After having returned from my eye-opening Japanese Language School graduation trip in 1981, I became a convert for Hiromi Iwasaki's(岩崎宏美) music due to her cover of the Blue Comets' "Sumire Iro no Namida"(すみれ色の涙....Violet-Coloured Tears). The next year, it was my brother's turn on the graduation trip and so I asked him to bring back an album or a single record by her, and so he got me this single. I always loved the young Iwasaki's long straight black hair during the 80s.
"Madonna Tachi no Lullaby"(The Madonnas' Lullaby) originally started out with very humble beginnings. It didn't even start out as a full song. It had been written just as a short sung accompaniment to the end credits of "Kayo Suspense Gekijo"(火曜サスペンス劇場....The Tuesday Night Suspense Movie) on NTV, but when viewers overwhelmingly flooded the station for requests of this song, Iwasaki's 28th single was born. I have heard the original version for the end credits, and the intro and the middle instrumental struck me as tepid, so I am glad that the arrangers gave the official single a more urban contemporary punch-up with Rhodes Piano and electric guitar.
The little song that could was released in May 1982, and went to the top of the charts for four weeks straight before finishing the year as the 3rd-ranked song for the year, ultimately selling 1.3 million records. In addition, it won the Grand Prize for that year's Japan Kayo Awards. There were also expectations for it winning a similar prize for the Japan Record Awards.
And that's where the controversy came in. Toshiyuki Kimori(木森敏之) composed "Madonna Tachi no Lullaby" with Keisuke Yamakawa(山川啓介) as the lyricist. As they were accepting their accolades for creating Iwasaki's latest hit, a very unhappy American composer, John Scott, who had been responsible for composing the soundtrack for the 1980 sci-fi movie, "The Final Countdown", stormed into Japan accusing Kimori of plagiarizing parts from a couple of tracks for that movie (those tracks are in the video above). His protests against Kimori were enough so that there was a hasty revision in the credits. John Scott is now officially listed as co-composer. Those expectations for the song to receive the Grand Prize at The Japan Record Awards plummeted out of existence. All this happened before the single's official release in May; actually, it was supposed to have been released in April but all of the chaos forced a month's delay.
Still in the end, "Madonna Tachi no Lullaby" is recognized as one of Iwasaki's representative works, and because of its origins as the ending theme of that Tuesday night suspense drama, she was called upon again to provide further ending themes for the program for the next few years after that.