I kept seeing this Kyoko Koizumi（小泉今日子）album "Today's Girl" up on the racks at Wah Yueh, the old Chinatown record store that I used to frequent as a university student back in the 1980s. I never splurged the cash on it, so my loss.
Well, at least, I can capture some lost glory thanks to YouTube. One track on Kyon-Kyon's February 1985 top-ranking 6th album is "Yokosuka Daydream" which is the final track on Side A, given the nickname of "Funny Face" as opposed to Side B's "Serious Face". When it comes to any song with the seaside city of Yokosuka in the title, I always think of Momoe Yamaguchi's（山口百恵）"Yokosuka Story"（横須賀ストーリー）from around a decade prior.
Unlike the Momoe classic though where the aidoru of the 1970s is handwringing over a certain love, Kyon-Kyon seems to be having some vicarious fun playing hard to get at the expense of her boyfriend when he gets a little serious in the love department while in the titular city. But that was her image back then as the naughty pixie aidoru. Yukinojo Mori（森雪之丞）was responsible for the lyrics while Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）and Shiro Sagisu（鷺巣詩郎）took care of the rapid-fire synth-and-string melody and arrangement respectively.
This isn't quite what I think of when I think of pure city pop, and it isn't ordinary cute-idol kayō either. It's somewhere between:
ReplyDeleteidol kayō → electropop/techno-kayō → sophisticated mid-'80s urban pop. The rhythm track is conspicuously electronic, with the very 1984–85 Simmons-style electronic-drum sound. On top of that is Hayashi's smooth melodic writing and Sagisu's bright synthesizer-heavy arrangement. Koizumi's performance also suits the song unusually well. She doesn't sing it as a dramatic adult ballad. There is still a deliberately youthful, slightly cheeky quality in the verses, especially around the girl's attempts to hide how pleased she is. Then the chorus opens up melodically and becomes much more openly romantic.
That contrast—playful girl in the verse / genuinely lovestruck young woman in the chorus—fits the concept of the Today's Girl album rather nicely.
Never really thought of it as City Pop...just the common synth-driven aidoru tune that was popular back in the day.
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