Junko Yagami -- Jealous

It's been a pretty banner day in terms of this blog and in my overall enjoyment of Japanese music. There's been my discovery via Marcos' entry of his Special Selection 2016 of Perfume's "Cosmic Explorer" which has a beefed-up improvement of the trio's sound.

Then I ran into Junko Yagami's（八神純子）"Jealous" tonight. A track from her 1983 album "Lonely Girl", it's about as smooth as some of the nicest Brown Cow cocktails (all that Kahlua and cream) I've had in my time in Japan. I would say cognac but since I've never sipped on the stuff, I couldn't really use that analogy.

Composed by Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）and co-written by Yamakawa and Yagami herself, the singer goes a bit more coquettish on this one compared to some of her past hits which have had her exercising that sonic boom of a voice. And then Yamakawa weaves some cool City Pop that sounds quite a lot like some of my favourite R&B-pop tunes by Lionel Richie and James Ingram. In fact, I've already heard it twice and listening to it tonight, I thought that this particular outing by Yagami bridges the City Pop at the early part of the 1980s with the keyboard arrangement and the champagne City Pop performed by other female singers in the later part of the decade especially with the backup vocal arrangement.

Now, I'm kinda wondering about grabbing "Lonely Girl" as well. There are a couple of other good tracks: the title track and "Love Supreme", her entry into the "Space Cruiser Yamato" franchise.