Yuko Ohtaki -- Yokohama Ni-juu-yo-ji（YOKOHAMA 24時）/Yokohama Headlight（YOKOHAMA・ヘッドライト）

 

I had the A-side of Yuko Ohtaki's（大滝裕子）August 1980 3rd single "Yokohama Ni-juu-yo-ji" (Yokohama Midnight) on the backlog for a while and when I checked out her J-Wiki article for any details, I discovered that she and the other powers-that-be behind the single made both sides a Yokohama double whammy. Not that I would ever complain since I do love the bayside city and usually when I come across a song with Yokohama in the title, I expect some City Pop vibes.

Well, my assumption batted .500. Side A "Yokohama Ni-juu-yo-ji" surprised me at first with some synthesizer bloppiness. In fact, I'd say that the song is not a City Pop tune at all but something more along the lines of New Wave (although not on YMO technopop levels) with some rock guitar thrown in. Images of Blondie and some of those bands from the early 1980s started dancing around in my head. Though the single was released in August, it had already found existence through Ohtaki's one-and-only album "Million Kiss"（ミリオン・キス）which came out earlier in March of that year. Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）was behind the lyrics while Issei Okamoto（岡本一生）and Akira Inoue（井上鑑）handled music and arrangement respectively.

The B-side, "Yokohama Headlight", is also a track on "Million Kiss". Okamoto and Inoue were also responsible for the shaping of its melody while Chinfa Kan（康珍化）provided the lyrics, and this time, that .500 assumption of City Pop goodness is because of this particular song which has the genre tropes through the rhythm and instrumentation. And interestingly enough, I think that "Yokohama Headlight" is somewhat transitional in that there is that 1970s City Pop flute work in there while the keyboards and certain chords are more reminiscent of the urban contemporary of the early 1980s. For both songs, it's noteworthy that the title has the city name in romaji rather than its kanji of 「横浜」. I can only speculate that Ohtaki and her producers may have wanted to emphasize that these sides were showing off the modern Western pop elements.

Finally, to wrap up, the other notable thing is the look of Ohtaki herself. For the "Million Kiss" album cover, she looks like a cool tomboyish high school kid on holiday while on the cover for the "Yokohama Ni-juu-yo-ji" single, Ohtaki appears as if she should be manning the announcer's desk at a television station.