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.
I'd thought that my previous article on Shiro Sagisu（鷺巣詩郎）would be the final one for February 2026, but I was very wrong there on realizing that the music world has lost a pioneer in pop music and someone who has had a presence on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" over the years. Singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka passed away at the age of 86 on February 27th.
From what I've read on his Wikipedia file, he was responsible for a huge number of hits for himself and other singers, especially during the 60s and 70s, and I recall hearing his voice through radio, on K-Tel commercials and TV appearances since I was a kid. In fact, the very first ROY article that I posted was a Sedaka creation for Captain & Tennille. But for his own records, I always remembered that higher and melodic voice of his.
With all of those Sedaka successes in the postwar era, it's perhaps no surprise that the Japanese, who were more than happy to provide their own cover versions of many American and British hits of the time, also took a fancy to Sedaka's own tunes. Here are the ones that have been plucked from the pages of KKP over the years.
One of my favourites by Sedaka though was "Laughter in the Rain" from 1974. It still gives me a chill when he sings the chorus out and it's a song that I definitely have great memories about. My condolences to his family, friends and many fans.
I guess that I should have added the label Kanebo Cosmetics to the Labels because so many of the songs noted here on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" have ended up as campaign music for the company's commercials.
But interestingly enough, this particular song hasn't been included in the video compilation at the very top. Apparently, this November 1984 22nd single by the vocal trio Hi-Fi Set（ハイ・ファイ・セット）,"Hoshi Geshou Halley"(Star Make-Up Halley) was used by Kanebo but I haven't been able to find any sign of a commercial associated with the melancholy number on YouTube.
However, there is an anime short that has acted as the official music video for "Hoshi Geshou Halley" which is a bit on the bizarre side. It not only has the trio in anime and live-action form but it stars a time-displaced baby dinosaur missing his family dearly while he's struggling to figure out modern-day Tokyo. But no worries...Hi-Fi Set make like Doctor Who and set things back to normal although there is an Urashima Taro plot twist at the end.
As for the song itself, "Hoshi Geshou Halley" has a star list of songwriters: lyricist Shun Taguchi（田口俊）, composer Masamichi Sugi（杉真理）and arranger Akira Inoue（井上鑑）. It leans toward the sophisticated pop territory of City Pop although a lot of the song also has that Gallic feeling that might transport some listeners to the streets of Paris. Not sure how all this managed to intertwine itself with a baby dinosaur but hey, whimsy is Japanese pop culture's middle name.
This particular song here (along with any other kayo kyoku dealing with the titular place) has taken on a further poignancy considering that between the time of its release in 1975 and the last several years, the big boss airport for the Tokyo area had been Narita all the way out in the wilds of Chiba Prefecture for many many years while Haneda Airport was the faded glory as more of a domestic hub (although flights were there between Japan and Taiwan). However, up to around the mid-1970s, Haneda had been the mighty airport of destiny in many a song and it was my first entry into Japan in 1972.
"Doyoubi no Yoru wa Haneda ni Kuru no" (I'm Coming to Haneda on Saturday Night) is the B-side to vocal group Hi-Fi Set's（ハイ・ファイ・セット）far more famous "Sky Restaurant"(スカイレストラン) that was released in November 1975 as their 4th single. Created by the same team behind the A-side: lyricist Yumi Arai（荒井由実）, composer Kunihiko Murai（村井邦彦）and arranger Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）, "Doyoubi no Yoru wa Haneda ni Kuru no" continues that dreamy urban and urbane atmosphere that began at that rooftop restaurant in downtown Tokyo and takes it Haneda Airport a few kilometres away. A woman goes there to remember an old flame who has long since headed for a place overseas perhaps with a new lady on his arm. I'm not sure if her visit to the airport is a one-off or something she does on a weekly basis; I'm hoping that at least she's taking the subway or monorail there instead of a pricey taxi.
As I stated earlier, there seems to be a musical link between the A and B sides but with "Doyoubi no Yoru wa Haneda ni Kuru no", though the arrangement retains the wistful feeling, there is also a sweeter hope that sort of wins out over any bitterness. The lady in question is perhaps ready to move on with her life. In addition, there is also some fine harmonizing with the soft scatting among the Set.
