Ami Ozaki -- Air Kiss (Follow-Up)

 

Almost a couple of years ago, I wrote an article on singer-songwriter Ami Ozaki's（尾崎亜美）December 1981 album "Air Kiss" which was one of her two album collaborations with Canadian music producer and musician David Foster that year. Taking a look at the Labels for "Air Kiss", it was a fair potpourri of genres being represented, and with Foster being involved (production, arrangement and keyboards), City Pop and J-AOR were definitely going to be in there. I finished the article off by stating that I would have to finish off the rest of the tracks, and so I will. By the way, besides the article for the album proper, I did provide individual articles for two other tracks "Sweet Christmas Song" and "Foggy Night".

So, by my reckoning, there are three tracks left to take care of here, and the first one is Track 4, "Ginmaku no Koibito" (銀幕の恋人...Silver Screen Lover). A melancholy AOR affair with Michael Landau especially going large on guitar here, according to Ozaki's lyrics, it's either about a woman treating a past romance (possibly her first relationship) as having been no more than special effects on a movie screen or realizing that it's time for her to get out of make-believe time with a motion picture hero that she'd fallen in love with. There's some feeling of Boz Scaggs in the dramatic "Ginmaku no Koibito", and Landau has been on tour with the singer.

"Heart no Iro wa Umi no Iro"（ハートの色は海の色...The Colour of the Heart is the Colour of the Sea） is the type of mid-tempo love ballad that Ozaki can whip up in her sleep. It's strong on the background chorus and the switch between congeniality and great pride. I can imagine a couple strolling on the beach at sunset, content with each other's company. At one point though, I thought that a Whitney Houston song was about to break out.

"Just Once Again" finishes things for the original album (before the addition of bonus tracks for future remastered versions). Ozaki's piano and Landau's guitar come to the fore as the singer relates a story of someone who starts off on the line between despair of a tough time between them and their significant other and hope at some kind of reconciliation. By the end of the song, though, it looks like the person is taking that first stride toward that better tomorrow.

As it turns out, it looks like that I'd left those heartfelt ballads as the tracks to follow upon but that's fine. It wouldn't be an Ozaki album without them.