Ai Kawamura -- Passionata（パッショナータ（熱情））

 

When I first heard this song on YouTube some months ago and saw it being described as Italo synth disco, I initially thought that it was a cover of some European artist's contribution to dance pop music in the 1980s. However, I was wrong on that account. "Passionata" is very much a homegrown tune which was written by Takao Abe（阿部孝夫）, composed by Toshikazu Miura（三浦年一）when he was going by the name of Ichinen Miura（三浦一年）, and arranged by Tatsushi Umegaki（梅垣達志）. It is also the third and final single of aidoru Ai Kawamura（川村愛）from January 1987.

Yes, it looks like the songwriters though did study their Italo synth disco quite well although Umegaki's arrangement also lets the aidoru part shine through, too. And may I say that there is a certain synthesizer playing there that reminds me of some of Ryuichi Sakamoto's（坂本龍一）pop stuff which makes the song even more enjoyable. Thundering drums will always get appreciation from me as well. Not sure how it did on Oricon, but "Passionata" was used for an NTT telephone card promotion. 

There's no J-Wiki file on Kawamura but the good folks at "idol.ne.jp" saved the day with some information on the Yokohama native. She was actually born Yukiko Shiga（志賀ゆき子）in 1969 and her older brother is Yasunobu Shiga（志賀泰伸）of the aidoru group Ninja（忍者）. The lass was scouted at Jiyugaoka Station on her way home from school when she was a junior high senior. She did at least one commercial under her real name after which she took on the name of Ai Kawamura based on the name of her arranger Eiji Kawamura（川村栄二）who had worked on her debut single "Love...Mitsumete Kudasai"（LOVE…見つめてください...Love...Look at Me） in 1985.