In the last thirteen years that I've been back in Canada, I've managed to visit my old stomping grounds in Japan in 2014 and 2017, and I've gone through the new-and-improved Haneda Airport which has become a bustling transportation centre once more. Restaurants and shops abound galore.
Well, I was just writing about vocal group Hi-Fi Set（ハイ・ファイ・セット）last week in the regular Yutaka Kimura Speaks series. Mind you, that was a song from their 1980s period but we're back in the 1970s for them, the decade that I've known them best for. And man, this 12th single from August 1978 is quite the banger.
Listening to the first few measures of "America Monogatari"(The Story of America), I have to admit that I was wondering whether we were going to get a refrain from Barry Gray's theme from "Space: 1999", knowing how prog rock and disco that song was. Instead though, I got a huge aural advertisement by Junko Yamamoto（山本潤子）and company to visit the good ol' US of A. More likely, it was a big invitation to take a bite out of the Big Apple.
Written by Toyohisa Araki（荒木とよひさ）and composed/arranged by Yuji Ohno（大野雄二）, "America Monogatari" was indeed created for a 1978 Japan Air Lines commercial campaign getting folks to come and visit the United States (though I can't find the ad on YouTube). Ohno really stuffed the song with jazz and disco which were probably the music genres that a lot of Japanese equated America with at the time. Of course, Hi-Fi Set's optimistic and upbeat delivery sure made it inviting for folks to make their reservations.
"Mizuiro no Wagon" (Light Blue Wagon) shows a guy coming across a car with a local number plate and then taking a short trip led by his heart to a nostalgic street corner via an expressway running through the city. The group, which was with CBS/Sony at the time, has a song strongly reminiscent of "Sunao ni Naritai"（素直になりたい）which was created by Masamichi Sugi（杉真理）, but it's also a number that feels like it was truly penned by the Hi-Fi Set（ハイファイセット）members. The gorgeous harmonies are there as usual, and Hiroshi Shinkawa's（新川博）arrangement which hits the key points is also splendid.
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).
There are so many well-known songs born from the collaboration between Hi-Fi Set（ハイ・ファイ・セット）and Yumi Arai（荒井由実）, beginning with "Sotsugyo Shashin"（卒業写真）and "Chuo Freeway"（中央フリーウェイ）, but it's been difficult to put a definitive finger on a City Pop song by them. "Hoshi no Stranger" is a song that has the triple punch of a solid melody, a performance reminiscent of Tin Pan Alley and those characteristic Hi-Fi Set harmonies, and so when it comes to their discography, this song has more of Tin Pan Alley coming to the fore here.
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).
Just continuing the City Pop into today from Friday but only because this particular song is up for the Yutaka Kimura Speaks treatment next week.
"Hoshi no Stranger" (Stranger from a Star) is the first track on vocal group Hi-Fi Set's（ハイファイセット）June 1976 2nd album, "Fashionable Lover" (and I've already spoken on the title track). Written by Yumi "Yuming" Arai（荒井由実）and composed/arranged by Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）, I'm not too sure on whether there is a real alien girl involved here or it's more of a figurative way to describe an odd but appealing young lady that a man has fallen head over heels with, but the arrows have pierced the lad's heart hard.
Usually when I think of Yuming, she takes care of both words and music, but this time, it's her future husband, Masataka, who is taking care of the melody here which has that 1970s sunny swinging City Pop line. But as we get further into the song, the line almost sounds as if it's about to derail...the arrangement gets a little frenetic and the vocalization is something that I hadn't heard from Hi-Fi Set before. So, I'll have to let it cook in my mind a bit more, and yeah, I would gather that an alien-human relationship needs to have a lot of time to smoothen things out anyways. Plus, I'd like to read what Kimura says about this one.
I've been to the Big Apple twice and had my fair share of good food. However, I never got to partake in any of the cuisine in restaurants around Broadway. For this article, I curiously took a look at what some of the recommended eateries in that particular area are, and I found this one place called Buca di Beppo. I do like my Italian.
