Eri Kojima -- Foul Play

Bright Lights, Big Shinjuku

First off, I would like to thank YouTube uploader yaoiboi92 for referring to my blog for his/her video that he put up a little over a year ago. Plus my apologies for discovering it a year late.

What I'm referring to is Eri Kojima's（小島恵理）"Foul Play", her debut single from 1984. I first talked about the B-side from that single, "Lonely Feeling", and in that article, I mentioned about its arrangement being so reminiscent of that "champagne-&-caviar night in the big city". yaoiboi92 was kind enough to cite that underneath the video for "Foul Play" as well.

However, the A-side has a bit of a different vibe. It's still very much City Pop, but it looks like for the lucky couple, it's either happening before or after that expensive dinner at the Tokyo Hilton. "Foul Play" has more of that feeling of that epic night drive on the highway through the megalopolis. Plus, Kojima sounds like she is channeling some Junko Yagami（八神純子）through her breathy and sultry vocals. Lastly, this is more of a stylistic thing, but I really love the typography for the cover of the single. Couldn't get more slick 80s than that.

Kojima was behind words and music while Nobuyuki Shimizu（清水信之）took care of the arrangement.