Hiromi Iwasaki & Bill Champlin -- Both of Us

 

Over many years, I've observed that the elite of the Japanese baseball world have gotten that desire to take their chances in Major League Baseball in the United States with varying levels of success. Back in the 1980s, I think that there was a similar wanderlust by certain top singers to head over to America to work with the top songwriters, producers and session musicians. The output was usually of the West Coast AOR variety of music. There was Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）with her "Miss M" in 1980 and then Naoko Kawai（河合奈保子）and "9 1/2" in 1985, for example.

Apparently, that was also the case in between those two years with chanteuse Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）. In April 1984, she released her 14th album, "I Won't Break Your Heart" which consisted of her second recording session in Los Angeles following her 1980 release "Wish". I haven't listened to the entire album but judging from the English titles, I am assuming that Iwasaki was indeed going for that popular soft rock sound although most of the tracks are sung in Japanese. As with Takeuchi and Kawai, Iwasaki got to work with some of the big names in the recording booth such as David Foster, Carlos Vega, Steve Lukather and Michael Landau

One of the two English-only tracks is "Both of Us" which is a duet of Iwasaki and singer-songwriter/arranger Bill Champlin. Created by Champlin and Carmen Grillo, I found the video on the YouTube AOR channel West Coast 99, and "Both of Us" is so AOR, it hurts like anything. I ended up getting AOR ASMR for heaven's sake...had a sudden urge to wrap a cardigan around my waist (would've ended up causing forced mitosis on it). Of course, there just has to be the fluegelhorn in there. My other observation is that aside from the first few bars, Iwasaki sounds a fair bit different in her delivery here. I've heard her sing other tunes in English on at least one other album, but for some reason, she seems to be putting a tighter leash on her vocal projection.

I noticed one brief comment underneath the video: "very EWF...", and that person is absolutely correct. Not to put too fine a point on it, but "Both of Us" sounds like a chip off the old "After the Love Has Gone" by Earth Wind & Fire. That shouldn't be too surprising considering that Champlin himself (along with Foster and the late Ray Kennedy) had a hand in writing that hit for one of my favourite R&B bands. And it sounds as if the 1979 beautiful and bittersweet ballad has been a template because for my next ROY article, I will be featuring yet another Champlin tune that also has similarities to "After the Love Has Gone".