Hideki Saijo -- Ao ni Nare（青になれ）

 

Over the past several Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹）articles on KKP which means almost two years, I've been going back into the early period of his time as a lanky teenage aidoru. Well, of course, there was that time in the mid-1980s going forward when he was embracing his inner City Pop such as "City Dreams From Tokyo".

However, it seems as if I was focusing a lot on the albums "Twilight Made...Hideki" (1985) and "From Tokyo" (1986) when it came to his time with the urban contemporary. So, recently I did find this lovely track from his February 1987 album "Private Lovers", "Ao ni Nare" (Be Blue), and though it's the only entry that I've listened to on this release thus far, I'm fairly sure that this is another in his City Pop LPs.

"Ao ni Nare" sounds like it picks up where the tracks of "From Tokyo" left off with its classy city arrangement by Hiroshi Shinkawa（新川博）of singer-songwriter Yoichi Takizawa's（滝沢洋一）melody. It's certainly an attractive number with elements of early 80s and mid-80s City Pop, and perhaps even something in there that's reminiscent of Mood Kayo. Yumi Morita（森田由美）provided the lyrics but I'm not quite sure what it means to be blue in this case. Does Hideki want someone to be sad or does he want them to be cheerful? I don't really have a clue but I may have to ask the Twitter Hideki followers for guidance in this case.

March 29, 2022: And sure enough, those Hideki fans came to the rescue. Quite the learning experience, actually. A couple of them, Ruru and Crystal Love have mentioned about the "blue" in the title referring in truth to the "green" of a green light giving the go-ahead for love and/or calming down in the face of that emotion. I have heard over the years that a green traffic light has been called "ao" (blue) instead of "midori" (green). Many thanks to them!