Yuki Uchida -- Getsuyoubi no Asa（月曜日の朝）

 

The last time I heard about singer/actress/model Yuki Uchida（内田有紀）was when she became a late addition to the cop comedy-drama franchise "Odoru Dai Sosasen"（踊る大捜査線）. However, my memories of her are usually restricted to her appearances in commercials, music videos and dramas of the 1990s. In a way, I saw her as the 90s version of Kyoko Koizumi（小泉今日子）: a young, short-haired and sassy woman. The singing part of her career was often paired with the Komuro Steamroller as I like to call it when producer and songwriter Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）was pretty much everywhere in music with a group under him including Uchida, hitomi and TRF for instance.

But with her second album "MI-CHEMIN" which was released in September 1995, initially a lot of the tracks there had no connection with Komuro so that, according to J-Wiki, it probably prompted King Records to add on a couple of those hits by the guy in a bonus track sort of way at the end of the album, one being "BABY'S GROWING UP".

The one song that I was actually looking at for tonight is the track "Getsuyoubi no Asa" (Monday Morning), and yep, it definitely doesn't sound like Komuro. In fact, I'd say that there was some Shibuya-kei (by way of perhaps Bacharach and maybe Swingout Sister) infused into its melody and arrangement by Hideo Saito（斉藤英夫）. Manaho Mori（森真帆）was responsible for the lyrics which tell the tale of life after the end of a romantic relationship as a woman begins her life anew by taking a ride on her bike against the pedestrian flow heading into work. It does sound like the plot for a J-Drama featuring Uchida. As for "MI-CHEMIN", it peaked at No. 3 on Oricon.