Yuko Imai -- By The Side of Love

Y'know...I really ought to pay more attention to this singer, Yuko Imai（今井優子）. Up to this point, there have only been four articles related to her on the blog, and hearing some of her material, there's indeed a lot to like.

Case in point: this track from her 5th album "Do Away" from April 1990 which was produced by Toshiki Kadomatsu（角松敏生）. "By The Side of Love" was also written by Kadomatsu and composed by the bassist who performed on the album, Tomohito Aoki（青木智仁）. I'm biased toward the urban contemporary side of Japanese pop, but I really love this tune as one of those mid-tempo melodic pleasantries with that particular sound arrangement (especially the keyboards) I've associated with the turn of the 1980s into the 1990s.

There were some pretty big musicians involved in this project. Kadomatsu himself was on guitar, keyboards and chorus with Shuichi "Ponta" Murakami（村上秀一）on drums, Tsuyoshi Kon（今剛）and Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）on electric guitar, Nobu Saito（斉藤ノヴ）on percussion, Shin Kazuhara（数原晋）on flugelhorn and Yasuhiro Kido（広谷順子）and Junko Hirotani（広谷順子）also on chorus, among other session musicians. That's a pretty slick lineup. But most of all, I am really starting to admire Imai's light and resonant vocals.