Yuki Okazaki -- Sweet Joke

Earlier today, I put "Breeze", the very first CD that I ever purchased from the "Light Mellow" series onto the stereo, and re-acquainted myself with some of the pleasant sounds of the City Pop/AOR genres.

One of the sources of the pleasant sounds on "Breeze" is "Sweet Joke" by actress/singer Yuki Okazaki（岡崎友紀）. Her most famous tune is the swinging 1960s pop "Do You Remember Me?" from 1980 as she started to perform material that was far away from her aidoru beginnings in the 1970s.

Apparently, "So Many Friends" , her album from 1981 (with a darn sexy cover) was that nice veer from her teenybopper days as she tackled some of that urban contemporary stuff. "Sweet Joke" which was the second track on the album sounds like the equivalent of a mug of hot chocolate with a shot of Kahlua for good measure to me. The song has got that nice anchor of the piano with some synthesizer fluttering overhead, and of course, one can't forget the saxophone. Guitarist on the song, Kenji Iwakura（岩倉健二）was also responsible for the melody while Okazaki herself took care of the lyrics relating some possibly mock frustration at her friend for not making any moves on her. Actually, Okazaki would wed Iwakura some years later for her second marriage.