Apparently, so do the good folks at Hi-Fi Set（ハイファイセット）. As was the case with the previous article, I found another swinging first track of a 1979 album and it belongs to the long-time vocal trio. "Quarter Rest" starts off with "Broadway de Yuushoku wo" (Dinner on Broadway) and though it begins with a contemplative and folksy riff, it then gallops into a snazzy disco City Pop run as if the couple described through Keisuke Yamakawa's（山川啓介）lyrics are just marveling at the fact that they are among the lights of Broadway, about to catch a lovely dinner and then perhaps a musical as if they were normal New Yorkers. The really happy melody is by Hi-Fi Set member Toshihiko Yamamoto（山本俊彦）with Ichizo Seo（瀬尾 一三）arranging everything.
The good feelings engendered through "Broadway de Yuushoku wo" reflect how the Japanese must have felt back then when it came to their dreams of taking that trip to exotic places such as New York City, Hawaii and California. At the time, their aural representation was through genres such as City Pop and AOR. In any case, "Quarter Rest" also has another City Pop track that I've covered in the past: "TWO IN THE PARTY".
By the way, if any of you have any recommendations for good food in the Broadway area, let me know. I am quite curious.😀
Well, the usual occupational hazard has happened again on KKP where I mention that I will follow up on something soon enough and actually years go by. Mind you, it's not quite Rip van Winkle time but I wrote up on Side A of the original classic LP "The Stranger" by Billy Joel from September 1977 back in March 2022. Cue ahead almost 26 months later...
"The Stranger" is one of those albums in music history where virtually every track is a winner, loudly or quietly, and I'm happy to finally show off Side B.
Maybe those 26 months were due to the fact that I'd been waiting for the official music video (only released two weeks ago) for "Vienna" which starts off Side B. It's one of the more unusual songs by Joel because I hadn't heard it as much as I did the title track "The Stranger" and "Just The Way You Are" on the radio, and for the fact that it does have that accordion-like instrument in there to hint at that trip to Vienna which young William had taken years back. In the Wikipedia article for "The Stranger", I noticed that both "Vienna" and "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" were mentioned in the same sentence and that fit for me since the former has that similarly wistful tone as the latter although "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" is on a much larger scale. What I hadn't realized was that "Vienna" was an analogy for Joel's wish as to how the elderly should be allowed to spend their last stage in life, so it's no surprise that the song has gained greater recognition as the years have gone by.
I was surprised to hear that "Only the Good Die Young" had been released as a single in May 1978 since the first time I heard it was as a B-side on one of Joel's other singles, interestingly enough. And the crazier thing is that I swear that I'd actually heard it for the first time as a jingle for some commercial although what the product was I can't remember at all...it probably wasn't one for the Catholic church, though. The concert video above has Joel introducing the song with a bit of snark that the lyrics have something to offend everybody and yep, Catholic groups weren't impressed (which has something in common with last week's ROY tune) by Joel's message that Catholic girls were the party poopers of adolescent oat-sowing. But dang, it's a fun song to listen to.😎
"She's Always a Woman" was yet another single from "The Stranger" and unlike "Vienna", it did get onto the radio quite often. I've paired "Vienna" and "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" together and so I can do the same with "She's Always a Woman" and "Just The Way You Are" in terms of the ardor that Joel's protagonists express for the women in their lives. However, "She's Always a Woman" has a bit more of a folksier bent as Joel sings about loving a woman not only in spite of but also because of her flaws.
"Get It Right the First Time" is one of the two final songs that never got a single release and never really seemed to get onto the radio. I first heard it years ago when an enterprising radio station finally opted to show off some of Joel's more unknown numbers, and "Get It Right the First Time" is a high-energy pop-rock tune about making sure one's ready for a first-time confrontation which could span between an intra-neighbourhood spat and a presidential debate.
"Everybody Has a Dream" is the final piece in "The Stranger" and it's a gospel pop song that I hadn't heard Joel tackle before. If the entirety of "The Stranger" was used for a concert performance and each track was performed in order, then this is the song to finish things off properly and satisfyingly see off the audience back home. Mind you, encores would be inevitable, though.
Now, for something as legendary as this album, I can only do the comparison with Japanese music by having the Top 3 albums of 1977 via Oricon underneath.
1. Hi-Fi Set Love Collection
2. The Eagles Hotel California
3. Kei Ogura Tosagaru Fuukei（遠ざかる風景）
And how about that? I've made this post just a week shy of The Piano Man's 75th birthday!
