Make Me a Star

T-Square's "Make Me a Star" is Japanese fusion at its most sunlit and unashamedly optimistic. The arrangement is immaculate in that late-Showa studio way — every instrument perfectly placed, chorused electric guitar tracing bright lines, digital keyboards laying down glassy pads, and a rhythm section that swings with a lightness rarely allowed in Western jazz-rock. The saxophone or lead synth carries the melody like a vocalist would, phrasing with actual breath and rubato, and the whole piece is built as a series of hooks rather than a solo vehicle — chorus, restatement, a controlled break for improvisation, and back. Emotionally it's aspiration without anxiety: ambition rendered as brightness, not struggle, which is very much the mood of Japan's bubble-era instrumental music. T-Square, alongside Casiopea, defined this idiom, and it later became foundational to city pop's international rediscovery and to whole genres of game and anime scoring. There's no lyric, so the essence lives in that ascending motif — the phrase that keeps climbing. Best heard driving in daylight with the windows down, or as work music that raises your pulse without demanding attention. It's a song that believes things will turn out well, and it's persuasive about it.