In 1989, the song "Good Girls Go To Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere)" by Jim Steinman appeared on the album "Original Sin" - Pandora's Box.
In 1993, the song appeared on the album "Bat Out Of Hell 2" - Meat Loaf.
However, the first recording of the song was in 1986, and was used as the opening theme to a Japanese TV show. So I decided to find out something about that version.
As to why and how it exists? A fan replied to me to say that the song had originally been written as a third song for the song Streets Of Fire (1984), but was not recorded at the time. The theory is that maybe the songs for Streets Of Fire were made available to the people at Fuji TV at some point. That's how it ended up that Megumi Shiina recorded a version "Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young" as "Konya wa Angel" (今夜はＡＮＧＥＬ), and then "Good Girls Go To Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere)" as "Kanashimi wa Tsuzukanai" (悲しみは続かない).
(Gundam OST fans may recognise Megumi Shiina's name as the singer of the OP and ED themes to Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War In The Pocket)
A (somewhat jumbled) post of info about "Kanashimi wa Tsuzukanai" is after the "Read More" jump.
Originally posted 23/03/16 on: http://jimsteinman.com/messageboard/d.php?id=49266
This evening, I decided to dig up the internet a bit and I've actually found a bit of info on this - the Japanese version of Good Girls Go to Heaven by Megumi Shiina, called "Kanashimi wa tsuzukanai", which auto-translates to "Sadness will not last".
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lMZgNgNykk
The song was used as the opening theme to a school TV drama called "Kono ko dare no ko?", which translates to - "Whose child is this?". It ran from 22nd October 1986 to 25th March 1987, and had 22 episodes, each 54 minutes long, Wednesdays at 8pm.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLNLoODJRUo
It credits Jim right there at 2:02, in katakana. :)
There is an English wiki page about the series here:
http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Kono_Ko_Dare_no_Ko%3F
and a Japanese wiki page here.
I'm using machine translation here, so bear with me.
The drama was based on a manga called "Irodori no koro" by Tsukumo Mutsumi. I found on some other web page that the manga won an award for excellence in 1976.
Then the wiki page seems to say that despite this series getting very good TV ratings at the time, it's never been released as a DVD box set, probably due the heroine being subject to a shocking and graphic rape scene. Pretty heavy stuff for a show that was on weekly at 8pm.
Then it’s something about copyright and something that mentions the TV series Yanus no Kagami (or: “Mask of Janus”), and I don’t know why.
That series was the one that used Megumi Shiina’s Japanese version of TWIMBY as its opening theme.
(See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnvn0bNQXMw - really liking the brass section in this version)
Then blah blah blah, it describes the show and who was in it...
Then at the bottom,
Theme song
"Sadness will not last" song: Megumi Shiina ( TDK record )
Lyrics: Keiko Aso Composer: Jim Steinman Arrangement: Osamu Totsuka
(Original song "Good Girls Go To Heaven, Bad Girls Go Everywhere")
The lyricist and arranger appear to have worked on loads of other TV and anime music.
The person who wrote incidental music for the series was Shunsuke Kikuchi, who is actually really famous for his work. He did the background music for lots (and lots and lots and lots) of TV shows, including all of the original 1970s Kamen Riders, and Dragon Ball. And that song that’s at the end of the film “Kill Bill”. And about a hundred other things.
But coincidentally - he wrote incidental music for every single series where Jim’s compositions were used as an opening theme. Yanus no Kagami, School Wars (“HERO”), and School Wars 2 (“FIRE”).
Also found some really cheesy versions of the Kono ko & Yanus themes to mark the start of commercial breaks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7297QMIn6ig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVNyzEh-nco
--
On my travels through Japanese wikipedia, I also found out that in Japan, Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad was released under a Japanese name which means “66% of temptation”! Hahaha!
