Asami Kobayashi -- Aru Jijou（ある事情）

 

It's been a little over a year since my last article on the seemingly mysterious cool beauty Asami Kobayashi（小林麻美）. My image of her will always be that from her 1984 cover of Gazebo's "I Like Chopin" but in recent years, I've discovered that she did have an early aidoru phase in the 1970s starting with her 1972 "Hatsukoi no Melody" （初恋のメロディー）.

Compared to the sunny and wistful "Hatsukoi no Melody", though, her 4th single "Aru Jijou" (A Certain Condition) released in October 1974 has a slightly more ominous tone to match Kazumi Yasui's（安井かずみ）lyrics of a young woman who could be in her late teens or early twenties falling to temptation and having an illicit affair. Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）, who had also come up with that happy debut single, whipped up the melody of funky bass, dramatic strings and urgent percussion which kinda reminds me of some of the early works of Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）at the same time. Maybe there was a Momoe effect on aidoru songs of that period.