Nozomi Inoue -- Hana Negawakuba（花ねがわくば）

 

Had a heck of a time trying to parse this title here for aidoru Nozomi Inoue's（井上望）3rd single "Hana Negawakuba". Just looking at the arrangement of the kanji and kana, I had been wondering whether it was something like "Hanane ga Wakuba" or "Hananega Wakuba", but throwing in the words into the Jisho.org dictionary, I found out that the latter word of "negawakuba" means "I pray" or "I wish". So, perhaps "Hana Negawakuba" can be translated as "Flower Wishes" as in doing that old-fashioned action of "He loves me, he loves me not" with the petals of a bloom.

In any case, just going into this song by Inoue, who unfortunately never quite hit it big although she's found bigger success as a music producer, "Hana Negawakuba" isn't bad at all as this bouncy tune which was released back in December 1979 (yup, almost 41 years ago...I'm reaching for my Metamucil right now). Written by Kazuya Senke（千家和也）and composed by Yusuke Hoguchi（穂口雄右）, the same duo behind 70s aidoru trio Candies'（キャンディーズ）first Top 10 single "Toshishita no Otokonoko" (年下の男の子）, it possesses some of that early and mid-1970s innocent skippy nature but at the same time, I also think of late 1970s aidoru Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）when I hear Inoue's delivery. Speaking of her vocals, I think that they were a tad lower than in her debut single "Refrain" (ルフラン) which came out earlier in May. The other interesting observation is that underlying guitar riff that pops up at the beginning of each verse.; trying to remember where that comes from.

Just an additional piece of trivia concerning Inoue, but she ended up marrying Ed Yamaguchi（エド山口）, the TV personality and musician who, along with Shiro Okada（岡田志郎）, created the hit "Roppongi Lullaby"（六本木ララバイ）for singer Yasuko Naito（内藤やす子）in 1984.