I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
Showing posts with label Harumi Tsuyuzaki. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harumi Tsuyuzaki. Show all posts
Yesterday was one of those rare days that there were no articles posted onto the blog with the reason being that I was out for most of the day with KKP's Larry and one other friend for lunch at our favourite izakaya-turned-store (with a tiny eatery) Kingyo in Cabbagetown. Then, we caught "Oppenheimer" at the theatre. It wasn't exactly light viewing but those three hours passed by at the speed of an electron because the performances and the editing were just that good. "Barbie" will be next as the second half of the famous "Barbenheimer" marketing gag.
Will be starting off today's round of articles with a cover version. When I first saw "Downtown Boy" next to Harumi Tsuyuzaki's（露崎春女）name, I did figure that she would be doing her version of Yumi Matsutoya's（松任谷由実）perky 80s pop song from one of her best albums "No Side" released in 1984. Sure enough, it was.
"Downtown Boy" is a coupling song on Tsuyuzaki's 9th single from November 1999, "Break On Out". With arrangement of the original Yuming（ユーミン）melody by Jeffrey Kuriyama and Mayks. The song is now a contemporary slow jam with inter-verse rap under Tsuyuzaki's cooing vocals. It's a very laidback version although I think that they may have gone a little overboard with the strings.
Exactly a month ago, I put up an article on one of Masayuki "Martin" Suzuki's（鈴木雅之）earliest songs as a solo performer, "Tandem Run". Well this time around, I'm getting back to the relative present in his career by covering his March 2019 16th original studio album, "Funky Flag".
Arguably the most famous track for a lot of anime fans is "Love Dramatic"（ラブ・ドラマティック）as the opening theme song for the first season of the hit "Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai ~ Tensai-tachi no Ren'ai Zunousen"（かぐや様は告らせたい〜天才たちの恋愛頭脳戦〜）. Yup, this guy is now 65 years old and as a lot of the comments underneath the video have pointed out, Martin has charisma for kilometres.
I just want to take care of some of my own highlights from "Funky Flag", including the title track, "Ai no Funky Flag"（愛のFunky Flag...Funky Flag of Love） which, not surprisingly, has dollops of funk and even some Motown sprinkled in there. One big observation is that the album has a lot of big songwriters involved in the album and that includes lyricist Yukinojo Mori（森雪之丞）and composer/musician Tomoyasu Hotei（布袋寅泰）coming up with this quintessentially Martin tune (and yep, Hotei is on the guitar here) as the singer exhorts folks to get ready for a good party night. Martin and Hotei also provide the background vocals along with R&B songbird Harumi Tsuyuzaki（露崎春女）.
Good golly Molly! Suzuki has so much charisma that he needs five bodies to hold it all!
"Secret Boogie"（シークレット・ブギー）by Kiyoshi Matsuo（松尾潔）and Yoshihiro "Maestro-T" Toyoshima（豊島吉宏）is sultry and snaky as the lyrics go into somebody lusting for that target of desire. To be honest, the first time I heard "Secret Boogie", I almost did a double-take at one of the lyrics (if I'd been drinking water, I would have made Danny Thomas proud) but reading the liner notes for the song, I saw that it was "Funk with me"! Ah.
Not sure whether Martin or anyone else involved saw something at that massive Shibuya intersection, but "Scramble Kousaten"（スクランブル交差点...Scramble Intersection） is pure love across the rain-slicked pavement. I mentioned those famous songwriters and here, we've got Takaki Horigome（堀込高樹）from Kirinji（キリンジ）and Tomita Lab（冨田ラボ）, aka Keiichi Tomita（冨田恵一）, on lyrics and melody respectively. There's something so very 60s Bacharach about the style and arrangement of "Scramble Kousaten" that the joy-filled fellow in the story is willing to do a Fred Astaire pirouette during the crossing.
"Turn off the light" was composed by Yasuhiro Abe（安部恭弘）and written by Goro Matsui（松井五郎）. Abe has been involved in creating a number of songs for Martin over the years such as the 1989 "Kuu na"（くーな）, and here, he and Matsui weave a melancholy mid-tempo song with a bit of bossa nova about how although love can bring a lot of wonderful things, it can also trap someone in a time-stopped room of woe if it's broken. Martin really can wear his heart on his sleeve.
