The three Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）songs that I remember hearing first before I became a true-blue fan of the musician were "Your Eyes", "Christmas Eve" and "Endless Game". It wouldn't be some time later until I realized how much of a king of City Pop and AOR he turned out to be when I began to explore his material from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s at least.
One of the first Tats albums that I bought was "Melodies" originally released in June 1983, and the reason was that it had "Christmas Eve" on it, but leading off the album was his "Kanashimi no Jody" (Sad Jody). My first reaction to it was "Man, he really likes those Beach Boys, doesn't he?". That arrangement, his falsetto vocals, that sensation of summer...the song could have recreated a 1960s Venice Beach at dusk faster and better than any starship holodeck.
Indeed, according to the writeup at J-Wiki for "Melodies", Yamashita wanted to weave this song with a retro feeling of love lost at the end of summer. Another piece of music information that I gleaned from the description of "Kanashimi no Jody" was that the bass drum riff was influenced by his favourite drummer, the late Hal Blaine, a man who had also worked with the Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra and the Carpenters.
Guess I'm smart (inside Tats joke)...since "Melodies" has become one of Yamashita's most well-regarded albums, hitting the top spot on Oricon and ending up as the 7th-ranked album for 1983.
A year later, Yamashita included an English-language version of the song under the title "Jody" in his "Big Wave" album which hit No. 2 on the charts.
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