Hidemi Ishikawa -- Stardate（スターデイト）

I guess that I really can place 80s aidoru Hidemi Ishikawa（石川秀美）alongside Momoko Kikuchi（菊池桃子）and Yoshimi Iwasaki（岩崎良美）among perhaps a few others as one of those teenybopper singers who enjoyed their plate of City Pop and/or J-AOR from time to time.

Case in point: "Stardate", a track from Ishikawa's 5th album "Secret"（シークレット）which came out in December 1984. I could make some creaky "Star Trek" jokes here but I will refrain from that. In any case, the point is that this is the second Hidemi song in a row that I've covered in the blog which has some of that urban contemporary feeling to it. Last time back in January of this year, I covered her "Mezame"（めざめ）, a horn-driven song with some City Pop vibes.

With "Stardate", it's more West Coast AOR maybe along the lines of TOTO or even Chicago during their 1980s period. Those guitars rather give the show away right from the beginning but as "Stardate" progresses, some of that aidoru arrangement comes through before the guitars come racing in for the refrain. Actually, it's the fine Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）who came up with the melody with Hirobumi Suzuki（鈴木博文）of the Moonriders（ムーンライダーズ）providing lyrics while Nobuyuki Shimizu（清水信之）arranged the whole thing.

I couldn't find the lyrics for "Stardate" but from what I could hear from Ishikawa in the refrain, I don't think that the title refers to any Federation time system but rather the singer's request to have that fling through the stars with her beau. Perhaps Captain Kirk can provide some good (perhaps R-rated) advice on that point (oops, I couldn't resist from letting that groaner out).