Ginji Ito -- Heart and Soul

 

Here I was about to start the Urban Contemporary Friday round of songs on KKP with Ginji Ito's（伊藤銀次） percolating "Cherry Night", only to find out at the last minute that I had already provided an article about this track from his 1986 album "Get Happy" back in 2023, almost exactly four years ago. Oh, dopey me!😵

It took some scrolling but I was able to find something Ito and City Pop and it's from the album that followed "Get Happy", his 1987 "Nature Boy". "Heart and Soul" had the same songwriters: composer Ito and lyricist Youta Yumeno（夢野よう太）, but this time, the result isn't overcaffeinated and happy. Instead, it's a more sultry and soulful combination on the side of sophisticated pop, which was a genre that was getting added to the City Pop mix in the late 1980s. Not sure if the song included real horns or synth horns, but hey it's all good.