Mariko Takahashi -- Shinkirou（蜃気楼）

 

As I've probably mentioned in the past, when I first really got into music at the turn of the decade going from the 1970s into the 1980s, my vocabulary for describing music wasn't all that bountiful. "Funky enka" was the best I had to describe City Pop at the time. I can now also add that my appreciation for a lot of music by Japanese singers that I had only just discovered back then hadn't been all that evolved either. It's kinda like when I was little and at the time, I couldn't stand pickles in my McDonalds hamburgers. Why would anyone put something so sour between meat and bun? Well, now I do appreciate pickles as something that provides another taste angle and cuts through the heavier meatiness of the burger.

For me, as I was learning to navigate through what I enjoyed in Japanese and Western pop music as a high school student, I was more drawn to the "sweet" and "meaty" stuff: the hit songs and/or those tunes that just had that irresistible hook. If I were to focus my analysis on the works of one particular singer, I can do so with singer-songwriter Mariko Takahashi（高橋真梨子）. I first fell for the former vocalist of Pedro & Capricious（ペドロ&カプリシャス）when I heard her on "Sounds of Japan" in the early 1980s, and it was the sophisticated pop balladry of songs like "My City Lights" and "...for you" and that amazing voice from my favourite album of "dear" that grabbed me hook line and sinker.

However, there were other songs of hers that didn't quite grab me at the time just because the 80s instruments seemed so pedestrian (as I used to hear them ad nauseum on television shows of the decade) and the arrangements were a little too out of touch. One such song was "Shinkirou" (Mirage) which first appeared on her September 1985 album "Mellow Lips" but also got its own single release in January 1986.

Of course, now that the 80s are decades back and with my musical anatomy getting further seasoned over the years, those synthesizers and arrangements don't sound as pedestrian or as weird as they once did, so I now have gotten a second wind as it were with something like "Shinkirou". At one point, I was ready to give this one the technopop label but I realized that the song wasn't about the novelty bloops and bleeps; it was more about getting this song out as a pretty dramatic pop or City Pop number that could have adorned any Japanese cop show. And in fact, "Shinkirou" was used as the theme song for Fuji-TV's "Natsuki Shizuko Suspense"（夏樹静子サスペンス...The Shizuko Natsuki Mysteries）.

Written by Goro Matsui（松井五郎）, composed by Toshio Kamei（亀井登志夫） and arranged by Keiichi Oku（奥慶一）, "Shinkirou" the single managed to reach No. 31 on Oricon. As crazy as it sounds, the song got an even deeper 80s revamping (including orchestral hits) when it was presented as one of the tracks on Takahashi's BEST compilation "Voice ~ Special Best" from March 1994.

By the way, it looks like I'm going to end up reviewing "Mellow Lips" piecemeal rather than in one article so you can also take a look at some of the other tracks: "Jun" (ジュン）, "New York, New York", and "Mayoi Bato no You ni" （迷い鳩のように）.