Kimiko Kasai -- I'm So Much In Love

 

I've got another interesting one for KKP's City Pop/J-AOR Friday today. For one thing, this is the second Stevie Wonder-connected song that I'm bringing onto the blog after "Golden Lady". I'll let you know the other thing from the next next paragraph. First off, "I'm So Much In Love" was indeed written and composed by Wonder and songwriter/musician Richard Rudolph. Rudolph had been married to Minnie Riperton until her untimely death in 1979, and then about a decade later, he married jazz/R&B singer Kimiko Kasai（笠井紀美子）.

Kasai performs "I'm So Much In Love" as this sunny soulful number which can fit in either the AOR or R&B categories, but she still retains her usual smokiness in her delivery. The song didn't come out as a single but it is a track on Kasai's 1982 album "KIMIKO". I also found out about some of the instrumentalists for the song, one of whom is David Boruff with his wonderful sax solo. Boruff is also the same fellow who performed in the love theme from the 1985 movie "St. Elmo's Fire", the ultimate Brat Pack experience. Moreover, keyboardist Randy Waldman seems to be channeling his inner Stevie in some of his playing.

As for the second point in the Stevie Wonder connection is that the original is not only officially unreleased but it may be incomplete. Back in 2014, TIME Magazine announced that the originally titled "So Much In Love" was actually an unreleased recording during the making of "Songs in the Key of Life" from 1976. The entire thing is just a 45-second snippet that made it onto YouTube in the same year as the announcement.

It just goes to show the genius of Wonder and Rudolph that even with less than a minute of recording, "So Much In Love" still manages to convey a lot of Wonder-ful goodness. Plus, I give full compliments to Kasai and whoever arranged the full cover version, and maybe it's too much to ask for now, but wouldn't it be nice if Stevie could actually finish this song off and have it officially released?🙏