As I may have mentioned in the past when it came to the vocal group Hi-Fi Set（ハイファイセット）, until the last decade or so, I'd only known their very early material in the 1970s and then their 1990 album"White Moon". Therefore, there was a gap of probably 10-15 years that I had no knowledge of what the trio was doing but they were still producing and releasing singles and albums from the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. I've been able to do some catch-up work on their discography during their "missing" years thanks to the work on the blog.
This is the type of song that I love to hear on a Sunday night at the end of a weekend and before the grind of the usual work week begins. Maybe it's because I was so accustomed to seeing Fuji-TV's"Music Fair" on Sunday nights at 11; the show is still the classiest Japanese music program running and Hi-Fi Set is one of the acts that I've thought was perfect for such a program.
And the wonderful thing is that the song "miss you" comes from one of the group's albums from those "missing" years. "I Miss You" was Hi-Fi Set's 11th album from February 1983 and "miss you" finishes off the album with a sweeping jazz orchestra. The ballad was purely an inside operation in that members Shigeru Okawa（大川茂）and Toshihiko Yamamoto（山本俊彦）took care of words and music respectively. Okawa's lyrics are so bitter that I think the title is more of a sarcastic slash toward the cad who's left a woman for another woman. Basically, she's quietly stating her final cuts of retribution against him. Well as such, I'd rather focus on Yamamoto's romantic bluesy jazz which at least sounds like love is still thriving among the notes.
Yes, I realize that it's hardly the time to think of fireplaces. Toronto is reporting 27 degrees Celsius out there with lots of summery sun, and my room is an entire fireplace right now. The fan is doing its best. By the way, the fireplace above is supplied by Relaxing Fire Sound.
However, I felt the need to introduce yet another track from Hi-Fi Set's（ハイ・ファイ・セット）"The Diary", their September 1977 album which is fast becoming one of those New Music/City Pop releases that needs to be brought into anyone's genre collection. I've already gotten the album's "Koi no Nikki"（恋の日記）and "Memorandum" (メモランダム) onto the blog, and here is "Danro de Marshmallow" (Marshmallows Over a Fire).
Written by the recently retired Kei Ogura（小椋佳）and composed by Kunihiko Murai（村井邦彦）, the intro sounds like the beginning to an Elton John song, but listeners quickly enter a world of completely relaxed and refined jazz. Usually, it's Junko Yamamoto（山本潤子）as the lead vocalist but this time, "Danro de Marshmallow" is sung by who I believe is her husband Toshihiko（山本俊彦）. The wonderful Hi-Fi Set harmonies are there and I would have said that the setting for this swaddling cloth of 1970s City Pop/New Music could have been in any place ranging from a Manhattan penthouse apartment to a well-appointed lodge out in Vermont. However with that sax solo in there, I'm thinking it's more of the former than the latter. In any event, the happy couple is roasting those marshmallows among some soulfulness whether the melody is within New York, Chicago or Philadelphia.
Ah, thanks to Purplesound for uploading this winner. I usually don't pounce on videos that have just been put up because that seems a little unseemly but I couldn't resist "Danro de Marshmallow".
One of the first things that I realized when I started to explore kayo kyoku from the early 1980s was that there were vocal groups that struck me as being quite similar in tone to The Manhattan Transfer, a group that had already entered my mind with their music of jazz and contemporary pop stylings. Some Japanese folks did love their harmonies, I surmised.
As far as I can see, there was never a Gosanke（御三家）created in the media about vocal groups although I think that it would have been pretty easy to concoct one considering that both Hi-Fi Set（ハイファイセット）and Circus（サーカス）had their heyday in the 1970s and 1980s. I discovered those two groups from "Sounds of Japan" episodes a few decades ago, but the quartet SOAP was an act that I found out about in the years of doing this blog, so once again thank you KKP!
Last night, as I was writing up about the 1st disc on Yuming's（ユーミン）3-disc BEST album"Yuming Banzai!"（ユーミン万歳!）, I noted that one of the songs on that first CD was "Umi wo Miteita Gogo" (One Afternoon By the Sea) which was originally from the singer-songwriter's "Misslim" LP of 1974. I also pointed out that Yuming's original wasn't the first version that I had heard. That honour belongs to the vocal trio Hi-Fi Set（ハイファイセット）who had a strong association with her, especially in their early years.
