Reimy -- Just Only You/Shadow Play（シャドー・プレイ）

 

Sad to say, but with the rising infection rates in Ontario, my city of Toronto will be officially slammed into lockdown again with a few differences compared to the one in the spring as of this coming Monday. I'm rather grateful then that I did get my haircut a couple of days ago since all personal grooming establishments are going to be closed down for the foreseeable future. It will probably mean that lineups may be growing at the supermarket again, though. And for the first time, our Prime Minister has announced that a normal Xmas will probably be impossible this year. Well, just gotta suck it up.

However, our family still has their health and I've got my job and this blog. Let us try for something nice and soothing then. Reimy（麗美）is perhaps appropriate especially with her July 1986 single "Just Only You", a creation that she composed with Etsuko Kisugi's（来生えつこ）lyrics. Some nice and steady piano chords paired with the singer's whispery and solid vocals have that cocoa-with-a-marshmallow effect on me, and I think the song reminds me of some of the relaxing pop songs by female artists that came out in the latter half of the decade such as Miki Imai（今井美樹）and Akiko Kobayashi（小林明子）.

The flip side of "Just Only You" is "Shadow Play", a fairly velvety pop/R&B mixture that was created by a fellow named Trevor Beach or Beech according to Hip Tank Records. There is indeed something about the arrangement that takes things onto the West Coast, and even the description on Hip Tank Records states that it is a little reminiscent of Sade's "Smooth Operator". 

In a way, the combination of both "Just Only You" and "Shadow Play" strikes me as a crossroads between Reimy's early cute pop tunes and then her brief foray into dance pop in the mid-late 80s. Both songs, by the way, were also recorded onto her 4th album "My Sanctuary" which was released also in July 1986.