Swingout Sister -- Breakout

 

Here I was, prepping to put up my latest Reminiscings of Youth article for one of my favourite songs from the 1980s, and I just remembered that I had previously gushed all about Swingout Sister's "Breakout" way back in the autumn of 2015. Yup, Corinne Drewry and her group already has representation on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" because they had a song that became a theme song for a moody J-Drama on TBS back in 1996. "You Are Not Here" was a lovely ballad to fit the mood but any road leading to that song blog-wise had to go through the even more marvelous "Breakout".

Well, there's no need for me to write about how I first encountered "Breakout", one of the prime examples of that classy and cool genre known as sophisti-pop, since that's already out on my article for "You Are Not Here", but what I didn't mention there was that I've got the remix version LP. However, I don't know where it disappeared to.😨 Thank the heavens for YouTube to provide me with the memories, though (I'll still be searching).

The new angle that I can provide here in this ROY article is that with Swingout Sister's big popularity in Japan (heck, Softbank made a really spiffy ad with a silent Cameron Diaz to "Breakout" as you can see at the top), I think it also had some effect on the urban contemporary music scene in the nation back in those Bubble 80s. Last week, if you remember, I came up with the previous ROY about Steely Dan's "Peg" (1977) and how Fagen & Becker managed to influence so many of those Japanese songwriters with their groovy City Pop creations going into the 1980s.

Well, I think Swingout Sister and some other sophisti-pop acts helped out in carving their own territory in that huge magical cloud of Japanese City Pop in the latter half of that decade. Perhaps the early City Pop influenced by Steely Dan, the Doobie Brothers and Airplay had that general feeling of absorbing that fine urban atmosphere (being aware of the smog, though) while strolling the concrete sidewalks, but songs like "Breakout" may have inspired some of those same artists (singers and songwriters alike) to go for a jazzier and brassier City Pop with what I've called the champagne-and-caviar synths while still retaining the soulfulness. This was about being more active in the city: painting the town red including some fine dining in Akasaka and all that dancing in Roppongi. A couple of songs that have immediately come to mind are Junko Ohashi's（大橋純子）"Nemurenai Diamond"（眠れないダイアモンド）and Masayuki Suzuki's（鈴木雅之）"Wakare no Machi"（別れの街）from those late 80s.

I really ought to make up a Venn diagram for City Pop someday. It would be the first time since junior high school that I've made one; I guess those things actually have some applied use after all. Regardless, although "Breakout" was released in 1986, I couldn't track down in which month it came out but I did find out that the Swingout Sister hit reached No. 1 on US Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart in November 1987, according to its webpage, so I will go with that to provide the Top 3 Oricon singles for that period.

1. Yukari Morikawa -- SHOW ME

2. Seiko Matsuda -- Pearl-White Eve

3. Akina Nakamori -- Nanpasen （難破船）