Miyoko Yoshimoto -- Groovy Glory

 

In late 2019, I made the delightful discovery that Momoko Kikuchi（菊池桃子）wasn't the only one of the latter-80s aidoru to embrace her inner City Pop. Kikuchi was a teen idol that I did get to know fairly well through her discography, but Miyoko Yoshimoto（芳本美代子）was someone that I knew mostly from going into the colourful pages of "Myojo"（明星）.

Yup, like Kikuchi, Yoshimoto did have her own purely aidoru tunes such as "Shiroi Basket Shoes" （白いバスケット・シューズ）but I was surprised when I found out about her July 1987 album "I'm The One" and got the distinct impression that she was going all urban contemporary through listening to her cool "Wanna Catch" as one of the tracks. I wrote that one up back at the time that I mentioned right off the top, and so I was rather disappointed when the usual video takedown had occurred. Mind you, I was able to resurrect it somewhat through a link to the Tower Records site which has short excerpts from "I'm The One".

But in the vain hopes of finding another video for "Wanna Catch", I did find instead another track from the album. "Groovy Glory" is a fun little city shuffle down the road lined with some of that caviar-and-champagne keyboard and horn pavement that has led to many a nice sophisticated pop work. Not surprisingly, the same tandem behind "Wanna Catch", lyricist Masami Tozawa（戸沢暢美）and composer Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）, was behind "Groovy Glory". Yoshimoto holds her own here although at certain high points, she almost gets a bit overwhelmed by the bright lights and big city.