Primer: What is Japanese City Pop?/DJ Notoya's Tokyo Bliss

 

The above AI Bing image was one of the first I concocted after throwing the title for Miki Matsubara's（松原みき）City Pop classic into the image creator. I hadn't been aware that begging that guy to stay with the lass at midnight involved luring him with McDonalds fries!

Anyways, my good wishes are belated but congratulations to "Mayonaka no Door"（真夜中のドアー）on its 45th anniversary which occurred last November. However, I am using this space and time for something a bit more unusual, and it's to let City Pop fans know of a couple of media creations.

Once again, this first one is a belated affair but the music podcast "Primer" started its run last May with an episode devoted to Matsubara and her debut album "Pocket Park" from 1980. Host Christian Dueñas, music writer Yosuke Kitazawa and radio/tv presenter Linda Marigliano spend the better part of an hour discussing and enjoying the various tracks including the most famous one on it. A couple of days ago, I'd been looking for any sort of podcast to while away the time as I was typing something else when I stumbled upon "Primer" and enjoyed it quite a lot. I've also come across another several "Primer" episodes here as well, so why not give them a spin as well?

The second creation is actually the opposite of my discovery of "Primer" in that it has yet to be released. If the name DJ Notoya is familiar to you, then you probably own a copy of his City Pop compilation "Tokyo Glow" from 2021. And from there, I was able to find out about and post a few songs from that album such as Kumi Nakamura's（中村久美）"Kimagure"（気まぐれ）.

Well, this time around, a new DJ Notoya album is coming out on February 14th 2025 titled "Tokyo Bliss", and it is once again chock-filled with songs of the genre between 1974 and 1988. One of those tracks is Kumiko Sawada's（沢田久美子）"Your Love's Away". The only difference here is that "Tokyo Bliss" will just be the one LP or CD instead of the two-record set of "Tokyo Glow".

Kumiko Sawada -- Iro no Nai Sekai（色のない世界）

 

Le Petit Troquet is a French restaurant where my former colleagues and I had dinner one time well over a decade ago, as you can see from the time stamp at the bottom right. Even looking up the place on Yahoo.jp (not far away from Shibuya Station in Tokyo), I'm not sure whether the place is still in business. I hear that restaurants and bars can open and close more frequently than a goldfish's mouth in the big city.

To be honest, I don't remember what I had at Le Petit Troquet but I'm pretty sure that I didn't imbibe on the hard stuff like whiskey or brandy. And sipping whiskey is what I would compare this song to (what a segue!). Of course, I mean that in a good way with Kumiko Sawada's（沢田久美子）"Iro no Nai Sekai" (Colourless World), the opening track from her album "Love Me Or Leave Me" from 1979.

In May 2019, I introduced singer-songwriter Sawada with one of the other tracks on "Love Me Or Leave Me", "Your Love's Away", a disco-funk song perhaps inspired by Cheryl Lynn. Fascinatingly enough, "Iro no Nai Sekai" is a mellow and bluesy slab of sunset City Pop that I thought would be one of the later tracks with "Your Love's Away" being the starter of the album. Instead, this creation by Sawada opens up a relaxing respite at home or at the local bar after a busy week at the company. Nursing a whiskey would be just the thing while listening to "Iro no Nai Sekai", especially when the sax solo rolls in.

As I mentioned in that 2019 article for Sawada, there's very little information on the singer but I did find out at Discogs that she did end up releasing one single, "Imagination", which included "Your Love's Away" as the B-side in 1979. But that's all I can find.

Kumiko Sawada -- Your Love's Away

I realize that this will be starting my 5th entry today (and at 10 minutes before midnight), but I was quite intrigued by this singer-songwriter named Kumiko Sawada（沢田久美子）.

There's not much information on Sawada except from what I could find on this page for the Record Shop Merurido website, and even that was restricted to just comparing the song of note here. "Your Love's Away" is a track on Sawada's debut album "Love Me Or Leave Me" from 1979, and that album cover has Sawada looking distinctly like someone that should never be crossed.

As for "Your Love's Away", it's a pretty disco-funk concoction that has been compared to some of the works of Cheryl Lynn including her hit "Got To Be Real". Sawada definitely puts her all into the song with a husky diva-like delivery that sometimes goes a bit off tune but also seems to have as much to do with Janis Joplin as it does with the aforementioned Lynn. The arrangement puts plenty of oomph from the funk to the racing guitar to the soaring saxophone. To be honest, I can also hear a bit of "I Love The Nightlife" by Alicia Bridges in the song.

