SPY -- Hello Mr. SPY

 

A few months ago, Nick Luscombe interviewed another City Pop chanteuse for his "City Pop Stories" series, and this time it was Nanako Sato（佐藤奈々子）! He did point out that kittenish and whispery jazz-pop voice of hers from the 1970s which may have influenced some other singers such as Miharu Koshi（越美晴）and perhaps even Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）to some extent. It's interesting though that Koshi and Ohnuki did make that turn in their musical stylings to a technopop/New Wave adventure going into the 1980s.

And so did Sato, if perhaps for just one album. But before that, she had to form a band called SPY with Kenji Iwakura（岩倉健二）, Yoshinori Toda（戸田吉則）and Hiroshi/Yu Nagata（永田裕）in 1980. Yup, that is indeed Sato on the cover for that one-and-only LP "SPY". Gone are her long and luxurious auburn tresses to be replaced with something a bit more post-punk spiky.

From "SPY" is "Hello Mr. SPY" which is that New Wavy bounce-fest and the crazy thing is that Sato's voice works well with the melodic dancing, vocal strutting and chirps. Indeed, although the music by Sato and Iwakura grabs that new genre of 80s music and runs with it, I couldn't help but feel that the underlying rhythm especially in the intro was still a final tether to the singer's City Pop days. Sato was behind the lyrics, too. I also see that there is at least one more track from "SPY" on YouTube, so I'll have to give that a listen as well.