It's been a while since I put up a Junko Yagami（八神純子）song. There was one in the backlog that I was going to target for today but it and/or the YouTube channel behind it has been summarily sent into oblivion because of those copyright strikes. Then, I actually thought about doing "Ame no Hi no Hitorigoto" （雨の日のひとりごと）, her December 1974 debut single...only to realize that I'd already written about it all the way back in August 2015. When I've done my stuff for the blog for as long as I have, memory lapses are all but inevitable.
As one of my blog mantras go, "Never ignore the B-sides". Taking my own advice then, I'm going with the B-side of "Ame no Hi no Hitorigoto", "Naze da ka Tsurai no" (I'm Feeling Bad for Some Reason). My impression of Yagami in her very early days as a musical wunderkind in the early 1970s didn't involve her singing City Pop or some of those spicy Latin-tinged disco numbers near the end of that decade. Instead, it was her singing very refined high-toned love ballads.
Indeed, that is my impression as well when it comes to "Naze da ka Tsurai no", her own creation where she wonders aloud why she is suddenly feeling so blue although I think from her own lyrics, it's pretty easy to know the reason behind the tears: romantic heartbreak. The arrangement includes such a classy combination of her piano and the strings that it's really quite Fashion Music in a French sense, along the same lines as Mayumi Itsuwa（五輪真弓）and Ruiko Kurahashi（倉橋ルイ子）.
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