A couple of months ago, I wrote about Akiko Mizuhara's（水原明子）"Love Duet", the cover of Michael Franks' 1982 song, and looking at the article again, I did mention off the top about the COVID-19 situation in my city. Well, in terms of new infection rates, we've happily further plummeted into double digits consistently since then although I still think there's gonna be some sort of bounce up going into the autumn, and we got a premature kick in the side to remind us of that. Apparently, about 550 patrons of a strip club downtown may have been exposed to the virus because of an employee who tested positive and the management wasn't following all of the restrictions.
In any case, getting back to happier stuff with Mizuhara, I also mentioned in "Love Duet" that there isn't much in the way of information about her except that she did release two albums: "Love Message" in 1982 and then "So Crystal" in 1984. Well, some kind soul has put up "So Crystal" and I wanted to cover the second track at 0:41 titled "Burnin' Night".
Whereas "Love Duet" reflects the soft rock/disco of the late 1970s through the City Pop/J-AOR screen, "Burnin' Night" has a distinctively different tone although I would still categorize it as a City Pop tune, albeit one that also goes into straight pop. The tempo kinda takes things into Michael Sembello's "Maniac" territory while the melody has me thinking of some of Ian Thomas' "Hold On" which was famously covered by Santana. Even the keyboards give a whiff of uncertain times in a 1980s Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）way. The lyrics were provided by Yukari Sato（沙東由香利）and the music was by Mizuhara herself. In fact, Sato was responsible for the lyrics for most of the tracks on "So Crystal".
Taking a listen to the rest of the album right now, and I'm getting those "Buy it!" vibes in my head. Allow me to cross my fingers and hope that it's within reasonable access.
'Burnin' Night' sounds like it could've worked as BGM/theme to an anime or movie. It's a nice track, nothing too remarkable. The mellower tracks on this album, such as 'Goodnight To You' and 'Silent Walker', are better realized than the hokey pop-rock stuff like 'Maybe Tonight' and 'Sayonara So Long'.
ReplyDeleteApparently this Korean singer departed from Japan some time after making this album for her home country where she continued to make albums, none of which I know anything about. Both her clear intonation and nuanced delivery are noteworthy, but the album itself is standard '80s fluff through and through.
Hello, Michael.
DeleteYeah, I probably wouldn't put it in my Top 10 albums, by any means. However, I still think there's enough interesting stuff in there for me that I would still get it. It looks like "So Crystal" is indeed in 'haiban' status but "Love Message" apparently is still available at CD Japan.