Jay Graydon & Marc Jordan -- Secret Love

 

One of my favourite tracks on Mariya Takeuchi's（竹内まりや）"Miss M" album from 1980 was "Secret Love". In fact, I love it so much that I gave it its own article a few years after posting about the album. One YouTube commenter even mentioned that "Secret Love" seemed to be the great connector between American AOR and City Pop in Japan.

The song does go down smoother than a Bailey's Irish Cream. However in the 1980 album, there were those horns which suddenly blasted a hole in my eardrums during the instrumental bridge. It was somewhat jarring; otherwise, I would have pegged it as the perfect AOR song.

But that seems to have been resolved when one of the two guys responsible for its composition, guitarist Jay Graydon (the other guy was David Foster, so it was Airplay behind the music), released his third solo album, "Past to Present - The 70s" in 2006. The horns are now gone but the rest of the music and arrangement has basically been untouched, and this time, the vocals are provided by the lyricist Marc Jordan who also does a great job. Still feel like bombing down the Ventura in a convertible during dusk or dawn while hearing this.

Mariya Takeuchi -- Secret Love

"Secret Love" is a track from Mariya Takeuchi's（竹内まりや）"Miss M" album from 1980. As I mentioned in the article for her 4th album, "Miss M" is about as City Pop/AOR that the divine Miss M has ever gotten. And "Secret Love" seems to be Ground Zero for that genre. It sounds so West Coast circa that decade that I wondered whether Takeuchi had decided to put up stakes somewhere along the Ventura Highway in California.

Written by Marc Jordan and composed by Jay Graydon & David Foster (aka Airplay), the AOR keyboards start things off as if they are welcoming in the sunrise and then Mariya brings in her mellow tones with backup from the horns before everything and everyone takes the song into broad daylight in Los Angeles. Listening to it, it felt like I was sitting by that off-pink plastic radio that used to sit on the dining room table back in the late 70s. 

"Secret Love" is about as nostalgic and slick as they come for me. However, the only thing that irked me is during the bridge when those sunrise keyboards came back in for a couple of seconds only for the horns to suddenly blast in. It seemed like the guys wanted to lure the listener in up close to the speakers before playing that sonic joke on him. Happened to me the first time and just struck me as being a bit intrusive. Still, if someone asked me about what City Pop was all about, I could just point him to this song as an example.