I love Eriko Tamura’s (田村英里子) debut album, “May be Dream”, probably because it’s
your typical late 80s album full of bouncy and carefree aidoru pop with an
Eurobeat flavor. The ridiculously catchy “Dessert ni KISS”, for example, is a
playful song about a girl who prepares a “magical” cake to the boy she’s in
love with for his birthday. Very innocent stuff (or not so innocent, since she
wants the boy to come over to her house when mother and father are out, so that
the teen couple can experience a “sweet romance”), but we must remember Eriko
was only sixteen years old when this album was released. And, as a matter
of fact, she has always been an anachronistic aidoru. We all know how, by 1989,
the Seiko Matsuda (松田聖子) “cotton candy filled” days were already over.
As I’ve been saying for years, the late 80s/early 90s
were not good times to traditional and old-fashioned aidoru singers like Eriko Tamura. Even though she had a nice start,
it was tough to be successful in this route for too long. The musical tastes would
soon change after the end of the Showa era and the burst of the bubble, and so
would Tamura’s musical output through the years. In the end, she had all, from
beauty to talent (she was one of the best aidoru
of her generation, in my opinion), but the time wasn’t right.
The “May be Dream” album was released in July 1989. Lyrics for “Dessert ni KISS” were written by Takashi Matsumoto (松本隆), while music was composed by Takeshi Kobayashi (小林武史).
Source: Amazon.jp
Hi, Marcos.
ReplyDeleteYeah, you're right. It was too bad about the timing for Tamura's aidoru career; things were heading into a more eclectic pop or rock direction in the early years of J-Pop. "Dessert ni Kiss" is definitely catchy with the synths in there (sweet romance, indeed); the intro actually reminded me of the music of Matt Bianco.