You Ishihara -- Yaburekabure（破れかぶれ）

 

It was on New Year's Eve last year that I introduced the mysterious You Ishihara（石原祐）, a singer that I couldn't really find a lot of information about, although commenter Brian Mitchell sent me some of what he had gleaned.

Well, the article that I posted was on her 1978 single "Hakka Tabako"（薄荷煙草）. Today, it's time for the B-side, "Yaburekabure" which has quite the amusing pronunciation...something akin to "topsy-turvy" or "abracadabra". However, its meaning is "desperation" although the melody by Katsuo Ono（大野克夫）sounds anything but. I'd say that for a desperate individual, "Yaburekabure" is surprisingly quite upbeat and happy-go-lucky especially with those silky strings coming in. Legendary lyricist Yu Aku（阿久悠）was the one behind the words. 

You Ishihara -- Hakka Tabako（薄荷煙草）

 

Happy New Year's Eve! Perhaps some of you are getting ready for the biggest party of the year at homes or hotels. Hopefully, you'll have a find time tonight as the countdown progresses towards the end of 2025.

I have a bit of a mystery here. There's barely anything on this singer named You Ishihara（石原祐）who has been referred to as the "Female Julie"; basically she was seen as the woman version of Kenji "Julie" Sawada（沢田研二）, the flamboyant artist who was once the lead singer for the Group Sounds band The Tigers. And that's basically the only thing I could glean from a brief blurb on the Takechas website.

The only other thing there was that the famed songwriters, lyricist Yu Aku（阿久悠）and composer Katsuo Ono（大野克夫）who had also created magic for the real Julie, including "Casablanca Dandy"（カサブランカ・ダンディ）, was also the duo behind Ishihara's possibly one-and-only 1978 single "Hakka Tabako" (Hakka Cigarettes). Quite the downtown kayo kyoku with the spirited strings and guitar in addition to the nice and sharp horns, although Ishihara doesn't look anything like Sawada (she kinda looks as if she had graduated from the Takarazuka Academy), the comparison is probably more with the plaintive balladeer-like vocal style that Sawada possesses. To be honest, I can also compare her to similarly husky-voiced Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）. Not sure whatever became of her.