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.
Seeing that we are less than a fortnight away from summer (hopefully), perhaps it is time to post something a little more seasonal.
Singer-songwriter Manaho Mori（森真帆）is someone that I've gotten to know only recently. Although I have very limited knowledge about her history and discography, I believe that she did have her City Pop phase in her early years such as her collaboration with the late Hiroshi Narumi（鳴海寛）, "Desire", from his "Around the Thru Traffic" album.
In 2018, Mori released a single titled "Natsu no Kumo"(Summer Clouds) which was written by her and composed by Tatsuya Takidera（滝寺達也）as this very gentle and earthy pop song that pretty much demands that listeners go outside, lie on a hill and stare at the title (not a bad therapy actually). In a way, listening to this song and then remembering her early works, I'm reminded of Yurie Kokubu（国分友里恵）who started out as a City Pop singer herself in the 1980s but shifted to a quieter style in the mid-1990s.
I guess it's been a good week for new City Pop discoveries. Last night, I found out about CHiLi GiRL and then even the day before, I'd learned that there had been a digital album released in June 2022 in tribute to the late singer-songwriter Hiroshi Narumi（鳴海寛）called "Around the Thru Traffic". Tortured usage of prepositions aside, I was interested in the material since Narumi had been partners with songwriter Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）for their one-off 1982 album "Thru Traffic" as the duo Tohoku Shinkansen（東北新幹線）, one of the finest works in the City Pop and J-AOR genres. The connection between the 2022 release and the original "Thru Traffic" was made complete with that gorgeous cover of an old-style house which would make a DuPont Paints salesman swoon.
Accordingly, I thought I would feature a few of the tracks from the whole she-bang of twenty tracks on "Around the Thru Traffic" which consists of selected songs from some of Narumi's other albums including the 2017 "Melting Pot featuring Narumi Hiroshi Live at Egg-man +" when he was part of the project Melting Pot. A couple of those selections are already up on the blog: "Summer Touches You" from the aforementioned "Thru Traffic" and "Nakushitamono ga Ohsugiru"（なくしたものが多過ぎる）from that 2017 album.
So let's begin with "Throw a Kiss" above which was also from "Melting Pot featuring Narumi Hiroshi Live at Egg-man +". It's a rollicking AOR number which sounds like it could have easily belonged to "Thru Traffic" and there's something about the beat that suggests a nice 1970s City Pop song.
"Desire" featuring Manaho Mori（森真帆）was the B-side to Hiroshi Narumi's own single version of "Summer Touches You", so I'm guessing that it is from 1982 as well. It's also a part of Narumi's "HIROSHI NARUMI WORKS SPECIAL 7inch BOX" which was released in June 2020 according to Amazon. It's quite the smoky and dusky City Pop tune that demands a tumbler of whiskey of similar quality. I believe that is Narumi's giving a bluesy performance on the guitar.
Not sure where "You & I", a duet between Narumi and Cindy, was originally from. The search for it always leads back to this album so could this be a previously unpublicized single? I doubt it but if anyone can educate me on this, that would be most appreciated. Anyways, this is a cool and playful song reminding me of some of the soulful tunes from the 1980s by folks like Al Jarreau and Whitney Houston. It's also rather poignant that all four of the singers that I've mentioned in this paragraph are no longer with us.
One more song that I'll feature here is the final track, Narumi's homemade "For Joao", and suitably it's a smooth and relaxing instrumental of bossa nova goodness (with some scatting) which highlights his guitar skills. Get me a glass of that fine caipirinha!
For all you Tohoku Shinkansen fans, maybe "Around the Thru Traffic" can make its way through traffic into your Christmas stocking this year.
Yes, I realize that it's been a little over two months since we had our last exposure to April, but frankly, I felt that this tune is plenty genki enough that I wasn't willing to wait until 2024 to put this one out.
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There isn't a lot of past information on Manaho Mori（森真帆）(except that she hails from Tokyo), although she's very active now with a Twitter account and a YouTube channel, but she's a singer-songwriter as well as a vocal producer who has still been releasing music. But she did release a single back in 1980 called "April Morning Love" which has a lot of sumptuous soul and funk thanks to composer Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）and arranger Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）. Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）provided the lyrics to this song, and one commenter below the video mentioned that this is a tune that could have been covered by Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）, probably because there is some similarity between the two voices and the fact that Iwasaki had been doing a fair bit of disco-inflected tunes at around the same time.
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