One more song that I'll put up here is "BAZOOKA" which was all created by Gota Nishidera（西寺郷太）of the band NONA REEVES. It also has tons of funk but in the intro, I think that I even heard some New Jack Swing. "BAZOOKA" fairly percolates all throughout as Martin buzzes about getting that first blast of fall-in-love right between the eyes.
Hopefully, I'll take care of the remaining tracks in the months to come but for those who have discovered the wonders of Suzuki as the King of Love Songs through "Kaguya-sama", then have a go at "Funky Flag" which peaked at No. 8 on Oricon. In addition, you can take a gander at his most recent "ALL TIME ROCK 'N' ROLL".
If I'm not mistaken, the above was taken in front of the Shinjuku Hilton Hotel when I was in Tokyo the last time in 2017. It was early November but I gather that the management didn't hesitate to put up the Xmas illumination. Years ago, my friend took me to the main floor café for an all-you-can-eat dessert buffet (as endangered as those are now) that I believe occurred on Thursday afternoons. Among other delights, I had my fill of really good bread pudding with raisins there.
Good times those. Anyways, to get back on track, I've found R&B chanteuse Harumi Tsuyuzaki's（露崎春女）debut single from October 1995, "Time". Tsuyuzaki wrote and composed the song with Robert Etoll, and it's quite the start to her career with that voice and some of that 90s soul. I also appreciate some of the brief percussion solo in the middle. I only wish that the singer had gotten more attention and love in the charts than she did.
Back in my first article on Tsuyuzaki, I mentioned that one of my students had informed me back in the late 1990s that her buddy was actually the singer herself and that she was off to see one of her gigs. Wouldn't it have been quite the experience if I had actually gotten the chance to witness Tsuyuzaki myself? Well, I never got that opportunity but as a consolation, I did end up buying her August 1998 album"Believe Yourself", and on that album is "End of Eternity". Created by Manami Fujino, A. Bagge and H. Sommerdahl, it's a ballad that did remind me of Mariah Carey, something that I also stated in that first article.
It's always a pleasure to listen to J-R&B chanteuse Harumi Tsuyuzaki（露崎春女）. Perhaps she didn't become quite as famous as Misia on the charts and in media but there's no denying that Tsuyuzaki has always possessed the soulful chops.
I do have this track on her 4th album "Believe Yourself" from August 1998 and "Feel so real" was also released as Tsuyuzaki's 7th single in July of that year. Written and composed by Anders Bagge with co-writing credits to Shoko Fujibayashi（藤林聖子）, the song is another slice of happy-go-lucky sunny soul with some dexterous piano playing near the end. Tsuyuzaki's vocals aren't quite as unleashed here as they are in some of her other material but they do purr and soar throughout the song.
From the thumbnail for the video, "Feel so real" was used as the intro song for the weather report on TV Asahi's"News Station". I think that would be wholly appropriate.
Knowing about the wonders of the vocals of both singer-songwriters Chikuzen Sato（佐藤竹善）and Harumi Tsuyuzaki（露崎春女）, and then seeing the latter help out on backing chorus for the former's band, Sing Like Talking, through a couple of YouTube videos, I figured that the two of them would have to have done an official duet together.
But of course, that was definitely the case. For Tsuyuzaki's first album"Harumi Tsuyuzaki" released in November 1995, there is a track titled "In This Love" with her and Sato performing a ballad arranged as if it had come from a decade before. I thought that there was something very Whitney Houston or Peter Cetera or David Foster. In addition, those vocals are just amazing...a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of Japanese romantic balladry.
I'm not sure when those Sing Like Talking YouTube videos featuring Tsuyuzaki in backup had been originally filmed but I can only speculate that it must have been very early in her career. With a wonderful voice like that, there was no way that she could stay in the background for long.
She may have been dubbed "The Mariah Carey of Japan" but I think Harumi Tsuyuzaki（露崎春女）is her own singer...a singer with her own great set of vocal cords, and she arrived on the music scene even before R&B songstresses such as Misia and bird.
