Kaede -- Morning Call（モーニングコール）

 

Wow! Isn't that something? Twenty-four hours after finding out that I may now have an upper limit to my Labels, I've got a new one to add from my potentially remaining batch of several hundred. 

And this one is for Kaede, who happens to be a member of the veteran aidoru group Negicco. Although she's still performing with the Niigata Prefecture-based group that's been around since 2003, Kaede also went solo as of 2019, and thus far, she's released six singles, a couple of mini-albums, and two full albums.

One of those mini-albums is "Aki no Wakusei, Heart wa Night Blue"（秋の惑星、ハートはナイトブルー。...Autumn Planet, My Heart is Night Blue [although the official English title could be "Stardust in Blue"]）which came out in September 2020 and one of the tracks there is "Morning Call". A collaboration between Kaede and the multi-genre band Lamp, this is a sweet tune that incorporates some of that 1970s City Pop sound into its arrangement thanks to lyricist and Lamp vocalist Kaori Sakakibara（榊原香保里）and composer and her fellow bandmate Taiyo Someya（染谷大陽）. The lyrics seem to take us listeners back to the late 80s or early 90s when phone booths and telephone cards were the thing in the pre-smartphone age. The lass in the song makes it a habit to give that good morning call to her beau to make sure he's ready to greet the world and also to hear his lovely voice.