Hideaki Tokunaga -- Mayonaka no Liberty（真夜中のリバティー）

Good afternoon. Hope you're enjoying your weekend so far. It's been a good while since I've spoken about high-toned Hideaki Tokunaga（徳永英明）and I managed to find the B-side for one of his trademark singles, "Kaze no Eolia"（風のエオリア）.

Compared to the wondrous and tenderhearted "Kaze no Eolia" which became the very serious jingle for a Panasonic air conditioner back in the day, the B-side, "Mayonaka no Liberty" (Midnight Liberty) takes things to downtown Tokyo. I was quite taken with the melody line for this one since it is so late 80s/early 90s City Pop (the single was released back in February 1988, and up until now, I'd always treated Tokunaga as a balladeer of heart-on-your-sleeve love songs. However with that recognizable voice, he could apparently handle the urban contemporary quite well as well.

The same trio for "Kaze no Eolia" was also responsible for "Mayonaka no Liberty": Tokunaga for the melody, Akira Ohtsu（大津あきら）for the lyrics about the trials and tribulations of love, and Ichizo Seo（瀬尾一三）was the one who arranged it all. And both songs were also placed onto Tokunaga's 4th album "Dear" from April 1988 which hit No. 2 on Oricon.