Trade Love (ELIKA) -- Sunny Summer Days

Yesterday, it was a drive from San Francisco to California's wine country via J Utah's marvelous driving videos. Today, it was down south through Malibu, and the reason for another virtual drive this hot weekend is that this time I was listening to YouTube channel Sentimental Tokyo's "Summer Edition IV: The Lost Summer「90s」" compilation of City Pop/AOR tracks (which has unfortunately been taken down).

It was another pleasant drive although this time around there was quite a gap in times with the Malibu drive lasting around 40 minutes while the City Pop compilation video was a little over an hour, but that's fine. If you wanna give it the City Pop Radio treatment, you can always choose another J Utah video to finish things up. The wonderful thing is that while listening and enjoying the drive, I got to hear some new stuff; the second track, for instance.

And that would be "Sunny Summer Days" by Trade Love, aka ELIKA. Actually, I posted an ELIKA tune around 18 months ago "Kono Mune wo Dakishimete"（この胸を抱きしめて）, a coupling song for her 5th single "Midnight Party"（ミッドナイト・パーティ）in June 1992. However, some time into the 1990s, she decided to take on a new moniker for a while, Trade Love, and her first single under that name was "Sunny Summer Days", a dynamic and refreshing splash of pop music that came out in April 1995.

I mentioned this in the article for "Kono Mune wo Dakishimete", but I think that similarity in Trade Love's vocals with those of ZARD is also in "Sunny Summer Days". The lyrics were provided by the singer under her real name of Erika Shimakage（島影江里香）while Kazuya Daimon（大門一也）was responsible for the happy music which I could imagine being categorized as Resort Pop. It definitely heralds a pleasant summer drive down to the beach.

"Sunny Summer Days" was the first of two singles that came under Trade Love, and the song was also a part of Trade Love's sole album "paradise door" which was released in July of that year. Incidentally, "Sunny Summer Days" was also used the ending theme for a sports show on NTV. Anyways, I hope you enjoy this song as well as the drive and the City Pop compilation as well.