Juice=Juice -- DOWNTOWN

 

Back in February, I put up the first article for the Hello Project aidoru group Juice=Juice and their KAN-penned "Pop Music"（ポップミュージック）and at the end, I stated that I was looking forward to their cover of Sugar Babe's "DOWNTOWN".

Well, that cover arrived on April 28th as the group's 14th single on CD and I got reminded of the fact from Juice=Juice's appearance tonight on "Uta Con"（うたコン）. 

Now, let's see...there is the 1975 original by Sugar Babe, the 1980 City Pop cover by EPO (which still remains my favourite version), an English-language cover by Haruko Kuwana（桑名晴子）on her 1982 album "Moonlight Island", a chip tune take by YMCK in 2008, the jazzy version by Maaya Sakamoto（坂本真綾）in 2010, and finally we have a contemporary aidoru group tackling "DOWNTOWN" this year. This version starts off pretty spacey and there seems to be a bit of a guitar riff giving a fond shoutout to the EPO cover before we get a "DOWNTOWN" that goes for the dance beats as each of the members hand off the mike to each other. 

This new "DOWNTOWN" has done pretty well on the charts by coming in at No. 3. Again, all compliments to lyricist Ginji Ito（伊藤銀次）and composer Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）. 46 years later, it's still fun to go "DOWNTOWN".