Yoshiko Miyazaki -- Orgel no Koiuta（オルゴールの恋唄）

 

Last month, I introduced Yoshiko Miyazaki（宮崎美子）onto the pages of KKP through a track that was on one of her three albums "Mellow" (1981). Up to then, I'd known Miyazaki as the cheerful veteran actress/tarento who first got her fame from her bikini-clad figure in a Minolta commercial.

Well, that track that I first talked about, "Ima wa Heiki yo"（今は平気よ）, is quite the technopop treat provided by Akiko Yano and Ryuichi Sakamoto（矢野顕子・坂本龍一）, and I mentioned there that although Miyazaki's vocals weren't supremely strong, the bubbly synthesizers rather compensated for that. However, Track 3 on "Mellow", "Orgel no Koiuta" (Music Box Love Song), is a straight-ahead mellow pop song written and composed by singer-songwriter Machiko Watanabe（渡辺真知子）who has had her own hits of the past. 

"Orgel no Koiuta" is a pleasant song to be sure with arrangement by Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）and it's got a pretty interesting bend in the melody when it goes into the instrumental bridge. In fact, I would say that this was something ideal for someone like Ruiko Kurahashi（倉橋ルイ子）who has tackled the more romantic and baroque pop (aka Fashion Music) of the time. Again though, Miyazaki's vocals aren't the strongest and the wobbliness especially shows up in the higher notes, but at the same time, there is something about that which reminds me a little of Hiroko Yakushimaru（薬師丸ひろ子）who was just starting her own career in music at the same time.