Kenjiro Sakiya -- Nijuu-go-ji no Arashi（25:00の嵐）

Getting that request from commenter Gyo the other day for the lyrics for one of the songs from singer-songwriter Kenjiro Sakiya's（崎谷健次郎）BEST collection, I figured that it was time to give the album another spin. Sure enough, I found another song from the compilation that I hadn't covered there or separately.

That would be "Nijuu-go-ji no Arashi" (Storm at 1:00 am), a pretty uptempo City Pop tune of the 1990s considering the lateness of the hour indicated in the title. Written by Goro Matsui（松井五郎）and composed by Sakiya, the song was originally a track on his April 1991 album "Ambivalence", but unlike that particular title, there isn't anything ambivalent with "Nijuu-go-ji no Arashi" in terms of how much the protagonist loves his romantic partner during a very late-night storm outside.

Strangely enough, the overall melody reminds me of a much more languid version of an old Bananarama song, "I Heard A Rumour", so I wonder if there's even some Eurobeat in this one. In addition, I still marvel at the similarities between Sakiya's delivery and the vocals of Noriyuki Makihara（槇原敬之）who was starting to make it big that year.