Akiko Wada -- Park Avenue 7 PM

 

It's been over twenty years since I last set foot in The Big Apple. I was in New York City twice, the first time in 1993 and then I was there in 2001. Even as someone from the largest city in Canada, it's still an eye-opening experience walking through the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn. I definitely remember walking along Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue but I'm not 100% certain whether I did traipse along the famous Park Avenue. At this point, my only touchstones with one of the most expensive streets on the planet are through the game Monopoly and, being the "Kayo Kyoku Plus" writer, EPO's "Park Ave. 1981".

Well, I've gained another touchstone with the avenue and it was through writing B.B. Queens' "Yume no End wa Itsumo Mezamashi!"（夢のENDはいつも目覚まし!）. Veteran songwriter and producer Daiko Nagato（長戸大幸）provided the lyrics for that happy-go-lucky tune but I saw this song on the right side of YouTube while I was listening to B.B. Queens and discovered that this was given the melody by Nagato. Considering that I've known Nagato mostly for his 90s happy rock and pop stuff, this was indeed a discovery.

This is the urbane City Pop of "Park Avenue 7 PM", a track on Akiko Wada's（和田アキ子）1978 album of the same name, and I have already written about one other song on the album, "Sayonara wo Iwanaide"（さよならを言わないで）which actually follows the title track. Indeed, "Park Avenue 7 PM" might be another one of those City Pop treasures that not many of the genre's fans know about for now. With lyrics by Sachiko Murata（村田さち子）, it's a silky and sophisticated Mancini-esque arrangement which would befit a walk down the actual Park Avenue with a Holly Golightly sighting. Wada, who I now believe can pretty much anything in the pop genre from City Pop to synthpop, sings this in an atypically subdued and tender tone.