Credits

I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Friday, November 6, 2020

Yuko Kawai -- Television Trip(テレビジョン・トリップ)


Yuko Kawai(河合夕子)is a musician-singer who I first found out about back in the summer of 2013 and then I wrote about her debut single "Tokyo-tique Girl" (東京チーク・ガール)from 1982. She cut quite a striking figure from her fashion sense along with her glasses, frizzy hair and the wide smile.

Judging from some of the other tracks on her 1982 debut album "Little Tokyo"(リトル・トウキョウ), I think Kawai had quite the thing for successfully merging a couple of genres that were hot back in those days almost 40 years ago (ouch!): City Pop and 50s pop.

The first track, for example, is "Television Trip" which was created by Kawai with co-lyricist duties given to Masao Urino(売野政男). Launching with a Doobie Brothers piano riff and the shoutout of the actual title as if it were a gloriously cheerful and harmonious television/radio announcement of the call letters, it weaves some happy doo-wop and wraps it around that Doobies riff as Kawai sounds like she's describing her joy of surfing the channels with her remote (whether it was still corded or not, I'm not quite sure). No mention of whether the song was actually used in television commercials.

Incidentally, "Tokyo-tique Girl" is also a part of "Little Tokyo" which you can hear at 17:16 in the above video.

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