Yutaka Kimura Speaks: Yasuhiro Abe （安部恭弘）

 

There is no rarer artist who has continued to release music of such high quality consistently since his debut as Yasuhiro Abe.

As well, his skill as a songwriter is considerable. One good example to prove this is "September Valentine"（セプテンバー・バレンタイン）, which Abe himself performed at the Yamaha Popular Song Contest in 1977 and was his notable debut as a songwriter when Yukio Sasaki（佐々木幸男）recorded it as a single. It's an outstanding and wonderful ballad, noteworthy for its beautiful melody, and when considering that 1977 was the golden age of folk and New Music in the music world, it could be said that the song was even a little too sophisticated for its time. At that time, Ryo Aska（飛鳥涼）once listened to "September Valentine" out of the blue on the radio and marveled at how much it stood out. Abe back then was often creating songs with a stylish bossa nova touch, and even since his amateur days, he'd already been making tunes that were totally extraordinary ("Gosenshi", which he provided to Mariya Takeuchi, also fell into this category). Thinking along those lines, one can be convinced by the high level of perfection that wouldn't normally be possible with a newbie when it comes to his debut album "Hold Me Tight".

While his second album "Moderato" and his third album "Slit" were rooted in 60s pop music including The Beatles, Abe envisioned Gino Vannelli's "Nightwalker" when he came up with one of his early hits "Irene" (heard on "Slit"), which can be heard as Abe's own interpretation of David Foster, and as such, his smart approach to the AOR of that time and his stylish expressionism of "urban mellowness" can be said to define "Yasuhiro Abe Pop". His special skill with chorus and harmony and his unwillingness to compromise on the little details mean that we can continue to look forward to high quality music from him at his own pace.

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