Junko Yagami -- Thank You for the Party

 

Time to go from the optimistic and breezy morning side of City Pop into the sexier and more jaded night, so let us go with some Junko Yagami（八神純子）in her downtown R&B phase of the late 1980s.

Her "Thank You for the Party", the first track for her 11th studio album "Truth Hurts" from November 1987, is a frenetically-paced dancing R&B number from Los Angeles. The singer-songwriter's lyrics can pretty much describe some of the feelings that Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）was putting forth in her late 1970s hits through her seen-it-all, done-it-all persona, except that it's probably on the other side of the Pacific. Lasting romance doesn't really exist in the City of Angels; it's all a series of mutually beneficial one-night stands starting from the various discos in town...and apparently, it's all good.

Perhaps the story is somewhat cynical but I can't deny Yagami's music and those reliably wonderful vocals of hers. Her husband, John Stanley, is having fun on percussion, and I guess those are synthesizers masquerading as the tight horns according to the liner notes on "Truth Hurts". The 80s must have been one heck of a time down in California.