabako, and all that.

In any case, from some of that mighty pressure, a small pearl of a tune was born in the form of "Hoshi wo Sagashite". Here's hoping that I can find some more pearls to make a string.