YAPOOS -- Barbara Sexeroid（バーバラ・セクサロイド）

 

With all of the talk on the song-and-dance group Atarashii Gakko no Leaders (I'm wondering if they will be invited to the Kohaku Utagassen again in a couple of weeks), KKP friend and writer JTM and I were thinking that main vocalist Suzuka with her Wild Child ways would be the one to break out solo first. I can easily imagine her to be the Reiwa era version of Jun Togawa（戸川純）tackling the musical and grand theatrical in one fell swoop.

It's been a long while since I posted anything by Togawa incidentally, so I figure it is time to get this wild child of the 1980s back up. Up to now, I've covered some of her material under her own name but from 1987, she became identified with her new band YAPOOS, and in December of that year, they released their debut album "YAPOOS Keikaku"（ヤプーズ計画...The YAPOOS Plan）. And from that album, the first track was "Barbara Sexeroid", a jangly and jazzy technopop tune with hints of 80s New Wave and 60s secret agent soundtrack. The title character sounds almost like a heroic character with her own show as she boasts her android programming in multiple techniques and a broad way of pleasuring (and yes, I know I'm paraphrasing Lieutenant Commander Data whose TV show premiered only a few months before the release of this album).

Togawa came up with the lyrics while Yoichiro Yoshikawa（吉川洋一郎）came up with the melody. The website "Jun Togawa Forever" did come up with its own brief description of "Barbara Sexeroid", and apparently the song was created to convey the image of what YAPOOS was all about.