Yoko Nagayama -- Suterarete（捨てられて）

She had me at "Demo ne..."（でもね...But）.

Yup, I'm talking about Yoko Nagayama's（長山洋子）"Suterarete" (Cast Away). It's a rather sad song about longing for that special somebody although the chances for success are low, but what I like about it is that melody and the way the singer sells it with her come-hither vocals. It's been classified as an enka song and Nagayama wears her kimono, but that arrangement has me thinking about some hostess club in the depths of Ginza or Akasaka. It's a pretty urbane song that Satoshi Hinokibara（桧原さとし）whipped up while Noriyo Suzuki（鈴木紀代）wrote the lyrics.

This was Nagayama's 7th single as an enka singer, and her 24th single if we include all of her previous aidoru songs in the 1980s, which was released in March 1995. "Suterarete" was a pretty big hit for her as far as enka songs at the end of the century were concerned since it peaked at No. 32 on Oricon and it stayed within the Top 100 chart for virtually a year, selling around 325,000 copies. I mentioned about that "Demo ne" which started things off; apparently the gesture that Nagayama used when saying that also became a selling point.

"Suterarete" was nominated for Best Song at the Japan Record Awards for that year, and Hinokibara won the Best Composer award. Nagayama would appear on the 1995 Kohaku Utagassen for the second time to perform the song.