I often used to come up with melodies having at least had a look at a vocalist’s photo and hearing their singing voice. I’d been told she had a background in jazz singing, but at that stage I don’t think I’d even seen her picture. “We didn’t have any lyrics up front, and I hadn’t met Miki either. But even so, the songsmith remembers, it was the first time he had been tasked with creating a melody specifically to suit English words: It was Hayashi’s recognized knack for coming up with strong songs and arrangements before the addition of any lyrics that saw Kaneko reach out. The result was Matsubara Miki’s debut single “Mayonaka no Door/Stay with Me” (Midnight Door/Stay with Me), released on November 5 that same year.

But for this piece, Kaneko said I could forget about that entirely, which I remember thinking was quite a bold move.” Back then, even when you got an order for a ‘Western-style’ song, the norm was to also include a kayōkyoku Japanese pop dimension just to make sure it would sell in the home market.

“He wanted a song for this new female singer,” Hayashi recalls, “But that it had to have an all-out Western pop feel to it. Picture the scene: It‘s 1979, and up-and-coming songwriter Hayashi Tetsuji receives a new request from Kaneko Haruhiko, director of prominent record label Pony Canyon.

Tech n9ne songs on straight out