The backing band happens to be Creation（クリエイション）which would have a hit of its own a couple of years later with "Lonely Hearts". As for Sawada, I've only been able to find evidence of "Love Me Or Leave Me" but no other albums since then. "Your Love's Away" was written and composed by Sawada with Creation guitarist Kazuo Takeda（竹田和夫）handling the arrangement. I could be interested in the album but I have to hear a few more tracks.

Kanako Wada -- Dessert ni Hoshikuzu no Jelly wo （DESSERTに星くずのゼリーを）

Happily re-discovering Kanako Wada （和田加奈子）through her 6th album, "dear" in 1989, I wasn't nearly as hesitant when it came to purchasing another Wada album the following year. Given the far longer title of "Dessert ni Hoshikuzu no Jelly wo" (Stardust Jelly into your Dessert) and seeing the cover of Wada looking up from a pool, I wondered what I was in for. Released in September 1990, her 7th album would be her final full album up to the present day. All of the tracks were written by the singer.

The first track is the dreamy "Tsuki no Hotel"（月のHOTEL...Moon Hotel）which was composed by TSUKASA. If it hadn't been so, the song should have become a fine theme tune for some sort of anime or game about a fantastical quest, especially at the end when Wada and company give an Enya-like greeting of "Welcome to the Moon Hotel". Methinks that the accommodations referred to here isn't anything like a Motel Six but something more along the lines of a place that the kids at Hogwarts might end up in on a field trip.

Aside from the ethereal "Tsuki no Hotel", the rest of the songs seem to weave the overall theme of a woman's life with all of the ups and downs in whatever community she resides. The 2nd track, "Good Luck Factory" is my favourite entry for "Dessert". Composed by Kumiko Sawada（沢田久美子）, the song just blasts open with a cheerful set of horns representing the start of another day in the life of a working woman rushing off and making her way through Tokyo corporate life. I could say that it's a musical 4 minutes and 38 seconds of a late 80s trendy drama.

http://www.xiami.com/song/mQFW5W69d80?spm=a1z1s.6659513.0.0.luFCRz

"Convenience Boy" stands out from the other tracks due to the slightly techno-funky beat which perhaps may have been more her style in her earlier albums. The music by Chika Ueda（上田知華）describe a comical recon mission by a woman who sees a potential rival with the man of her dreams or fantasies.

http://www.xiami.com/song/mQFW5X55789?spm=a1z1s.6659513.0.0.AgQOUd

"Baby Class no Grandmother" (Baby Class のGrandmother...Baby Class Grandmother) is something that I'd never seen in a song before. This composition by TSUKASA again has a bit of the comic with some synth-Latin thrown into the pop mix while Wada's lyrics describe a plucky grandmother who wants to refresh her life by trying new things despite some of the congenial discouragement by the folks around her. The baby class of the title refers to the fact that Nana is basically starting from square one. Considering what is happening with the growing ranks of the elderly in today's Japan, perhaps there was some unintended prescience on Wada's part.

(I'm sorry but the video has been taken down.)

My final track of the article is "Kaze no Oka"（風の丘...Windy Hill）, a poignant ballad by Ueda that has Wada reminiscing about the old days and dreams. A saxophone that sounds like it came straight off of a Carpenters' song sets the mood here. Perhaps, it can be a thematic relative to Yuming's "Sotsugyo Shashin"（卒業写真）. By the way, there is one more track from the album that I did cover on her BEST album, "Heart de Furimuite"（Heartでふりむいて）.

After purchasing "Dessert", it would literally be years and years before I found a new Kanako Wada album which turned out to be her BEST album, although I later found out that she had released one more mini-album, "Yakusoku no Eve"（約束のイヴ...Promised Eve） just in time for the Holidays in 1990. After that, I did play a near-successful bit of catch-up by getting all those late 80s albums of hers. But I still have yet to get "Yakusoku no Eve". I'm not sure whether Wada will ever release a new studio album after over 20 years but the impression I get is that "Dessert" was a farewell of sorts. The power pop singer behind all those songs for the anime "Kimagure Orange Road" was finally settling down and at least some of the tracks described her transition back into civilian life.