Hiromi Ohta -- Ashita, Haru ni Naare（朝、春になあれ）

Spring officially arrived in my hometown at 5:58 pm last night. The current situation is the opposite of what you see in the above photo take on February 28th: there's no snow and the temperatures are into the plus column (thankfully), but it looks really dreary outside. And yet, after the tons of snow and cold that we had received in the past few months, I wouldn't be stepping out of bounds when I say that folks are simply happy that the weather is at least showing something fairly commensurate with the season.

Looking for something in the kayo stacks to herald the coming of spring, I found this soft and cheerful piece by 70s aidoru Hiromi Ohta（太田裕美）titled "Ashita, Haru ni Naare" (Tomorrow, Let It Be Spring). This was a track from the singer's 7th album, "Senaka Awase no Rendezvous"（背中あわせのランデブー...Back-to-Back Rendezvous）released in February 1978.

As you can see at the bottom of the article, I've placed the song in a number of genres: folk, aidoru, and New Music. Plus, if I actually had the category in Labels, I would also dub it a country tune, thanks to that steel guitar. It makes for a pleasant stress reliever due to in no small part by Ohta's delicate and reassuring voice.

Written by Michihiro Kobayashi（小林倫博）and composed by New Music/folk singer Takuro Yoshida（吉田拓郎）, "Ashita, Haru ni Naare" was also arranged by Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）. In fact, all of the songs on Side A were created and arranged by Yoshida and Suzuki while Ohta herself handled everything for the Side B tracks. "Senaka Awase no Rendezvous" peaked at No. 3 on Oricon.

I'm sure that a lot of Torontonians were echoing the same sentiments of the title yesterday. Well, it looks like we have gotten half our wish answered and over the coming weeks, we'll get the full response.