Mariko Takahashi -- Good Luck Sorry

 

I'm always open to a Mariko Takahashi（高橋真梨子）song especially in the late 1970s and early 1980s when she was dabbling in City Pop. This is especially true when it's sometimes difficult to find a lot of her discography on YouTube so I'm grateful to the uploader monochrome.

Takahashi fairly belts it out on "Good Luck Sorry", three words that according to her aren't the most pleasant to hear in a relationship since they usually signify the end of one. Sure enough, there is a most elegant breakup taking place over glasses of wine and presumably some fine dining, but the demise of a romance is inevitably in sight. A short-and-sweet track from her 1981 album "Lovendow", this was written by Akira Ohtsu（大津あきら）and composed by Kisaburo Suzuki（鈴木キサブロ）.

It's got that down-home City Pop flavour and when I write that, I mean that the song doesn't have that immediately noticeable influence from outside of Japan such as Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers or any of the West Coast AOR bands. I realize that the whole genre is about taking in those overseas influences of jazz, disco and the like, but songs like "Good Luck Sorry" just strike me as having enough of a made-in-Japan arrangement that they seem to stand out almost as a sub-genre of its own. I couldn't find out who was in the band but my compliments go to the wailing electric guitarist (which seems to have been a Kisaburo element back in those days) and the rollicking piano which I can admit reminds me of some of the arrangements that I've heard with The Manhattan Transfer and George Benson at around the same time.

"Good Luck Sorry" shares track space with the cool and mellow "Yoake no Lullaby"（夜明けのララバイ）on "Lovendow". I always appreciate a Mariko Takahashi album back in her early days especially.