Eri Kojima -- Urenokori（うれのこり）/Magical Situation

 

Listening to some of the material by the late Eri Kojima（小島恵理）, I sometimes wonder why the singer-songwriter never became quite as big as some of her contemporaries such as Junko Yagami（八神純子）. She had the vocals, the spark and the spunk but for whatever reason, she's been someone that I only got to discover because I was doing the blog many years later. Again, there isn't a whole lot of information about her.

I had to dig around my usual sources to find the data regarding Kojima's 1982 single "Urenokori" (Old Maid) and that included the search engine images feature where I found out that she had created both the A-side and the B-side, "Magical Situation". Katsu Hoshi（星勝）arranged "Urenokori" while "Magical Situation" was arranged by Kojima herself. The above video has both songs.

"Urenokori" is reminiscent of a Yagami song during her own disco/City Pop phase and the bass is going especially nuts along with the insidious electric guitar wailing away. I would hardly think that Kojima looks anything like an old maid on the cover, but her character in "Urenokori" is revving up to stand up for herself after being given the urenokori label and as someone who has been told that she's too late of a bloomer. Maybe she's going to show some major dance moves on the floor or razzle-dazzle a whole bunch of guys at the bar. Meanwhile, "Magical Situation" at 3:48 has that 70s/80s West Coast rock anthem vibe and it's the song where Kojima's vocals really shine through. 

Eri Kojima -- One

 

It's been over eight years since the untimely demise of Eri Kojima（小島恵理）in February 2015 at the age of 53. I've always remembered her for "Lonely Feeling" which was a song that I had first heard as a Vaporwave or Future Funk adaptation before I realized that the original was the B-side to her 1984 debut single. My discovery of it was just on the cusp of the explosion of City Pop onto the world.

At this point, I don't know how many singles and albums Kojima released in her career but she did keep on going into the 2010s. She put forth a 2012 album called "Nostalgia" and on it, there is the wistful "One". I couldn't find out who was behind the songwriting but it's a slow and lovely contemporary pop ballad which perhaps reflects that album title. It feels like a song of looking back on one's history and considering how short her life ended up only a few years later, "One" takes on a bit more gravitas.

Eri Kojima -- Foul Play

Bright Lights, Big Shinjuku

First off, I would like to thank YouTube uploader yaoiboi92 for referring to my blog for his/her video that he put up a little over a year ago. Plus my apologies for discovering it a year late.

What I'm referring to is Eri Kojima's（小島恵理）"Foul Play", her debut single from 1984. I first talked about the B-side from that single, "Lonely Feeling", and in that article, I mentioned about its arrangement being so reminiscent of that "champagne-&-caviar night in the big city". yaoiboi92 was kind enough to cite that underneath the video for "Foul Play" as well.

However, the A-side has a bit of a different vibe. It's still very much City Pop, but it looks like for the lucky couple, it's either happening before or after that expensive dinner at the Tokyo Hilton. "Foul Play" has more of that feeling of that epic night drive on the highway through the megalopolis. Plus, Kojima sounds like she is channeling some Junko Yagami（八神純子）through her breathy and sultry vocals. Lastly, this is more of a stylistic thing, but I really love the typography for the cover of the single. Couldn't get more slick 80s than that.

Kojima was behind words and music while Nobuyuki Shimizu（清水信之）took care of the arrangement.

Eri Kojima -- Lonely Feeling

Well, since I already put up another wonderful song due to "Light & Mellow: Dream", here is another track from the compilation album, Eri Kojima's（小島恵理）"Lonely Feeling". To be honest, I was surprised that this is my first entry of hers on the blog since I thought I had come across another song by her in the past. The little slip of information I had gathered in the past was that she also had some dealings in the anison genre including one song for "Lensman". (November 20 2019: Received a message from a fellow City Pop fan on Discord that Eri and Noeri Kojima are actually two different folks.)

In any case, "Lonely Feeling" is the B-side to her debut single in 1984, "Foul Play". Kojima took care of both music and lyrics, and I enjoy the arrangement that I've often referred to as "a champagne-&-caviar night in the big city". The title might refer to something lonely but the music is certainly high life in Tokyo, and I do love the saxophone.

Plus, I gather that other people have enjoyed the beats in "Lonely Feeling" so that it has been given the Vaporwave (Chillwave?) treatment and put onto a transformation sequence for Sailor Moon. Just imagine the villain-of-the-week asking Usagi-chan and the other Sailors to keep on transforming since he/she likes the song so much.

Kojima herself was also very busy in helping out in the areas of backup singing, chorus arrangement and vocal training of other singers with her own vocal school. So it was very sad to find out that she had passed away suddenly early last year according to a couple of other sites.