Yusuke Kuwahara -- Nightwalker/Midnight Fox -- (Misty) Tonight（トゥナイト）

 

Though I remember mostly its sequel show, "Tonight II", the late-night talk-variety programme on TV Asahi, I also have Chikaco Sawada's（沢田知可子）"Aitai"（会いたい）in my head as one of the many ending themes for the original "Tonight" which ran between 1980 and 1994. In fact, it was so much in my head that I ended up buying the CD single.

Double in fact, there are quite a few songs on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" that have their status as opening and ending themes for "Tonight" that perhaps I should actually consider putting the title of the show as a new Label. Along with "Aitai", there is Yuiko Tsubokura's（坪倉唯子）"San-byaku-rokujuu-go no Yoru to Hiru"（365の夜と昼）, Tomoko Kuwae's（桑江知子）"Tasogare wo Wine ni Somete"（黄昏をワインに染めて）and Shakatak's "Night Birds".

Well, thanks to Marty McFlies YouTube channel, I was able to discover the opening theme and image song for "Tonight" in 1986. First off is "Nightwalker", sung and composed by Yusuke Kuwahara（桑原佑典）, which was that image song. I'm not sure whether it was actually used in the commercials for the show or it popped up during the introduction of certain segments. Looking up Kuwahara's name, I couldn't find any other works that he was responsible for, but for "Nightwalker", it is pretty evident that he enjoyed Matt Bianco's "Whose Side Are You On?". The lyrics were provided by SHOW. Meanwhile, Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）arranged everything.

At 4:08 of the same video above is "(Misty) Tonight" which was the mostly instrumental opening theme for "Tonight" as performed by Midnight Fox. Steave MacDonald was behind both words and music for this tropical resort pop concoction; Kazuo Otani（大谷和夫）was the arranger here. As for why I've put up the brackets around the first word, although the liner sheet for the single (as shown above while the video is playing) just has the single word "Tonight", apparently the JASRAC database has listed the song under the two words. Despite the lateness of the hour that the show starts up, when I do hear "(Misty) Tonight", I still feel like some sort of daytime cocktail such as a huge margarita.