Yutaka Kimura Speaks ~ Japanese City Pop Masterpieces 100: MANNA -- Yellow Magic Carnival (single version)

 

Hi, J-Canuck here! I knew that MANNA's take on "Yellow Magic Carnival" was a cover of the tropical original by Tin Pan Alley. What I hadn't known was that Mariko Iwasawa's（岩沢真利子）cover actually consisted of two versions: the one which was put in my own 2015 article was the disco/City Pop March 1979 single (the above video) as arranged by Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）, and then the album version in her "Chabako Trick" from the same year (the video is at the bottom) was a slightly calmer pop or New Music take.

Number: 010

Lyricist/Composer: Haruomi Hosono

Arranger: Shigeru Suzuki

From her 1979 single: "Yellow Magic Carnival"

Here is a "legendary" vestige of the music group that Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）had planned to create with (drummer) Tatsuo Hayashi（林立夫）and MANNA before the formation of Yellow Magic Orchestra. "Yellow Magic Carnival" is a beefy ballad* that has aroused interest as the missing link between Tin Pan Alley and YMO which is even more intriguing thanks to MANNA's exotic vocals. The album version was arranged by Yu Imai（今井裕）which is closer to how Hosono had imagined it, but this single version is showy and a has a high level of City Pop flavour.

*The source has Kimura describing the song as a "chunky ballad" （チャンキー・バラッド）which I could only speculate at. So I went with "beefy".

The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).