Junko Sakurada -- Kimagure Venus（気まぐれヴィーナス）

 

Ahhh...those fresh-faced 1970s aidoru tunes with the engine of an upbeat studio orchestra propelling the teenyboppers into stardom! One of them, I believe, was Junko Sakurada's（桜田淳子）"Kimagure Venus" (Capricious Venus), her 19th single from May 1977.

Created by lyricist Yu Aku（阿久悠）, composer Koichi Morita（森田公一）and arranger Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）, it's certainly got plenty of bounce as Sakurada sings about the fact that compared to last year when she was an unripe green tomato, she's now ready for the picking by any suitable young lad, and apparently all of the innuendos that go with that. In the J-Wiki article for "Kimagure Venus", Aku mentioned that he'd had Marilyn Monroe in his mind when writing the words, even including a variation of the breathy "Boop-boop-a-doop" that Monroe sang out in "I Wanna Be Loved by You" for Junko to sing as well.

Maybe the choreography was inspired a bit by Monroe, too...? Well, in any case, "Kimagure Venus" was another Top 10 hit for Sakurada as it peaked at No. 7 and finished 1977 as the 65th-ranked single. She was even able to become the top batter for the Red team on the 1977 edition of NHK's Kohaku Utagassen with "Kimagure Venus", although the first lyric had to be tweaked since apparently her going from green and hard to red and ripe was a little overly suggestive.

As well, another piece of trivia from J-Wiki is that in 1978, young and ambitious Seiko Matsuda (when she was still Noriko Kamachi) had taped her cover of "Kimagure Venus" for an audition and one of the top guys at CBS-Sony heard it, much to his liking. A couple of years later, Matsuda would bound onto the stage of the NTV show "Uta Mane Furi Mane Star ni Chousen!!"（歌まね振りまねスターに挑戦!!...Take the Challenge to Sing and Act Like a Star!!）to actually perform the same song right in front of Sakurada herself.