Izumi Sara -- Spacy Love（スペーシィ・ラブ）

 

Back in the spring of 2023, I posted an article on a very obscure singer, Izumi Sara（沙羅いづみ）, and her B-side "Heartbreak City"（ハート・ブレイク・シティ）which was a pretty amiable disco City Pop tune.

Well, today to start off this edition of Urban Contemporary Friday on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I have the A-side this time, "Spacy Love" which seems to amp up the disco and the brass. Along with the disco, there is the City Pop and maybe even some exotic kayo in the intro. Written by same duo behind "Heartbreak City", lyricist Fumiko Okada（岡田富美子）and composer/arranger Kunihiko Suzuki（鈴木邦彦）, the writer on Hip Tank Records gave their assessment of the song (translation by Google Translate):

"...a charmingly unpolished cult Japanese disco track—a medium-tempo, spacey disco number with a melody that evokes an oriental atmosphere...".

Perhaps there is a bit of a backhand swing in that compliment but I think that brass has some Yuji Ohno（大野雄二）or Spectrum vibes, and to be honest, I sometimes feel that the horns came in from a particular Ryohei Yamanashi（山梨良平）tune from the future or were inspired by Maynard Ferguson. Hip Tank Records also treats "Spacy Love" as one of those rare cult singles so if any of you City Pop fans can get a copy of it anywhere, consider yourselves fortunate.

Izumi Sara -- Heartbreak City（ハート・ブレイク・シティ）

 

I used to remember some of the girls in my junior high school coming to class wearing hot pants like the one that this young lady was wearing on the cover. Not that I stared...much.😎

Anyways, this song is coming down as one of the rarest of the rare. I couldn't find anything on Izumi Sara（沙羅いづみ）online outside of this one October 1980 single she released called "Spacy Love"（スペーシィ・ラブ）, but for today I am covering the B-side, "Heartbreak City". Virtually the only thing that has been written about her is that she was a B-class aidoru although considering her lower vocals and the nature of the song, you'll forgive me if I don't see her that way.

"Heartbreak City" is indeed a City Pop tune written by Fumiko Okada（岡田富美子）and composed by Kunihiko Suzuki（鈴木邦彦）. It's got that refined disco style with the strings and the boppy bass and once again after listening to this one a few times, I think Sara's vocals make me feel as if she were more of an urban siren rather than a cute aidoru.