Junko Sakurada's（桜田淳子）23rd single from June 1978, "Lipstick" reminds me a lot of what fellow 70s aidoru Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）was singing at around the same time. There is that galloping beat, the jangly guitar and the sweeping strings. In fact, the progression of "Lipstick" is also quite similar to that of a particular Iwasaki song that I can't quite remember right now; it starts off slowly, almost mournfully, before things quickly launch like a prize steed exploding out of the gate on the race track.
Created by the golden songwriting duo of Takashi Matsumoto and Kyohei Tsutsumi（松本隆・筒美京平）, "Lipstick" is the story of heartbreak with a young lady finding out from a cad that she's not the only woman that he's been carousing with in town. Not sure if it popped up in Matsumoto's lyrics but I hope that she gave him a really painful goodbye slap across the face. By the way, Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）took care of the arrangement.
Apparently, "Lipstick" was the final Top 10 single for Sakurada as it peaked right at No. 10 and ended up as the 73rd-ranked single for 1978. Gotta say that performance video of hers above has her feeding off the audience's enthusiasm to give a great turn with the song.
Were you thinking of Mikan no Shozo?
ReplyDeleteAlso, here's a site you may be interested in. It covers similar ground to this, but in Japanese. The entry for Machibuse says that Yumi Arai specifically wrote it from Seiko Miki's experience, which I've not seen said elsewhere.
https://www.seisyunkayou.com/
Hi, Jim.
DeleteYup, "Mikan no Shouzou" would just be the type!
Thanks for the information on Yoshi's blog as well. Looks like he's got some very nice nuggets of information. Never even heard of Yuuki Igarashi.