Miho Morikawa -- Left Alone（レフト・アローン）

 

I have to say that although I've loved Miho Morikawa's（森川美穂）City Pop and pop/rock numbers in the last few years of the 1980s going into the 1990s, I've also been impressed by her early years as an aidoru in the mid-1980s. Not sure if it's a cosmetics things, but she even looks different when comparing those two times.

Case in point: one of the tracks on her July 1986 debut album "Takan Sedai"（多感世代...The Sentimental/Impressionable Generation） is "Left Alone". Written by Kyoko Matsumiya（松宮恭子）, composed by Minoru Komorita（小森田実）and arranged by Ichizo Seo（瀬尾一三）, it's quite the refined and sweeping song with the relatively galloping synths and percussion. But the urgency there is given some lightness thanks to those strings and Morikawa's bright vocals. It's interesting to hear her sing while she was focusing on those higher registers back then.