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 Kumiko Yamashita. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kumiko Yamashita. Show all posts
The last time I posted anything by singer-songwriter Kumiko Yamashita（山下久美子）was back in the dark days of COVID in the spring of 2020, so I figure that it's time to bring her back in more open days.
Considering that very cute voice of hers behind the mike, the title track from her November 1982 5th studio album"Baby Baby" makes for a nice match. Written and composed by Yamashita and arranged by Kenji Omura（大村憲司）, if it hadn't been for the fact that it was her own creation, I would have assumed that this was a cover of some 1950s or 1960s girl pop song from America but with a mixture of City Pop groove and crystal synthpop applique, especially with that twangy guitar in the middle.
For this week's ROY, we have Laura Branigan, and may I say off the top that the New York State-born singer and actress left us way too soon eighteen years ago at the age of 52. But she left a legacy of some fine music for us 80s fans, and first off, was her June 1982 single"Gloria".
I heard "Gloria" all sorts of times on the radio but I think that I saw this even more on TV via the various music shows, and every time that I do hear it like I am right now as I type this, I get taken back to that summer of 1983 when I had my first summer job painting fences all day in a townhouse development in Scarborough. That intro especially gets me into my happy 80s space but I think anyone named Gloria would be pretty happy with this anthem.
"Gloria" hit No. 1 in Canada and then No. 2 in America, going Platinum in both countries. And then some 37 years later, the NHL's St. Louis Blues brought the song back as their victory tune and good luck mascot to help get them their first Stanley Cup tournament in 2019. The story can be found in the Wikipedia article for the song.
But once again in a ROY article, I was left surprised finding out that a beloved 80s pop song was actually a cover of an original. Yup, this happened to me with Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun", and as was the case with "Hoho ni Kakaru Namida"（ほほにかかる涙）that I wrote about yesterday, "Gloria" was first recorded by an Italian singer named Umberto Tozzi back in 1979 with Tozzi and Giancarlo Bigazzi behind its creation. Trevor Veitch was responsible for the English lyrics for Branigan's cover.
Admittedly, I don't know as much about Kumiko Yamashita（山下久美子）as I know about some of the other singers such as Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）and Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）, but my impression of Yamashita has been that of a firebrand singer along the same lines as Ann Lewis（アン・ルイス）(feel free to correct me, if I'm wrong). To be honest, the only song that I know well by her is "Sekido Komachi Doki"（赤道小町ドキッ）, her big hit from 1982.
Therefore, as I've done before, I've always tried to go back to veteran singers' origins in terms of what they debuted with. And so it goes with Yamashita. Her first single was "Bathroom kara Ai wo Komete" (From Bathroom With My Love), released in June 1980.
Once again, just from the few times that I've seen her interviewed on TV, I've also had the impression that Yamashita has a fun and somewhat saucy personality, so when I first saw this title "Bathroom kara Ai wo Komete", my eyebrows got rather saucy in response. However, as it turns out, there isn't really anything lascivious about her debut single at all. In fact, Masataka Matsutoya's（松任谷正隆）arrangement of Toshio Kamei's（亀井登志夫）melody is cute 1950s innocence (helped in part by Time Five's backup chorus), the type of song that I would have expected Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）to have tackled early in her career. For that matter, Chinfa Kan's（康珍化）lyrics actually relate a woman fleeing to a bathroom in misery and fury on finding out her beau has been cheating on her.
With "Sekido Komachi Doki", Yamashita has that high-pitched chirpy delivery, but with "Bathroom", it's a fair bit lower and perhaps closer to that of the aforementioned Lewis. "Bathroom" was also the title track for her debut LP released on the same day as the single.
It must have been quite the time at the switchover from the 1970s into the 1980s for students of Japanese pop music. Along with the usual enka and aidoru, plus the undercurrent of City Pop and the in-vogue technopop, there were the elements of good ol' 50s rock-n-roll (also in Harajuku) and then New Wave to a smaller extent.
