SOAP -- Roommate（ルームメイト）

I was rather surprised that this chorus group SOAP hadn't appeared in my City Pop bible "Japanese City Pop" since their contemporaries, Hi-Fi Set（ハイ・ファイ・セット）and Circus（サーカス）, were listed. My discovery of them was purely under the aegis of YouTube and later on through the "Light Mellow" series of CDs.

Speaking of that series, "Roommate", originally the B-side to SOAP's 1981 single "Shinjuku Transfer", has gotten its first appearance on a CD via the "Beams" album in the "Light Mellow" catalog (apparently the originating album of "Harmotopia", their lone album, has yet to transition from LP to CD). It's a breezy and sunny day-in-the-life number about a couple for whom the song title is a bit of an understatement seemingly. The lyrics by Mami Kikuchi（菊池真美）have plenty of katakana household terms, perhaps referring to the breezy urban lifestyle the couple has. Maybe "Roommate" is the theme song for the yuppie life in Japan?

The title for that single "Shinjuku Transfer" is no accident since SOAP indeed does have that Manhattan Transfer influence. Moreover, according to the liner notes description of this particular song in "Beams", "Roommate" had been inspired by the Manhattan Transfer's cover of an instrumental tune by the fusion band Spyro Gyra.

SOAP consisted of Hisae Hasegawa（長谷川久恵）, Keiko Arisawa（有澤圭子）, Hideki Matsubara（松原秀樹）and Takanori Arisawa（有澤孝紀）. And indeed, Keiko and Takanori were married to each other. In fact, the latter was the one who came up with the melody for "Roommate". Another interesting tidbit about the composer was that he later created a lot of background music for anime and commercials, including several compositions for the "Sailor Moon" soundtracks which won him JASRAC international awards in 1998, 2000 and 2001 according to his J-Wiki article. Sadly, he passed away at the age of 54 in 2005.