I gather that "Kayo Kyoku Plus" representative Kayo Grace Kyoku is getting a little swoony again. Well, at least, she still has several more weeks of that before autumn finally arrives, and of course as anyone who knows kayo kyoku realizes, autumn is the season for romance to wither away like dried leaves.
Not to say that early 80s aidoru songs had bare-bones arrangements (and I'm saying this as someone who loves those early Seiko, Akina and other aidoru tunes from that part of the decade), but I've often found arrangements for similar tunes in the latter half of the 80s to be especially lush and almost downright cinematically fantastical when it comes to how they may affect the imagination of listeners. Not sure what it was, but arrangers seemed to enjoy weaving a lot of strings, choruses and synthesizers into this huge string ball of appealing whimsy and wistfulness that a kitten could adorably play with.
Case in point: I bookmarked this song by aidoru Maiko Okamoto（岡本舞子）. "Romance Shitai" (I Want to Have a Romance) was one of the tracks in Okamoto's debut album from October 1985, "Heart no Tobira"（ハートの扉...The Gateway to Your Heart）, and having a listen to it a few times, I swear that the song itself could sprout a black hair bob, a frilly dress and a supremely cheerful attitude as it skips on the yellow brick road. Written by Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and composed/arranged by Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）, it's late 80s aidoru-dom personified as Okamoto sings about trying to empty her heart of all romantic notions but helplessly getting dragged back into the mushy stuff. Kinda reminds me of a certain scene in "The Godfather, Part III" with Al Pacino (although let's not imagine Don Corleone in a cute dress, shall we?).
Yamakawa may have been one-half of the amazing City Pop and jazzy duo Tohoku Shinkansen（東北新幹線）in 1982, but she also had a great touch with aidoru tunes forty-odd years ago.
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