Namie Amuro -- New Look

 

I was sparked to write this article from a commenter under yesterday's Pizzicato Five "Twiggy, Twiggy" article. The person pointed out that the model Twiggy often brought back memories of a music video for a certain Namie Amuro（安室奈美恵）song from years ago.

And yep, looking at that video above, I can certainly agree because it seems to celebrate the entire time and milieu when Twiggy was queen...back in those late 1960s. Now, my time to enjoy the oeuvre of Ms. Amuro was really back when I had arrived in Japan to start my second tour of duty as an English teacher at the end of 1994. Amuro was the first singing star that I had encountered then via television commercials and of course, she did become not just a huge pop superstar but a pop cultural diva of legend as well. However, my time picking up those CD singles of her didn't go too much longer. I think after buying a copy of "Can You Celebrate?", that was about the length of my fandom for her since she started heading into the direction of hip-pop, a genre that I wasn't a big fan of.

Still, from time to time in the years since, she would pop up with another big single. One that did catch my eye although it wasn't enough for me to buy the single was the song that yesterday's commenter had alluded to. "New Look" was the first track on Amuro's 34th single from March 2008, "60s 70s 80s". The video was a love letter to all things cool and swinging 60s in a way that would have had Austin Powers salivating. And what I hadn't known at the time regarding "New Look" was that the song created by michico and T. Kura had been overlaid onto the original arrangement for Diana Ross & The Supremes' "Baby Love" from 1964. In fact, the songwriters for the original song have been included in the songwriting credits: Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland, and Eddie Holland. Interestingly enough, "Baby Love" is one of the first pop songs that got into my head as a baby.

Although that music video stayed within my memory, I ended up forgetting the song title and with so many singles in Amuro's discography, I gave up any search for what the song was. Thankfully, the commenter reminded me. The single "60s 70s 80s" hit No. 1 on Oricon and ended the year as the 18th-ranked single.