Heartbreakers -- Unknown Title

 

This post is gonna be an interesting one. It's not quite an All-Points Bulletin because we know who the subjects are and it's possible that the song here may have never gotten an official title.

KKP commenter YMOfan04 put me onto this mystery about ten days ago when she left some information under the article for dynamic duo BaBe's "She has a dream". Tomoko Kondo（近藤智子）and Yukari Nikaido（二階堂ゆかり）were a prior incarnation known as Heartbreakers（ハートブレイカーズ）paired up with Saori Saito（斉藤さおり）in the mid-1980s, something that I mentioned in Saito's own article for "Yokogao"（横顔）.

According to YMOfan04's information, even earlier than Saito and Heartbreakers, Kondo and Nikaido had been part of choreographer Hajime Ichinomiya's（一の宮はじめ ジャズダンスアカデミー）Jazz Dance Academy where they first met. In 1984, the pair were given the name Breakers（ブレイカーズ） after which they appeared in a movie called "The Audition" which was released in November of that year. Almost a year later, another young lady, Mariko Saeki（佐伯万里子）, who had also been in the movie, joined Kondo and Nikaido to form a trio Heartbreakers which participated in various events such as school festivals and concerts. Several months later, apparently there was a switch in which Saeki had left and Saito came in.

In any case, out of that original Heartbreakers with Saeki came the above song. Even the YouTuber behind the posting of the song has no idea about what the title is, so we're both wondering aloud. In any case, it is a pop/rock number whose arrangement reminds me of some of the early Minako Honda（本田美奈子）discography and a number of background songs in Hollywood TV shows and movies of that time. If anyone has insights about the song, please let us know.

BaBe -- She has a dream

BaBe may have had a brief time in the spotlight as singing duos go and the baton was passed over to Wink from the late 1980s into the early 1990s, but Tomoko Kondo（近藤智子）and Yukari Nikaido（二階堂ゆかり）left a still-recognizable and memorable sound in my head, thanks to singles like their Eurobeat-y "I Don't Know!".

In total, BaBe released 8 singles and 5 original albums between 1987 and 1990, and as I mentioned, whenever I think of any of their songs, I remember that Kondo and Nikaido were the pre-Wink Eurobeat aidoru duo. However, listening to their final single "She has a dream" which was released in March 1989, try as I might, I didn't really hear any of that familiar Eurobeat.

Written by Ken Takahashi（高橋研）and composed by Mayumi Horikawa（堀川まゆみ）, I think BaBe and the powers-that-be behind them were trying to retool their sound somewhat into something more urban contemporary and sophisticated with "She has a dream". I certainly like the melody here and it was hoped that they would smash a hit out of the park. The song was even adopted as the official theme for the 1989 World Sports Fair taking place in Japan; the annual event lasted between 1983 and 1992 and included introducing various sports from around the globe.

Alas, "She has a dream" did just OK by peaking at No. 37 and sold around 14,000 copies. The song was also included on BaBe's 4th album from April 1989, "Brand-new". However, about a year later in March 1990, it was decided that BaBe would disband.

BaBe/Nami Tamaki -- Give Me Up

Friday is today and it is a good day to talk about this one since I'm going to start off with my Fridays from 30 years ago. As I've mentioned in the past, Friday nights were spent alternately on visits to karaoke Kuri and disco dancing in downtown Toronto.

One of the songs that got a lot of the kids back then (they're probably chewing out their own kids these days) on the dance floor was Bananarama's "I Heard A Rumour" which was created by the group and the producers Stock Aitken & Waterman (that name still sounds like a legal firm). A couple of the other big draws were "Bizarre Love Triangle" by New Order and "Boom Boom" by Paul Lekakis. Yes, I have truly carbon-dated myself.

One day, I was watching one of my rental videos for one of the Japanese pop music-ranking shows when this fellow with the mullet (considering the time back then, yeah I know, I'm not narrowing things down much) by the name of Michael Fortunati appeared to play this song "Give Me Up". And after hearing the first several seconds, I just went "WHOA!". I exclaimed that this sounded just like "I Heard A Rumour", and almost automatically, I assumed that the chiseler went out and copied the tune with slight variations.

As it turned out, it was actually the other way around. Fortunati's "Give Me Up" first came out in 1986, and it even lasted 4 weeks straight on Oricon's Western singles chart at No. 1. According to Wikipedia, "I Heard A Rumour" which was released on June 29th 1987 was based on "Give Me Up". So I guess that the video I was watching must have been a far older episode of "The Best 10" or "The Top 10". Furthermore, apparently Samantha Fox's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now" adopted some parts of "Give Me Up" as well. Stock Aitken & Waterman must have really liked to pay tribute to Fortunati.

Now, to be honest, I actually like BaBe's cover of "Give Me Up" better although I enjoyed their big hit "I Don't Know!" even more. I'm not quite sure what it is...maybe it's the pitch of the voices and the nifty choreography. Plus, I guess I like spunk and BaBe always did strike me as being a pair with plenty of spunk when they performed songs like "I Don't Know!". Man, Eurobeat was quite the thing back then, eh?

