Junko Ohashi -- Dancin'

Nope, this one isn't from her "Hot Life" album from 1980. This one actually has a different aesthetic but still well within her ballpark of City Pop.

It's been quite the ride with Junko Ohashi（大橋純子）. Over the years, I've heard various slants on her brand of urban contemporary whether it be the sweet sunset sounds of her 1974 "Itsumo"（いつも）, her classic "Telephone Number" from 1983, and then the 1988 champagne-and-caviar sophisti-pop of "Nemurenai Diamond" (眠れないダイアモンド）.

Now, with "Dancin'", there is another angle here; in this case, Ohashi has merged a lot of dance-funk from the other side of the Pacific into it, along with all-English lyrics. It's all so cool (and rather reminiscent of Hitomi Tohyama), and I may have to ask some of my more knowledgeable commenters about the influences here. As such, I'm hearing quite a bit of Dazz Band but there are some of those chord changes that have me thinking of other artists but for the life of me, I can't identify them. Plus, when she goes into the chorus and sings out "I got dancin' in my feet", images of Jamiroquai flood in.

According to the JASRAC database, the words and music of "Dancin'" were handled by Mark A. Gray (not to be confused with the late country music star). The song itself was placed onto two albums which were released at about the same time: Ohashi's original album "Point Zero" and her BEST album "Magical", both of which were released in 1983.