Peach & Apricot (Mariya Takeuchi & Anri) -- Watching Over You

 

Well, good heavens, this is quite the start of my blogging week. I was about to turn in for the night on Sunday when I discovered that a couple of the major stars of City Pop in the 1980s had gotten together sometime over the last few months (for the first time, I believe) to record a theme song for a TV Asahi Friday night drama which started up in late October.

I would have gotten onto it last night but I'd already gotten four articles up and it was about 11:30 pm so I figured that it could wait until this afternoon when I finished my day job.

That drama happens to be "Wada-ke no Otoko-tachi"（和田家の男たち...The Men of the Wada Family）, a story of a young man, played by former Arashi（嵐）member Masaki Aiba（相葉雅紀）, whose company closes down permanently due to the scourge of the pandemic and finds himself working as a reporter for a Net-based news organization. It certainly looks like the show is getting plenty of promotion on YouTube.

What's also getting a lot of attention via multiple videos on the platform is the theme song, "Watching Over You" by Peach & Apricot, aka Mariya Takeuchi & Anri（竹内まりや・杏里）. Yup, over the past month, their respective fans must have been tumbling over each other like crazy on hearing about this dream duet and I have to give myself a Gibbs Slap to the back of my head for not even noticing this, but then again, now that I have, there's plenty of evidence now for this particular song. 

OK, the first thing is about this name of theirs involving a couple of my favourite fruits. Had to think about that for a few seconds but then I went "Ah...I see now!". Peach & Apricot, indeed. And of course, as for Anri, her kanji has the character for apricot as well.

Listening to "Watching Over You" a few times now, I'm still marveling that it's actually Mariya and Anri singing together, and that the mellow music by City Pop-friendly composer Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司） with 80s at its heart and perhaps some 90s arrangements takes me back to those decades (the duo came up with the lyrics), especially when that saxophone rolls on in. Did the husband of one of those ladies send the player over? As well, the way that Peach and Apricot sing solo and together kinda shows that palsy-walsy manner that I used to hear in old performances on ancient American variety specials and movies with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin or Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. I wouldn't be surprised if the two had been shoulder-to-shoulder during recording (although that could have made production difficult).

"Watching Over You" was released as a digital download on November 4th. There's a nice and appropriate cover at the Amazon site. A relaxing cup of coffee is just the thing for this one.