Yuuichi Ikuzawa -- Racer

 

I gotta admit that Yuuichi Ikuzawa's（生沢佑一）"Racer" which belongs to his first solo album "Mysterious" from 1983 is one of the more intriguing City Pop songs that I've encountered. Starting off like a romantic tune belonging to a soundtrack on a 1950s Douglas Sirk melodrama, "Racer" then hits the familiar City Pop road with plenty of brass and chorus to fuel the singer's vocals. 

The arrangement, however, also sounds similar to a very languid West Coast take on "Xanadu" as if the characters from the Olivia Newton-John movie decided to take five and hang ten along the California shore. That's quite a bit of style stuffed into a track that's a fair bit less than three minutes. Masako Arikawa（有川正沙子）, who helped out on Akira Terao's（寺尾聡）"Reflections", wrote the lyrics while Keiichi Katagiri（片桐圭一）took care of the music.