Seeing Noriko Miyamoto（宮本典子）in the pages of "Japanese City Pop" all these years and listening to her "Silver Rain" from her 1981 album "New Romance", I had been assuming it was all about the R&B and City Pop with her.
However, I have just come across "Zebra" and it's about as far away from the urban contemporary sounds of Tokyo and thumpy bass as a song can get. With Yukihiro Takahashi's（高橋幸宏）music and Chris Mosdell's lyrics, Miyamoto was definitely going for a New Wave feeling here. Listening to the song, I immediately thought Blondie and "Heart of Glass". Even Mimi's vocals were not so much soulful as they were sexy and spacy at the same time.
The amazing thing is that like "Silver Rain", "Zebra" comes from the same album "New Romance". Now I am intrigued about getting this CD as well...if it is on the market place. With "Zebra", I could imagine that the album could have been called "New Romantic".
Hi! This is an incredible page, I love J-Pop, maybe not as much as you, but there are fantastic songs and artist many people doesn't know in this part of the music industry, and I'm glad people shares their japanese music tastes! Thanks so much for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI only know few artists, and I can't speak Japanese, so I'm terrible at finding information sometimes. Can I ask you for help?! There's a song I really like and I have no idea of the name and artist or proyect. May be you could take a look if you know the name of the song or artist! You can find it on my Youtube channel Gorremie, the last video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te9zBVOjgao
Hi, Hugo. Good to meet you and thanks very much for your comments. I'm glad to be able to meet up with folks who also share my interest in Japanese music.
DeleteI listened to your video and I have to confess that I don't recognize the song or the video but what I can do is put out an "all-points bulletin" for the song on the blog and see if anyone else who reads it can recognize the song. Let's keep our fingers crossed!