PAO -- Loving You

 

It's been a while since I put up a PAO song so I've decided to go with "Loving You" from their one-and-only 1980 "YOU" album. 

As I mentioned in PAO's very first article back in 2018 for another track on "YOU", "We'll Celebrate Tonight", my first listen to the album didn't yield a bumper crop of amazing results because I'd thought that the trio were trying a little too much to emulate the Manhattan Transfer's brand of urban contemporary pop at around the same time. It took a few more rounds on the CD player before the efforts by Sabine Marianne Kaneko（サビーネ金子）, Fumiko Miyazaki（宮崎文子）and Yoshikazu Miura（三浦義和）finally began to work themselves positively into my brain. 

With "Loving You", this is definitely not in the Manhattan Transfer's territory of AOR. Written and composed by PAO vocalist Kaneko and arranged by multi-instrumentalist Satoshi Nakamura（中村哲）, who was also handling the keyboards and sax on "YOU", this is some sunny funk in the big city supported by Miyazaki's and Miura's chorus and some tight horns. Of course, the boppy bass has to be included. "Loving You" has gradually entered the good sides of my brain to the point that listening to the song has gotten me to think about the old lovely walks through West Shinjuku among all of those skyscrapers and hotels.