As for Kusunose, he started off as an apprentice for Shuichi "Ponta" Murakami during his student years and later became a singer for Masamichi Sugi's backing chorus group The Dreamers. He released his first solo album as a singer-songwriter, "Takarajima" (宝島), in 1986. I don't have the Japanese City Pop book with me at the moment, but I distinctly remember the review for "Takarajima" describing him as having pop sensibility that matches that of Happy End and Tatsuro Yamashita. Though in my opinion he may not have the overall genius of those two acts, he has produced some mighty enjoyable tunes. I believe his most well-known hit is "Hottokenai yo" from 1991. After his first two albums he moved away from straight City Pop towards the airy version of it, but the roots still remained there as you can hear in "Eien no Yakusoku". He hasn't recorded anything since 2001 and instead decided to focus on his vocal training studio Breavo-para. I did, however, watch a recent video of him performing "Hottokenai yo" in a concert and was amazed at how well he preserved that voice of his over the years despite aging quite a bit on the outside.
I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
Monday, July 8, 2013
Seishiro Kusunose -- Eien no Yakusoku (永遠の約束)
As for Kusunose, he started off as an apprentice for Shuichi "Ponta" Murakami during his student years and later became a singer for Masamichi Sugi's backing chorus group The Dreamers. He released his first solo album as a singer-songwriter, "Takarajima" (宝島), in 1986. I don't have the Japanese City Pop book with me at the moment, but I distinctly remember the review for "Takarajima" describing him as having pop sensibility that matches that of Happy End and Tatsuro Yamashita. Though in my opinion he may not have the overall genius of those two acts, he has produced some mighty enjoyable tunes. I believe his most well-known hit is "Hottokenai yo" from 1991. After his first two albums he moved away from straight City Pop towards the airy version of it, but the roots still remained there as you can hear in "Eien no Yakusoku". He hasn't recorded anything since 2001 and instead decided to focus on his vocal training studio Breavo-para. I did, however, watch a recent video of him performing "Hottokenai yo" in a concert and was amazed at how well he preserved that voice of his over the years despite aging quite a bit on the outside.
Labels:
1990,
City Pop,
Pop,
Seishiro Kusunose,
Single
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Good golly, nikala! This is a keeper. I'm such a sucker for a good horn section that I think Jerry Hey should get honourary Japanese citizenship. Not sure if he was involved in this song by Kusunose, but it has that Hey sound.
ReplyDeleteKusunose just sounds like Yamashita's younger brother. Even though it was made in 1990, this song takes me back to Yamashita's early 80s days.