Minako Yoshida -- Ai wa Kanata（愛は彼方）

 

Van Paugam put up a tweet earlier this morning stating that singer-songwriter Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）is celebrating a special day on the 7th today, so allow me to wish her a Happy 70th Birthday. I've actually had a couple of her videos on the back burner so the timing is great to have them up. First off is this November 2022 video which contains a brief excerpt of an interview with her via Alfa Music and it's also subtitled in English. As one commenter put it, it's not everyday that a singer within City Pop has been willing to grant interviews about the music so it's a real treat to hear from her even if it's only for a little over three minutes.

The second video has the first track from Yoshida's March 1976 album "Flapper", "Ai wa Kanata" (Love is Beyond). Written and composed by the singer with both Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）and Makoto Yano（矢野誠）helping out in its arrangement, "Ai wa Kanata" begins with a slow and soulful piano and Yoshida's wonderful vocals before the sun figuratively rises on the melody of hope and love and a car ride over to those two things. As well, the list of musicians helping her out is a sumptuous one: Yamashita, his Sugar Babe bandmate Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）, and Yano's then-wife Akiko（矢野顕子）are on backing vocals (Akiko is also on the electric piano), Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）is on bass, Tatsuo Hayashi（林立夫）is taking care of the drums and percussion, Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）is playing the guitar, and Motoya Hamaguchi（浜口茂外也）is also on percussion.

I've already covered a couple of other tracks on "Flapper", "Yume de Aetara"（夢で逢えたら）and "Rum wa O-Suki?"（ラムはお好き？）.