Harumi Miyako -- Tokyo Serenade（東京セレナーデ）

 

The personal early reviews on Jme thus far have been that there's been a slight dearth of kayo programming with NHK's "Hayauta"（はやウタ）and "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新・BS日本のうた）not really showing up on the schedule. I'm perhaps not that surprised about the latter since that show is coming from NHK's satellite service and so may not have been licensed or whatnot for Jme.

However, I have tried to fill in the big gap by occasionally bringing in the YouTube videos involving enka and/or Mood Kayo songs, and there are plenty of those to go around thankfully. One nice thing about this is that I've been able to encounter songs that I had yet to see performed on shows like "Uta Con"（うたコン）. Case in point: Harumi Miyako's（都はるみ）"Tokyo Serenade", her 86th single from April 1982. 

Yup, I saw this being performed by Miyako this morning on one of those enka compilation videos, and the music by Asei Kobayashi（小林亜星）under Hiroshi Takada's（高田弘）arrangement rather brings in some of that sumptuousness of Tokyo nightlife among the corporate execs back in those high-flying 1980s. There is some of it which seems to refer to Frank Nagai and Kazuko Matsuo's（フランク永井・松尾和子）classic Mood Kayo "Tokyo Nightclub" （東京ナイトクラブ）but again Takada's flair with tying it all together also incorporates some of that urbane pop although I wouldn't classify "Tokyo Serenade" a City Pop tune. But I can say that it can qualify as a New Adult Music number.

Takashi Taka's（たかたかし）lyrics certainly talks up a typical Mood Kayo scenario as a couple gets ready for a night of hubba-hubba, and of course, the genre loves to describe the love affair, illicit or otherwise. "Tokyo Serenade" peaked at No. 39 on Oricon. I have to admit that among all the appearances of Miyako throughout the decades of her long and successful career, I've found her time in front of the camera in those early 1980s as the most attractive. There's just something about her straight shoulder-length hair and her makeup back then.