It's ironic that I had yet to put up an article regarding Hi-Fi Set's cover of "Umi wo Miteita Gogo" considering my many years of knowing both the trio consisting of Junko Yamamoto (山本潤子）, her husband Toshihiko Yamamoto（山本俊彦）and Shigeru Okawa（大川茂）and Yumi Matsutoya, or as she was known in the early 1970s, Yumi Arai（荒井由実）. In fact, I can say that "Umi wo Miteita Gogo" was one of the first Hi-Fi Set songs that I had heard thanks to the "Sounds of Japan" radio broadcast.
The song was a track on Hi-Fi Set's debut album"Sotsugyo Shashin"（卒業写真）from February 1975, and like the title track, I think that the trio's cover of "Umi wo Miteita Gogo" is even better than the Yuming original. It has that quiet folksy intro and Junko's wonderful vocals but there are also the great harmonies from the entire group that could even rival the lovely sounds from the Manhattan Transfer. Plus, a jazzy flute even comes into the proceedings near the end.
As I mentioned in the description for Yuming's original last night in "Yuming Banzai!", her lyrics relate the story of a woman coming to the real restaurant Dolphin in the Yamate district of Yokohama to reminisce or commiserate over a romance that is now over. Just a few minutes before starting this article, I had seen a comment under the YouTube video for "Umi wo Miteita Gogo" which gave an interesting way to distinguish the original from Hi-Fi Set's cover. The commenter stated that the original told the story when the romance had just broken off with the woman going through some raw and painful emotions while the Hi-Fi Set version takes place many years after the fact so that time has covered the wound to a good extent and it's now more of a wistful memory and perhaps lesson learned on the vagaries of love.
It's a Yuming tradition to incorporate places and situations that she has come across so indeed Dolphin has been treated as one of the places to visit for her fans. One site has photos of the menu and there is the restaurant's Twitter account. Y'know, if I ever return to Japan, I'll have to see about having lunch there myself (there's much more in Yokohama that I have to sightsee), so I can make a Sites article here on "Kayo Kyoku Plus". 😋
Finally, I have to also note that the 9th anniversary of Toshihiko Yamamoto's passing is coming up this month on the 27th.
Although I will always pale next to the families in Japan when it comes to this activity, I had my own o-souji（お掃除）session earlier today, and that is the big cleaning of the home just before the Old Year heads out the door and the New Year waltzes right in. It's a Japanese tradition and though I'm never going to be a neat freak, I can handle the process since it results in a cleaner and sleeker home...for a little while. So, there was much dust kicked about and a numerous amount of paper was thrown out
I also partook in the slurpier Japanese tradition of toshikoshi soba（年越しそば）for dinner tonight. Mind you, it was instant but it's the intent that matters, and I gotta say that even the instant stuff is pretty darn tasty nowadays, especially the tonkotsu soup. Above is how to make a homemade bowl of the stuff thanks to YouTuber Yukari's Kitchen.
Well, for my final article for 2022 on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I've decided to go for an Author's Pick. Last night, as I was getting ready to turn in, I managed to listen to Yumi Arai's（荒井由実）classic "Chuo Freeway"（中央フリーウェイ）. Indeed it is a classic since considering the time of year and the time of night, the musical serendipity that entered my ears as Yuming（ユーミン）sang about how much she appreciated getting that rare and luxurious drive home late at night was truly manna from heaven. By the way, the above video is once again thanks to J Utah.
Strangely enough, even that late at night, the gears in my head were still rotating and I thought about doing another Author's Pick on driving on the highways and byways of Japan. Despite the nation being a train otaku's Valhalla, there is still a romanticism about taking the car out for a spin on the streets whether they be in the metropolis or out in the countryside heading out to a seaside resort. Over the past several years, New Year's Eve has meant keeping things at home and in the last few years, I haven't even bothered ringing in the New Year through television. It's just me and YouTube and music. That sort of relaxation on an especially quiet December 31st can't be beat, and for some reason, I've associated that experience with that lovely day or night drive in Japan.
