Saki Kubota -- Orange Airmail Special

 

It's still nice and summery out there but the heat and humidity have climbed down a tad so there's even a bit more pleasantness with the walking out there. 

Yesterday on Urban Contemporary Friday, I featured a recent song by Natsu Summer titled "Orange Airmail". Interestingly enough, decades earlier, singer-songwriter Saki Kubota（久保田早紀）came up with a song that was almost identically titled except that it had an extra word. The song du jour is "Orange Airmail Special".

A track on Kubota's 4th album from May 1981, "Airmail Special", it was composed by Kubota with Keisuke Yamakawa（山川啓介）as the lyricist and Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）as the arranger. Usually with Kubota, who now goes by the name of Sayuri Kume（久米小百合）, she was often associated with exotic kayo or City Pop. With "Orange Airmail Special" though, it strikes me as being more straight pop, although a case can be made with that electric guitar in there that it's achieved the rockier side of AOR. But hearing this one by Kubota, it did feel rather refreshing.