Ai Furihata -- Cinderella Time（シンデレラタイム）

 

I guess that I was rather curious about what Halloween in Tokyo might look like this year so I just took a gander at the back footage from "SHIBUYA COMMUNITY NEWS"  on YouTube which has that live camera pointed straight at the Shibuya Scramble intersection. Nope, I gather the 23rd is considered to be a bit early and perhaps still somewhat gun-shy because of COVID-19, people were not coming out. But according to the website for "The Japan Times", it seems like the area is getting ready for a return of the masses or at least some fraction of them in their Halloween best or worst. I'll keep an eye out over the next several days.

Anyways, Halloween might also be the opportunity for all sorts of folks to come on out as Sailor Moon or characters from "Evangelion" or something as traditional as Cinderella which is why I'm bringing this song here tonight. "Cinderella Time" is another track from Ai Furihata's（降幡愛）September 2020 mini-album "Moonrise" which also has the first song by Furihata that I ever introduced, "CITY".

My intro for the "CITY" article whimsically posed the question of what if an aidoru-esque Midori Karashima（辛島美登里）and Michael Sembello from the 1980s had collaborated. I answered my rhetorical query with "CITY". I'll be doing the same over here. What if Furihata channeled all sorts of melodic goodness from Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）and Taeko Ohnuki/Ryuichi Sakamoto（大貫妙子・坂本龍一）of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Well, I think "Cinderella Time" may be the result.

"Cinderella Time" is actually the brainchild of Furihata on lyrics and Akimitsu Honma（本間昭光）on music but there is that dramatic longing of a Yuming（ユーミン）pop tune from that period of time that I hear in this one along with the some of the synthpop blippity-bloppity quirks and chord shifts which I've also come across in the Ohnuki and Sakamoto collaborations. Furihata's lyrics basically tell the age-old tale from Cinderella's vantage point if she were Japanese and living in an old danchi in Takashimadaira. "Cinderella Time" doesn't break any molds but it's still an interesting song to listen to considering the influences.