Kaori Kawamura -- Merry-go-Round ni Notteru Kimi no Koto ga Suki da yo（メリーゴーラウンドに乗ってる君のことが好きだよ）

 

Rock singer-songwriter Kaori Kawamura（川村かおり）left this Earth way too early at the age of 38 back in 2009 due to cancer. Although she didn't burn up the Oricon charts like some other singers or bands, she remains one of the musical touchstones for me when I was living in Gunma Prefecture between 1989 and 1991 because before I arrived in Japan at the end of the decade, it was unusual to see a female Japanese singer who wasn't bouncing around in a white frilly dress or singing enka in a formal kimono on stage. However, the turn of that decade had a lot of diversification going on in the new format of J-Pop and one of the new wings that unfurled in the mainstream was the female rocker either through bands like Princess Princess and solo singers such as Kawamura. 

I got to know Kawamura basically in 1991 via "Kamisama ga Oritekuru Yoru"（神様が降りてくる夜), a catchy number that I used to hear often because it was used as the theme song for a segment on the extremely popular Fuji-TV Wednesday night variety show "Kuni-chan no Yamada Katsutenai Terebi"（邦ちゃんのやまだかつてないテレビ）. And then there was her cover of "Tsubasa wo Kudasai"（翼をください）, a 1970s folk song that has become a standard in those high school chorus competitions.

When I first caught this music video, I was initially a little confused. My image of Kawamura had been that of the singer with that close-cropped haircut in the leather outfit who felt that it wasn't too cool to smile. But here she was with slightly longer (but not long) hair in pretty casual wear and actually beaming a bit more.

My assumption was that this one of her later efforts on the basis that perhaps Kawamura had mellowed out, but it was actually the video for an earlier 4th single "Merry-go-Round ni Notteru Kimi no Koto ga Suki da yo" (I Love Ya on the Merry-go-Round) that had been released in September 1989. A rolling and jangling pop/rock tune, this was written by Kawamura and Ken Takahashi（高橋研）with Takahashi handling the melody and arrangement. The lyrics are all about some fellow asking a young lady for a fun afternoon at the amusement park. My compliments on the guitar work.

"Merry-go-Round" was also used as the theme song for an anime motion picture, the boxing-based "Eiji"（エイジ）in 1990 at the request of the creator of the original manga, Hisashi Eguchi（江口寿史）. The song was also Kawamura's first to get into the Top 100 of the Oricon charts by placing in at No. 90.

Well, I found out some of Eguchi's work through a Denny's commercial.