Strangely enough, I've encountered a song which seems to bring the latter two elements together in a fun 4th single by Kumiko Yamashita（山下久美子）called "Toriaezu New York" (First, New York). It gets started with that 50s theme but then when the refrain clicks in, that Merseybeat-sounding keyboard had me thinking Elvis Costello and some of those other skinny tie-sporting pop musicians from the 1980s. There's even some disco at the end. I thank legendary Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）for the music and then there is lyricist Haruo Chikada（近田春夫）who creates a story of a woman alone with her TV set after some romantic downturn and thinking that maybe the Big Apple may be the place to run from her woes. The travel expenses would be more expensive than the Tsugaru Strait, though.
Knowing Yamashita only for her big hit "Sekido Komachi Doki"（赤道小町ドキッ）, it's nice to learn a new and boppy tune by her.
Yesterday, I had a rare Monday off so I took the opportunity to catch "Spiderman ~ Far From Home" which was a refreshingly breezy continental superhero romp after the epic "Avengers: Endgame". I did like it much better than "Homecoming". If I were to use a meme to describe Marvel's final movie for this year though, it would be ILLUSION: 100!.
As was the case with "Homecoming", the ending credits for "Far From Home" engaged plenty of artistic imagination with a style that once again reminded me of the 1980s. Not surprisingly, the ending theme was also of that decade, The Go-Gos' catchy "Vacation". And for me, The Go-Gos including Belinda Carlisle and Jane Wiedlin was the first all-woman band that I'd ever seen on TV in my life, and they had a lot of great hits such as "Our Lips Are Sealed" and "We Got The Beat". I was almost tempted to get their album "Beauty and the Beat" at the neighbourhood Hudson's Bay when it actually sold LPs, but never got around to it. Hopefully, I may find it at an old record store someday.
But of course, with "Kayo Kyoku Plus" being a Japanese pop music blog, I will do here again that I did with my article on Captain & Tennille back in January this year, and provide the appropriate singers and songs. "Vacation" came out in June 1982 so allow me to feature the Top 3 songs for that same month on Oricon. Actually found the information here.
I have to confess that this is the only Kumiko Yamashita（山下久美子） song I know, but it is a memorable one. In fact, even before I realized who was behind the playful delivery, I'd known the song as the "Doki Doki" tune.
Kumiko Yamashita was born in 1959 in Oita Prefecture, and debuted in 1980 with "Bathroom kara Ai wo Komete"（バスルームから愛をこめて...With Love From The Bathroom）before breaking through with her first hit, "Sekido Komachi Doki"(Small Town On The Equator...Heart Goes Ba-Bump) in April 1982. Her 6th single had been chosen to become the latest commercial song for Kanebo Cosmetics, so there was quite the pressure to get it written up and recorded. Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆） had taken care of the lyrics in advance but right up to the day of recording, the music had yet to be completed, so it was up to YMO's Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）to get down to the studio and get it worked out with his colleague Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸弘）on drums and former Akai Tori（赤い鳥）member Kenji Omura（大村憲司）on guitar (Omura also arranged the song).
As would be the case for a Hosono-penned tune at that time, there is that technopop side in there nestled alongside the kayo rock. It's quite the quirky little tune delivered in an appealingly squeaky way by a singer who, looking at the images in the video above, was also quite flamboyant. Although it was Hosono who took care of the music, there is something of Akiko Yano（矢野顕子） in it, and I could imagine someone like the main vocalist for the band Fairchild, YOU, covering it easily. Lyrically, since it was made for a make-up ad, the song playfully describes how beautiful the subject of the song looks in the summer sun. The main line in the refrain goes "Kimi wa sekido komachi..." (君は赤道小町....You are a small town on the equator) which, I guess, would be along the lines of "You are a spicy little number" or "You are a tall drink of water".
As mentioned, "Sekido Komachi Doki" was Yamashita's first big hit, peaking at No. 2 on Oricon and becoming the 22nd-ranked song of the year. Incidentally, Yamashita had been married to former BOOWY guitarist Tomoyasu Hotei（布袋寅泰）for about 12 years.
