Butter Field -- Make Me Smile

 

I've encountered a couple of videos on YouTube categorizing this particular song as either City Pop or Shibuya-kei. Personally, I think that it hews closer to the former category as a 90s version of the genre  umbrella (or I can just go for groovy pop) but you can all decide at your leisure.

Provided that memory is serving me correctly, I may have first experienced this one via One Step Communicate's "True Paradise". In all likelihood, it popped up on the right side of the YouTube screen while I was listening to that 1994 song. Butter Field was a duo consisting of singer-songwriter Yoshihiko Seki（関美彦）and former 80s aidoru and actress Yoko Kikuchi（菊地陽子）. Kikuchi only released a couple of singles in 1983 but she had a fairly good go in front of the camera for several years.

Butter Field, according to Kikuchi's J-Wiki profile, got its start around October 1993, culminating in an October 1995 mini-album, "Early Autumn". The first track is "Make Me Smile" which is indeed a nice slice of groove. Written and composed by Seki, there's something about the song that reminds me of some of the tunes that Original Love was concocting at around the same time. Soon after the album was released though, Butter Field broke up. It's also sad to note that a few years later in December 1999, Kikuchi would lose her battle with leukemia at the age of 32.