Momoe Yamaguchi -- Ai no Arashi（愛の嵐）

 

Happy Victoria Day for all of you in Canada and for the rest of you, Happy Monday!

I haven't watched much of any of his shows on television for years now, but Seth MacFarlane can still surprise me. It was about a decade ago when I found out about "American Dad" bringing in Perfume's "Monochrome Effect" for one of its episodes, and apparently a few weeks ago, there was an episode on his flagship "Family Guy" where he and Chris Griffin take a stab at the good ol' Toyota Cressida.

I took a look at the Wikipedia article for the model and it had been originally marketed as the Toyota Corona Mark II. Now, why I would even mention this specific vehicle in the pages of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" is that I actually was driven in a Cressida during my 1981 trip through Japan. The father of my host family during my 3-day homestay in Nara picked us all up in a Cressida and earlier in the trip, I had found out via a tour through Toyota facilities in Toyota City that supposedly the Cressida was second only to the Crown in terms of their sedan line. So I gather that this particular model back then was for the division head tier of executives but I'm wildly speculating here. It was a comfy ride since I did end up snoozing in the back.

Anyways, try as I might, I couldn't find a specific commercial for the Cressida that had a Japanese pop song as the jingle. But I opted to search through the J-Wiki list of songs that had been used in Toyota commercials in general, and I was surprised to see that even Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）had gotten into the act.

Yup, her 26th single "Ai no Arashi" (Love [Jealousy] Storm) from June 1979 was used for the Toyota Tercel in which she herself appeared as well. The song itself was another collaboration between her and the husband-and-wife team of lyricist Yoko Aki（阿木燿子）and composer Ryudo Uzaki（宇崎竜童）with the arrangement of Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）, as her persona of the world-weary woman of the city and the night has to deal with yet another romantic entanglement. The guitar and string combination weave the lady and situation perfectly as someone quietly ferocious in a delicate situation. From the pounding percussion that ends the song, I gather that things didn't end well.  I remember hearing this on my BEST compilation, thanks to that Aki lyric of "jealousy storm, jealousy storm, storm/storm/storm...".

"Ai no Arashi" peaked at No. 5 on Oricon and ended 1979 as the 36th-ranked single. It was also a track on Yamaguchi's 19th studio album "Harutsugedori"（春告鳥...Japanese Bush Warbler） which was released in February 1980 and it hit No. 5 too on the album charts.