Junichi Kawauchi -- Koi ni Ochita Hi ~ Anyday You Love Me（恋に落ちた日）

 

I guess that I can make another observation of a pattern taking hold in the mid to late 1980s: that of the presence of soulful male balladeers crooning of love over a pop melody. So far, I can think of folks like Yasuhiro Abe（安部恭弘）, Yudai Suzuki（鈴木雄大）and Kenjiro Sakiya（崎谷健次郎）.

Now, I found this fellow by the name of Junichi Kawauchi（河内淳一）who is a singer, guitarist, composer and arranger. According to his J-Wiki file, he's enjoyed rock of the 1970s and 1980s along with the West Coast sound of that time and his favourite musician is Bill Champlin from the band Chicago. His career began in 1973 as a studio musician but then in 1986, thanks to his participation in the house band for singer Keisuke Kuwata's（桑田佳祐）radio show the year before, he joined KUWATA BAND.

Beginning in 1988, Kawauchi went into a solo career and started releasing singles and albums. His second single was "Koi ni Ochita Hi ~ Anyday You Love Me" from August that year. With lyrics by Akira Ohtsu（大津あきら）and melody by Kawauchi with Hiroshi Shinkawa（新川博）in charge of arrangement, the song does sound like it belongs on the West Coast and the singer's vocals had me thinking of those crooners that I mentioned at the top, especially Suzuki and Sakiya. "Koi ni Ochita Hi" also seems to be made for an old Parliament cigarette commercial but it was actually used to sell Mitsuya Cider...one of the most urban contemporary numbers that I've heard for a soft drink.

"Koi ni Ochita Hi" can also be found on Kawauchi's debut album "One Heart" which was released in April 1988. On that note, since this will be my final entry for 2020, I would like to wish everyone a Happy and Safe New Year! See you in 2021! I'd also to state that this is the 94th article for December 2020, and it breaks a record for the highest number of articles for any month in the history of the blog. I hope that we can all keep the good times rolling and I just want to thank all of the collaborators, commenters and readers for all of their attention and insights over the past year.

よいお年をお迎えください。