Now, I've already done one similar Author's Pick and that was back in November, so here's the sequel. As usual, they are not in any particular order. Have a listen and a look, and enjoy the ride.
On that note, this is Article No. 1084 for 2022, so we've all happily managed to attain quite a feat by having the most number of articles for a single year thus far on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" to beat 2021's 1046. Despite all that has happened around the world over the past 12 months, I am happy (and I hope that you are, too) that KKP reached its 10th anniversary this year. This is thanks to everybody involved from the contributors (Marcos, Noelle, Larry, Joana, HRLE92) and commenters including Brian and Jim, and also the readers. I'm certainly hoping that 2023 will continue the same path of insanely putting up kayo kyoku and J-Pop here on the blog without the need for a straitjacket (not that one would fit me anyways).
Happy New Year to everyone and we'll see each other again on January 1st 2023 (perhaps with my own thoughts on the Kohaku after watching it) and later on, we'll enter our 11th year.🎊 よいお年をお迎えください。
As I mentioned for Junko Yagami's（八神純子）"Naze da ka Tsurai no"（何故だかつらいの）yesterday, one should never ignore the B-sides. By their nature as B-sides, yes, maybe there's a legitimate reason that they are on the flip side of the more prominent and possibly hit-worthy A-sides, but I have found that there have been quite a few diamonds in the rough.
Case in point: Hi-Fi Set's（ハイ・ファイ・セット）November 1975 hit single"Sky Restaurant"（スカイレストラン）isn't only one of the vocal group's trademark tunes but it's also one of Yumi Arai's（荒井由実）wonderful sets of lyrics, and it's one of the finest examples of 1970s City Pop. However, literally in the past fifteen minutes, I discovered the wonders of its B-side, "Doyou no Yoru wa Haneda ni Kuru no"(I Come to Haneda Airport on Saturday Nights) for the very first time.
Brought to listeners' ears by the same folks behind "Sky Restaurant": Arai, composer Kunihiko Murai（村井邦彦）and arranger Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）, "Doyou no Yoru wa Haneda ni Kuru no" (I'll just go on with just "Haneda" in any later references to the song) shares that same sense of wistfulness as its A-side sibling. Perhaps for any City Pop-loving musicologist, there can be a lot to dissect with all of the key shifts, that feeling of Motown, the string plucking, and the lovely harmonies of the Set themselves. Yuming's（ユーミン）lyrics relate the story of a woman who periodically stops by Tokyo's main airport, the final meeting time and place for her romance before the guy got on that plane and took off forever.
Even outside of the lyrics, "Haneda" has that certain wistfulness since in the following year or so, Haneda Airport had slowly found itself getting shoved off the main airport stage by the new Narita Airport in Chiba Prefecture which held sway as the No. 1 international hub for decades. But thanks to renovations several years back and the realization that it was far more convenient to head over to Haneda rather than Narita, Haneda is back in the spotlight. I've been lucky to partake in some of the benefits there during those last two visits to my old home away from home.
I never thought that this particular song would make it into a film but according to its Wikipedia entry, it actually got into a few movies including the 2013 comedy "Anchorman 2". Never saw that one although I did catch the first movie.
This week's ROY article deals with "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight", a soft rock classic from May 1976 that I used to hear over and over on AM radio when I was a teen. It was just too bad that I always had a tough time remembering who sang it because I guess at the time, I wasn't accustomed to hearing a country's name being included in a person's name but indeed the duo is England Dan & John Ford Coley.
The duo had been together for a decade between 1970 and 1980 with their share of singles and albums under their belt, but "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight" is the only one that I remember by them as this calming ballad about giving love a second chance. It's that piano and the strings that make it for me. The song made it to the top of the Adult Contemporary charts in both America and Canada, and though I've heard that covers have been done by no less than Barry Manilow and Ian McShane among others, it'll always be the original by England Dan & John Ford Coley that I come home to. Strangely enough, I found out that an earlier song "Simone" from 1972 became a No. 1 hit in Japan.
According to Showa Pops, these kayo classics were released in May 1976 although at least for one of them, it was more like April.
