"Open cheek, stick tongue in..."
That was the first impression I got when I saw the music video for YMO's "Kimi ni Mune Kyun"(Making Your Heart Go Boing). And I'm sure that was what Ryuichi, Haruomi and Yukihiro were going for when they did both the song and the video.
Released in March 1983 as their 7th single, the song surprised me....and probably the rest of the technopop fans. Compared to their previous songs, "Kimi ni Mune Kyun", is the poppiest effort I'd ever heard from the band. And according to the J-Wiki article on the song, the lads wanted to doff off their image as the cool and cold robotic warriors just once and become ".....adorable old geezers..."(translated from the article). Judging from their choreography, I'd probably change the first word in the quote to "adorkable". And considering that at the time, the individual members were also penning a number of songs for aidoru singers, I guess they were also trying to get that cute soft image. But I have to admit that during the part of the video where they're chasing that frouncy French girl in the avant-garde forest, I am still doing involuntary cringes.
But you know, kinda like in the way that adding salt to watermelon ironically brings out the sweetness in the flesh, I think putting this song into their repertoire added that extra oomph. I can't explain why....it just does. And certainly, the citizenry of Japan thought so as well. "Kimi mi Mune Kyun" became the highest-ranking technopop single to debut on Oricon at No. 2....a record that YMO would retain until Perfume took it over in 2008 with "Love The World". It was also a track on the band's 6th album, "Naughty Boys", released in May 1983. "Naughty Boys" was the final YMO album to top the charts, and the last technopop album to hit No. 1 until once again the girls from Perfume did so with "Game" in 2008. Strangely enough, both album and single ended up at No. 28 on the yearly rankings. Ah, by the way, the band was responsible for the music, but the lyrics were by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）, Haruomi Hosono's old bandmate from Happy End.
Asako Toki（土岐麻子） gave her own groove-a-licious version of "Kimi ni Mune Kyun" along with cute little video as part of her 5th album, "Weekend Shuffle" in December 2006. The soft-singing artist has often given summery light covers of famous J-Pop/kayo kyoku tunes such as "Komugi Iro no Mermaid" by Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）.
A lot of other covers out there such as Miku Hatsune's （初音ミク）take.
And there is also Human League's take on the song. Gotta say that a match between YMO and Human League is one made in techno heaven!
March 14 2021: Also have a look at Ginger Root's own cover of the song!
Thanks J-Canuck for this post on YMO's 君に、胸キュン. I didn't realize that there were so many different covers of this song and was especially taken aback by the Human League cover. Got to admit it is very amusing hearing Philip Oakey trying to pronounce "Kimi Ni Mune Kyun" throughout the song. Of the covers, I think I like the 中田ヤスタカ/CAPSULE(カプセル) version the best (this would have been a perfect song for PERFUME). Too bad YMO didn't do more of these types of 「かわいいおじさんたち」 concept songs.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think the guys were just interested in doing that one-off "Yeah, we have a sense of humour, too" thing. But I also remember that they did their cover version of "Tighten Up" by Archie Bell & The Drells which was also quite tongue-in-cheek a year or two previously.
ReplyDeleteIndeed a lot of other artists paid tribute to the song. On J-Wiki, I found Noriyuki Makihara and even Miku Hatsune listed.
Does this means that Technopop isn't popular anymore after this album?
ReplyDeleteHi there. I think Sakamoto, Hosono and Takahashi were done with each other by that point, but no, technopop would continue to plow ahead. Other bands eventually picked up the baton such as PSY-S and then Denki Groove.
DeleteGood, but I read that Kimi ni mune kyun is the last Technopop song to be charted in no 1 on Oricon until Perfume's 2008 single Love the World charted at no 2 (or something like that).
DeleteYup, I think that's accurate. But there was always an audience for technopop of some size, even though there weren't such songs to hit the top of the charts until 2008.
DeleteI feel like it should've been explored more in the 80s and 90s.
Delete