Y'know...I assumed for all these years that I'd already posted about Hiromi Iwasaki's（岩崎宏美）4th single "Fantasy" since it was one of her earliest tunes and I'd been pretty dedicated about writing about those, such as her sophomore release "Romance"（ロマンス）. However, going up and down her discography on KKP a few times when I was writing up a recent ROY article, I realized much to my chagrin that it was simply not the case.
Well, one Gibbs slap later, I've gotten to work. "Fantasy" was Iwasaki's January 1976 single created by lyricist Yu Aku（阿久悠）and composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）. As with her earliest works by this duo, "Fantasy" has that rather urgent string-driven arrangement with the slight disco touch. From what I can glean from Aku's lyrics, there is a countdown going from two months down to half a day before as a woman recounts the adventure of a man she fancies and is then betrayed by. It makes me wonder whether the lady's dreams of romantic bliss were nothing but cruel fantasy or whether the woman made this whole thing up. It's quite the mature topic for teenaged Hiromi to sing about.
"Fantasy" peaked at No. 2 on Oricon and eventually became the 20th-ranked single of 1976. Iwasaki also got onto that year's edition of the Kohaku Utagassen for the second time to sing this one.
She does an amazing job in that Kohaku performance.
ReplyDeleteYes, Hiromi was soon to be seen as quite the talent; just amazing vocals. I think the above video though shows her at the NTV Music Festical.
DeleteI didn't know Hiromi Iwasaki's 「ファンタジー」 came out in 1976!!! Okay, so it seems that we have a growing list of great songs that have come out of a year I in the past time thought was the underdog of the Japanese music world. This is now clearly not the case at all.
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned above, I didn't know that I hadn't even put this one up onto the blog...gave myself a slap on the back of my head for that omission. 🤷
DeleteNote the jump in key in the later part of the song.
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