One definite musical presence in my childhood and youth was singer-songwriter Barry Manilow. After first hearing his "I Write the Songs" on some K-Tel record commercial, it seemed as if he had become a permanent resident on the airwaves with chart-toppers such as "Mandy" and "Ready to Take a Chance Again". And then even going into the 1980s when music videos were all the rage, Manilow had another hit with his 1981 "Read 'Em and Weep"; I was surprised by that release year since I didn't hear about the song until the video came out in 1983, so I gather that it was truly one of the longest slow cookers in pop.
However with all of those songs that he created, the one hit that has always stood out in my mind (and is this year's final ROY article for KKP) is "Copacabana". Released in June 1978, I'm guessing that it was one of the last great disco hits of the era and it was one song that got plenty of airplay on the radio whether I was at home or in the car. At the time, I had no idea where Copacabana was; at first, I'd assumed that it was somewhere in Africa before I learned that it was in Brazil.
Even there, I was wrong. "Copacabana" wasn't referring to anywhere in Brazil but the real-life Copacabana nightclub in New York City..."the hottest spot north of Havana" and the setting of a tragic love suspense thanks to Jack Feldman and Bruce Sussman's lyrics paired with Manilow's tropical disco. In a way, this pairing of a sad story with one heck of a happy disco-dancing melody should have earned it honourary kayo status in Japan. At the very least, it did get its own J-Wiki page where I discovered that "Copacabana" has even been used as the cheer song for the Chiben Wakayama High School（智辯和歌山高校）baseball team...and interestingly enough, the team won this summer's Koshien tournament. Thank you, Barry!
"Copacabana" hit the Top 10 in a number of countries including the United States (No. 8) and Canada (No. 7). From what I've read of the Wikipedia article for the song, although it was all about the intrigue at the nightclub in New York, the seed for it was germinated between Manilow and Sussman at the Copacabana Hotel in Rio de Janeiro. Speaking of the legendary club, it was closed down in May 2020 due to the pandemic and although there were plans to open it up again in a new location this year, nothing has happened. Still, 80 years of history are nothing to sneeze at.
So, what was coming out in June 1978 or thereabouts according to Showa Pops?
From what I've heard and read, Boxing Day in Canada and the United States (December 26th) isn't really all that much of a bargain day to be had anymore, now with sales extravaganzas on earlier days such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And to be honest, I was never all that much of a bargain hunter to begin with. If I needed to buy something right away, sale or not, I just got it. Boxing Day isn't a thing in Japan although there are sales periods in my old stomping grounds, but sales have certainly happened in areas such as Ginza (pictured above) especially via the department stores on the main strip. Still, the ritzy neighbourhood is not known for its low low prices.
It can be called fashionable, though, and that is why I have my last article for tonight, "Fashionable Lover", the title track from Hi-Fi Set's（ ハイ・ファイ・セット）June 1976 2nd album. This is also my fourth and final article for the vocal trio for 2021 which is a pretty banner year.
Words and music were by two of Hi-Fi Set's members, Shigeru Ohkawa（大川茂）and Toshihiko Yamamoto（山本俊彦）with arrangement by Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）, a good associate of theirs since some of the Set's songs were also provided by Matsutoya's to-be wife Yumi Arai（荒井由実）. It's quite the mellow party-hearty tune with everyone including remaining member Junko Yamamoto（山本潤子）having a fine time behind the mike giving out their famous harmonies. In addition, it seems as if everyone involved indeed had quite the ball from the jazzy brass to the members themselves when they suddenly went into a somewhat bizarre vocal rave at one point in "Fashionable Lover".
And yet, according to Ohkawa's lyrics, the party is really going on in one fellow's head as he's gone head-over-heels because one lovely young lady apparently has shown signs of interest in him. Right from the first line, no fashion magazine can contain her full beauty and she's graciously rejected a lot of other suitors. Yep, I can understand him being over the moon.🌜 Let's just hope that this isn't all a grand delusion.
"Fashionable Lover" is something that I can't quite define through one genre. Of course, pop is dandy but considering what Hi-Fi Set was singing during the 1970s, I can also place it within the City Pop and New Music categories as well. Whatever the case, it's a fun tune which brings images of that sunset drive through Tokyo back in the day.