Yup, "Give Me Up" was BaBe's debut single from February 1987. The original song was created by Michael De San Antonio, Pierre Michael Nigro and Mario Giuseppe Nigro but the Japanese lyrics were provided by Yukinojo Mori（森雪之丞）. It didn't hit No. 1 like the original but it did break the Top 10 on Oricon by peaking at No. 8 and ending the year as the 73rd-ranked single for 1987.

I've heard about the singer Nami Tamaki（玉置成実）before but never really heard her music. I think part of the reason that the name did get stuck into my head is because of Koji Tamaki（玉置浩二）, the lead singer of Anzen Chitai（安全地帯）. However, there is no familial relationship to talk of here. But I did find out that the singer is from my ancestral home of Wakayama Prefecture.

Tamaki was someone I heard about mostly during the 2000s and I couldn't even really pinpoint what kind of music she sang. But with her March 2009 cover of "Give Me Up", I can surmise that she was into dance-pop. Perhaps "cover" may not be the accurate way to describe it, though, since the lyrics by Kanako Kato（加藤哉子）and the overall melody has been changed by Susumu Kawai. Basically, I think that it's more of a shoutout through the "Give Me Up" yell.

According to some of the comments from YouTube, this particular song hasn't gotten a lot of love although the impression I'm getting is that fans might have been more disappointed with this one in comparison to her past work. I don't know (no pun intended)...it's not too bad to me but I've yet to explore the rest of her discography. Tamaki debuted in 2003 and her "Give Me Up" is her 16th single. It got as high as No. 18.

Well, whaddaya know? I found the music video for "I Heard A Rumour". Ahhhh....the 80s!

BaBe -- Get a Chance!

BaBe, the fun aidoru duo from the late 80s. Besides the classics “Give Me Up” and “I Don’t Know”, BaBe had some great releases as well, and “Get a Chance!”, my favorite from the girls, is one of them.

The obvious eurobeat arrangement and the catchy chorus are what this song is about. The hard bass and beat makes this an unlikely song for an aidoru duo like BaBe to perform, but I’m not complaining as the result is great.

The video above is from a crazy performance on "Music Station" where the girls had to sing while walking thought a labyrinth with the camera crew running behind them to capture everything. It’s quite fun as the girls expressions and little shouts are very cute to watch. And that’s what aidoru culture is all about, of course.

This performance also made me think that the Japanese music shows from the 80s were quite crazy and sometimes even epic. The production teams from music shows like “Yoru no Hit Studio”, “The Best Ten” and “Music Station”, to name a few, had always put a lot of effort into designing a nice and innovative stage for the newest aidoru performances at the time. They didn’t succeed every time, with a big amount of bad designed and weird stages, but you couldn’t say they didn’t try. And when they succeeded the viewers could appreciate a stylistic and fun performance from both the artist and the production team behind the stage design. Unfortunately this kind of thing is almost lost nowadays. “Music Station” and “CDTV” still tries to do something like that sometimes, but it’s not the same thing.

“Get a Chance!” was released in May 1988 as BaBe’ sixth single. It reached #9 on the weekly Oricon chart*. Other than that, I couldn’t find how many copies of the single were sold. As it didn’t make the Top 100 singles of 1988, I can say that it sold less than 91,000 copies, because those were the numbers of the 100^th place**. The song was written by Mori Yukinojo (森雪之丞) and composed by Hideya Nakazaki (中崎英也).

*source: http://www.oricon.co.jp/prof/artist/3247/

**source: http://entamedata.web.fc2.com/music/music1988.html

BaBe -- I Don't Know!

Sometime between the frenetic Pink Lady and the delicate Wink, there was BaBe! This duo, consisting of Tomoko Kondo（近藤智子） and Yukari Nikaido（二階堂ゆかり）, had a short career life of 3 years. But during that time, I used to see them on the ranking shows such as "The Best 10", mainly to perform this dynamic song.

"I don't know loneliness!"

I've always remembered that opening lyric and then the two girls launching their angular choreography. Eurobeat was really big during the late 80s, and BaBe's debut single was a cover of Michael Fortunati's "Give Me Up"....a prime example of the genre. "I Don't Know" was their 2nd single, released in May 1987, and it was composed by Hideya Nakazaki（中崎英也）and written by Yukinojo Mori（森雪之丞）in the same Eurobeat vein. The song is also available on their first album, "Bravo"released in June of that year. It made it as far as No. 5 on the Oricon weeklies.

It was fun to hear and watch the girls since back in those days, my life in the discos was often surrounded by Eurobeat supplied by Stock, Aitken & Waterman via Bananarama and Samantha Fox. For BaBe, the end came in 1990 when Nikaido ended up settling down with a husband and a kid.