As I mentioned just a tad earlier, I've been listening to Rocket Brown's J-Xmas mix and within the opening minutes, I've been able to listen to some really fine material, some new and some old.
One other song that I got to hear for the first time in a long time was 80s aidoru Momoko Kikuchi's（菊池桃子）"Yuki ni Kaita Love Letter" (Love Letter Written in the Snow). My memory engrams really do need quite a bit of jogging now since I had completely forgotten about this one. For one thing, that cover of her 3rd single from November 1984 is probably one of her most famous ones as she wondrously looks over the Earth.
For another, there is that melody that I immediately pegged as a Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）. Good heavens! I've been listening to Japanese pop music and writing this blog so long now that I'm referring to songs and their composers as if they were works and artists at The Louvre. Anyways, as soon as I heard the song, I just had to go "Aw, man, I remember this one!". So what made me identify "Yuki ni Kaita Love Letter" as a Hayashi? I think that it's just that combination of those innocent strings and certain keyboards being involved; I've heard them used for bands such as Omega Tribe back in that decade.
The lyrics are by Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）who would come up with the big aidoru supergroups in different decades, Onyanko Club（おニャン子クラブ）and then AKB48. A few days ago, when I wrote about Toko Okabe's（岡部東子）"Kata ni Fureta Christmas Eve"（肩にふれたクリスマス・イヴ）, I cited the Japanese penchant for Xmas songs there to have a sad component, lyrically speaking. "Yuki ni Kaita Love Letter" is also rather melancholy, although Hayashi's music and his arrangement keep things moving forth at a peppy and pretty happy pace, since it deals with a one-way love situation at the worst time...Christmas Eve. Another December 24th all alone.😢 The song managed to peak at No. 3 and then it ended up as the 49th-ranked single of 1985.
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