Masayuki Suzuki -- LOVE MACHINE

Last week, I was finally able to track down a copy of Masayuki Suzuki’s (鈴木雅之) album “Perfume” here in Brazil, and for a ridiculously cheap price. I already had some of these songs in the compilation “Martini II”, but it was my chance to have my favorite song by Martin in physical format, which happens to be “Kirai da yo” (きらいだよ).

Over the years, J-Canuck managed to cover many of the songs featured in “Perfume”, such as “Koibito” (恋人), “Shibuya de Go-ji” (渋谷で5時), “Kirai da yo”, and even the album itself (click here for the full article), but there’s still one more song I’d like to give some love (no pun intended), which is “LOVE MACHINE”.

A deep cut from the aforementioned album “Perfume”, which was released in September 1993, “LOVE MACHINE” is a funky tune with Martin’s usual soulful voice and charisma. It’s not outstanding like some of his hit singles, but I like it as a nice hidden surprise towards the end of “Perfume”. It’s also quite risqué, but he’s labelled as the king of love songs, whatever that means, right?

The thing is, even though he portrays a mature, classy and mildly seductive dandy nowadays, especially in the perspective of Western newcomers that discovered him after anime theme songs like “Love Dramatic” (ラブ・ドラマティック) and “DADDY! DADDY! DO!”, the man was a lot wilder in the 90s, like we can hear in “LOVE MACHINE”, but also see in one of the song’s performances, as presented below.

One funny thing to notice in the performance above comes from the background singers. The way they said “love machine” near the end, it sounded exactly like the ending to Morning Musume.’s own “LOVE MACHINE” (LOVEマシーン). Maybe Tsunku (つんく) attended one of Martin’s live concerts and got inspired.

“Perfume” reached #2 on the Oricon chart. Lyrics for “LOVE MACHINE” were written by Saeko Nishio (西尾佐栄子), while music was composed by Kiyonori Matsuo (松尾清憲). As for the arrangement, Akihiko Matsumoto (松本晃彦) was the responsible.