Momoe Yamaguchi -- Daydream（デイ・ドゥリーム）

 

If there's one thing that I've learned while some of us have tackled the discography of 1970s aidoru Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）, it's that there is a trove of amazing and perhaps hidden tunes underneath all of her huge hits which include "Ii Hi Tabidachi" (いい日旅立ち) and "Yokosuka Story"（横須賀ストーリー）. For example, there is her July 1979 AOR-themed album "LA Blue" and even those two Yokohama-themed songs that I wrote about last month.

From what I've read about her last years in the industry before retiring from show business near the end of the 1970s, Yamaguchi was probably more than ready to get out. Furthermore, I think that she was quite insistent that she would do the music that she was interested in rather than simply churn out the usual orchestra-backed aidoru material in her numbered days as a teen singer.

"LA Blue" was one result with her trying out that American West Coast AOR but even some months before its release, Yamaguchi had recorded another album titled "A Face in a Vision" which came out in April 1979. I've not heard the entire album at all, but I did encounter a track from it called "Daydream". It's quite the different song for Momoe, certainly apart from those hits, especially the ones created by husband-and-wife songwriting team, Ryudo Uzaki and Yoko Aki（宇崎竜童・阿木燿子）, in the latter half of her career (although they also contributed tracks to "A Face in a Vision") and very different from the songs on "LA Blue".

"Daydream" was written by Keisuke Yamakawa（山川啓介）and composed by Kimio Mizutani（水谷公生）with arrangement by Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）. The song is more along the lines of some of the exotic kayo that was in vogue during the last years of the 1970s with Judy Ongg's（ジュディ・オング） "Miserarete"（魅せられて）and Saki Kubota's（久保田早紀）"Ihojin" （異邦人）as prime examples. Yamaguchi sings of far-off adventures and fantasies involving Incan queens, barefoot gypsies and the Andes with the effect enhanced by Hagita manning a classic guitar and instruments such as the quena, a traditional flute from the Andes, and the percussion instrument known as the tabla being involved. It's quite refreshing, actually, with Momoe's familiar mellow voice paired with all of these non-familiar instruments; it was described on the video as artpop which isn't a bad way to express it. As for "A Face in a Vision", it scored a No. 3 ranking on Oricon.