J-R&B may have had its first heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s and a lot of it was through rap and hip-hop, but for me, my love for R&B targets the old stuff from the late 70s through to the early 90s. There were young Mariah, CeCe Peniston, Whitney Houston and similar singers back then, and Tsuyuzaki reminds me of them.
Tsuyuzaki's 5th single is "Taiyo"(Sun) from May 1997 (a good 20 years ago...sheesh!), and this fits very snugly into my favourite type of R&B. It truly is a sunny song. The singer wrote and composed this piece about getting all cheered up and living life to the fullest and happiest. Not a bad theme for getting out of the blues. And listening to her sing, I wonder what would happen if she were to duet with Keizo Nakanishi（中西圭三）who also has a similar set of pipes.
The first presence of "Taiyo" on a Tsuyuzaki album was a live version on her August 1997"THANK YOU! 〜WONDER OF LOVE TOUR '97〜". However, I was happy to get the recorded version on my BEST album of hers above in the photo...first track even.
Last summer when I posted my first article on J-R&B songstress Harumi Tsuyuzaki（露崎春女）, I mentioned about this song that I loved from her 4th studio album, "Believe Yourself" but couldn't find any sign of it on the Net. Well, my search is over as you can check above.
Now, I wrote about the title track from the album, and it, along with the other single release from it, "Feel So Real", were fine enough songs, but my favourite song from "Believe Yourself" has got to be "Tender Trap". I'm being very biased here but I wondered why this one didn't get its own release. From Tsuyuzaki's explosive intro (I can understand the comparison to Mariah Carey) to the horns to the contagiously fun music, it's one of my favourite songs of the genre, period.
And what a pedigree, too. The music is by Satoru Shionoya （塩谷哲）who was the pianist from the amazing salsa band, Orquesta De La Luz and has worked with Chikuzen Sato （佐藤竹善）of Sing Like Talking numerous times (as has Tsuyuzaki). And the lyrics are by CHAKA from PSY-S, someone who also carries a set of vocal cords like a sonic weapon. I'd always thought that Shionoya's melody here would've been fine as a theme for some sort of romantic comedy (the title helps), but CHAKA's lyrics also read like a script from such a show....about someone who can't seem to shake off a particular suitor but may not really want to, either. Mind you, this sort of plot probably has been recycled for about half the dramas that have been seen on Japanese TV since the mid-80s, but hey, it's the song that I'm talking about. And I hope that it was just as fun for the singer as it has been for my ears.
Back in the late 90s, when I was teaching in a school in Tokyo, one of my students engaged me in conversation about music and she told me that she was going to see one of her old high school classmates perform at a concert that night. I assumed her friend was going to sing indies rock at some sort of hole-in-the-wall live house in either Shinjuku or Shibuya, but then my student said matter-of-factly that her old buddy was actually a pretty accomplished R&B chanteuse at a fairly well-known venue. I forgot the name of the place but all I could remember was that it was not exactly small.
Her friend was Harumi Tsuyuzaki（露崎春女） and she has been called the Mariah Carey of Japan, thanks to her powerhouse of a voice. I asked my student to write down the kanji and romaji for Ms. Tsuyuzaki's name, and then I set out to look for her CD. At the time, her latest disc was her 4th studio album released in August 1998 titled "Believe Yourself".
Tsuyuzaki herself is from Kawasaki City and as a high school student undertook voice training before joining the gospel group, The Voices of Japan in 1990. She made her debut in 1995 with the debut single, "Time". Tsuyuzaki was also a big fan of Sing Like Talking's Chikuzen Sato（佐藤竹善) for his own vocal talents even before her entrance into the music industry, and in that same debut year of hers, she was able to join him and his band on a concert tour as a backup singer. Actually, if you check my profile on SLT's smashing"Together", you can see her in the video as the young lady pretending to play the slide trombone near the end.
"Believe Yourself" was Tsuyuzaki's 8th single released in October 1998. It was written by her and composed by t.kura. Although the song is pretty darn uptempo and she amply demonstrates that Carey-like voice, for some reason, she also reminds me of mellow Anita Baker. There is also a track on the titular album titled "Tender Trap", which unfortunately I cannot track down on the Net, but is my favourite song because of the combo of her voice and some mighty fine horns.
