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.
"Candy" is some nice urban groove with a direct lineage to Curtis Mayfield's"Tripping Out" and Tatsuro Yamashita's（山下達郎）"Amaku Kiken na Kaori" (あまく危険な香り）. What I think of whenever I listen to any of Naoko Gushima's（具島直子）creations such as this one and "Love Song" is the sweetness, and at the same time, some touch of nostalgia. Perhaps this is the reason for the mysterious charm that keeps the listener's attention.
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).
Yesterday, I put up that list of mine regarding late summer-to-autumn Japanese pop songs. If I'd known about this one that I am about to talk about, I would have included it there, too.
Singer-songwriter Naoko Gushima（具島直子）isn't someone that I get a chance to write about a lot, but over the years, I've gained more appreciation for her stylish approach to pop with some soul thrown in. I wouldn't consider her "Ku-gatsu no Umi" (September Sea) to be Neo-City Pop or even really R&B, but there's something undeniably urban and cool about it. Written and composed by the singer, the gravitas-laden piano and the bluesy guitar set the tone for a song whose image to me through the lyrics is of a lady walking barefoot along the beach wondering whether love will strike again. Another image is of an amiable Friday night dinner for a couple in their favourite neighbourhood restaurant of class and style.
"Ku-gatsu no Umi" was a new song added to Gushima's first BEST compilation, "Magic Wave", from April 2009.
I'm not sure how the western Tokyo neighbourhood of Jiyugaoka（自由が丘）has fared during the pandemic. It used to be a place where I visited fairly often and despite it being one of the many residential and commercial hubs surrounding train stations, it seemed to have its own remarkable cachet due to a conglomeration of boutiques and trendy restaurants. My Skype student even informed me years ago that there was a Beavertails outlet (a Canadian franchise that sells beavertail-shaped waffle delights) in Jiyugaoka.
However, both my student and another good friend have moved away from the area since then so I no longer have any regular eyes or ears into the neighbourhood. Still I'm hoping that it's been holding itself together over the past 20 months.
And indeed, the thumbnail photo at the top is one of a Jiyugaoka street at night after things have closed down. Plus, I think that it would make for the setting of this song by singer-songwriter Naoko Gushima（具島直子）. "no.no.no" was her 3rd single from July 1998. Written and composed by the singer, it all deals with a lady getting off at the station before her home station and while walking the rest of the way, she thinks about a past romance and the consequences of there no longer being that significant other by her side.
"no.no.no" is very stylish and velvety, and it makes me wonder whether Gushima dipped some old-school soul into a bowl of slow jam before serving it to us. That old-time feeling really comes through especially when she trills the title; I'm half-expecting a background chorus to chime on in but the production process has given us that with her voice. My compliments as well to the pianist.
I just barely remember the first television set that I ever laid my eyes upon and that was the ancient black-and-white in our old apartment in St. James Town. Strangely enough, I do remember that it was showing "Hockey Night in Canada" with Ward Cornell as the host. However, since then it's been colour sets all the way.
Then, for all of my 17-year stint in Ichikawa, my apartment was blessed with a colour set but it was a very old TV which had knobs and dials and no remote control. It even had the bunny-ears antenna. Before you send your pity, don't bother. My living room was small enough that I could bend forward a degree from my sofa and be able to reach the knob to turn the contraption on while it was on the other side of the room. Even when I finally pulled the trigger and bought a contemporary thin-screen set at the local electronics shop, I didn't even throw away the old set. I simply moved it to the bedroom for the last few years. I'm a sentimental one, for sure. It would explain why I started the blog in the first place.
All that preamble on black-and-white and colour sets just to introduce a track from singer-songwriter Naoko Gushima's（具島直子）1996 album"miss G", "Monochrome". A trackmate of "Candy", "Monochrome" has the same sort of relaxed groove and slow funk ideal for a weekend nap at home, and it may have made for a nice antidote at the time if one were constantly listening to the dance-pop from the Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）steamroller that was in full force in the mid-1990s. I had and have no problems with TRF, Tomomi Kahala（華原朋美）and Namie Amuro（安室奈美恵）but from time to time, it's nice to listen to something that can place you in an intimate coffee house rather than the dance club.
I especially like the George Benson-esque guitar that starts things off along with the hypnotism provided by Gushima's voice and the piano.
I remember picking up this album "miss G" by Naoko Gushima（具島直子）a couple of decades ago, probably because I heard some of the tracks being played on the store speakers...most likely Tower Records. And in all likelihood, one of those tracks was "Candy". As was the case with all of the other tracks, Gushima provided the words and music for this softly bouncy song which the blogger for Japanese-language "Music Avenue" described as being an example of Urban Mellow.
Not sure if Urban Mellow is an actual genre name (a love child of J-AOR and City Pop?), but I guess "Candy" would fit the title. In any case, it is a cafe-friendly tune with Gushima's velvety vocals reminding me a bit of another singer who was in the same ballpark, genre-wise, Toko Furuuchi（古内東子）. "miss G", by the way, was Gushima's debut album from 1996.
There's not a whole lot of information on Gushima unless you go straight to her website...not even a J-Wiki entry. She was born in 1969 in Tokyo, started learning piano at the age of 4, and then at 21, took those first steps into a music career as a backup singer and singer for commercials before releasing "miss G" some years later. According to her website, Gushima has released 5 albums up to now including her latest, which is also her BEST compilation, "magic wave" from 2009.
