Toshiki Kadomatsu -- Lonely Goofey

 

Look, the first time I saw this title by Toshiki Kadomatsu（角松敏生）, I could only think of a Disney character in a morose mood.

"Lonely Goofey" (and yes, I realize that the Disney character has a slightly different spelling in his name) is the B-side to Kadomatsu's 3rd single from April 1983, "Sky High". I read the blurb that the song is about a surfer who's down in the dumps so he's hanging ten with a hang-dog expression, so I tried to find out what that second word in the title was referring to. The closest I got was the surfing term goofy-footed which describes a surfer who surfs with their right foot forward; not sure if that is a bad thing or not.

Regardless, this Kadomatsu-penned song has a 1950s doo-wop melody transplanted into a 1980s City Pop/J-AOR arrangement. Kadomatsu came up with this non-album entry from his own images of hitting the waves and dedicated it  to his own surfing buddy. The mention of September in his lyrics kinda hints at the possibility of a broken romance. Of course, that's too bad but you can't beat the soulful melody.