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 Princess Princess. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Princess Princess. Show all posts
Welcome to a steamy Sunday in the Greater Toronto Area. I think you have probably read me referring to Yasushi Akimoto's（秋元康）harem of aidoru groups such as AKB 48 as the Alphabet Aidoru. Well, today to start this broadcasting day on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I'll be providing some Alphabet Songs through their titles.
There's something here that is almost downright "Jeopardy" about this selection. I'll take Alphabet Songs for $200, Alex!
It's another Hump Day this week and as has occasionally been the case, I like to put up an Author's Pick article just to liven the middle of the week up. Today, I found out that June 11th is the International Day of Play according to the United Nations. Now, I wasn't sure what they meant by "play"; was it referring to board games, gaming or sports? Well, I should have known since we're talking about the UN here that it was about kids' having that right to play for health and development.
As such, I've been reminded of the undokai(Sports Day) that I attended while I was on the JET Programme over 35 years ago. Mind you, the sports day festivities took place in the autumn but they do reflect about what the International Day of Play is all about: getting the kids together to do all sorts of activities such as relay races and ball tosses throughout the day. Because I was in a village, Sports Day took on even bigger meaning as a good chunk of the population came out to cheer on the kids at my junior high schools. Afterwards, when the kids went home to rest and shower, the parents and staffers headed out to imbibe copious amounts at the local izakaya in what could have been called the International Day of Drink (followed by the International Night of Gastrointestinal Distress and Headaches).
Regardless, I heard a number of songs played repeatedly during those Sports Days on the loudspeakers as BGM or tunes accompanying some of the events. I'm listing a few of them here along with a couple of Western oldies.
I was watching the local news this morning when I found out that apparently today is National Burger Day here in the Great White North. Ah...wonderful...and I'm not going anywhere for lunch or dinner.😞 But those cheeseburgers did look rather sumptuous on television. Interestingly enough, I've heard that within the Japanese gastronomical world, the hamburger in all its different forms (sliders, smashed burgers, etc.) is getting its second wind. I was there for the first big blossoming of the burger there when all sorts of burger shops popped up throughout the Greater Tokyo Area.
After catching that TV segment, I was wondering about any burger kayo out there. The only one I knew was Kirinji's（キリンジ）bubbly "Pizza VS. Hamburger" from the band's "cherish" album of 2019. However, although I'd assumed that I would be lucky to find even one after several minutes, I was able to track down two within just a few minutes. So, for your listening (and perhaps future eating) pleasure, here are the double portions with cheese.
I have to really get better at distinguishing folksy singer Masato Shimon（子門真人）from Tatsuo Kamon（嘉門タツオ）. Shimon was the one behind the biggest-selling single in Japan, "Oyoge! Taiyaki-kun" (およげ！たいやきくん）, also a song about food but nothing to do with lots of protein. Kamon, on the other hand, is an entertainer who started out as the apprentice for a rakugo comedian in the late 1970s before becoming a singer-songwriter of comical novelty tunes from the 1980s.
His 34th single was released in December 1995. "Totsugeki! Hamburger Shop"(Bang! Hamburger Shop) comes across as a comedic country-western tune with Kamon acting in two roles: the grumpiest customer in a hamburger shop dealing with a super-polite employee and the grumpiest hamburger shop owner dealing with a nervous nellie of a customer. Basically, he brought in his old rakugo techniques into this one. Kamon composed the song while Tsuyoshi Sugimoto（杉本つよし）took care of the lyrics.
Meanwhile, Chisato Moritaka's（森高千里）"Teriyaki Burger" is one upbeat jukebox-friendly pop-rock track from her October 1990 album"Kokon Tozai"（古今東西...All Times and Places）. The title is the only thing that concerns any patty between two buns; Moritaka just lets loose on her ambitions to take over the world her own way without things such as formal education and borders getting in her way. In a way then, "Teriyaki Burger" could share something with the food-themed title "Sukiyaki" being slapped onto Kyu Sakamoto's（坂本九）classic "Ue wo Muite Arukou" (上を向いて歩こう) by that British DJ decades ago. "Sukiyaki" has nothing to do with the meaning of the lyrics but it's easier to pronounce that particular title. In any case, Moritaka took care of the lyrics while Hideo Saito（斉藤英夫）was the composer.
Now, here's a special video. I don't think I've ever seen Princess Princess and Moritaka collaborate. Cherish it and that hamburger today.🍔
Well, here I was thinking that I had basically exhausted all of the possibilities on the Gosanke（御三家）file, true and imagined which explains why nothing from that Label was posted over the weekend. And I was wrong, so perhaps there may be some hope to squeeze out a few more trios.
And yep, sticking with my JET days between 1989 and 1991, I remember that the massive blossom of diversification in Japanese popular music at that time included the proliferation of female pop and rock bands. So, when I look back on my two years in Gunma, the following three groups are who I think about.
A bit of an odd one to start off today's articles of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", but on hearing about the passing of former President, CEO and Chairman of SONY, Nobuyuki Idei（出井伸之）, at the age of 84 (his death was the top news story on NHK today) a few days ago, I began thinking of all of those contraptions that me and my family have had contact with over the decades such as the Walkman, Discman, Playstation 1 and all of those audio tapes. And crazily enough, I've also mentioned our old family pink SONY radio from the 1970s from time to time in various articles. Well, I finally found a photo of it but since this is a Pinterest shot on someone else's account, to keep things copacetic, I will instead provide the link to it right here.
It did get me to thinking, though. I remember that a number of musical artists have been featured on the commercials for all of those SONY products in the past. At first, I thought about focusing on one song but then I opted to make this an Author's Pick based on Media, and see if I could dig up some of those commercials with songs that have already made their way onto our blog. To be honest, it was a tad more difficult than I'd assumed, but I did find five.
I'm providing a special Reminiscings of Youth article tonight in that it doesn't revolve around any of the Western songs that I usually centre a ROY around. The target is actually a building!🏢
Earlier tonight, I was watching an NHK hour-long documentary on the stories behind the architecture of some of the buildings erected in Tokyo in the 1960s and 1970s. It wasn't too dense and academic since it was some entertainers who were leading the way including a comedian who had studied architecture at university before he decided to take that very different career path.
A number of buildings were featured including a few in West Shinjuku which is also known as the Skyscraper District. I used to walk through the area on a weekly basis since I did have one teaching gig in the area for several years, and I thought it was quite the marvel to put up so many hulking towers there considering how earthquake-prone Japan is. One of the buildings on that program was the Keio Plaza Hotel, accommodations where I stayed at for four nights and five days during the summer of 1989. It was the base for many many new recruits on the JET Programme as we had our orientation session there before getting shipped out to our respective prefectures.
What I learned on the program was that the Keio was the very first skyscraper to be erected in West Shinjuku which used to be the site of a huge water treatment facility. And from Wikipedia, I found out that it was the first high-rise hotel in Japan. Looking at a photo of the hotel when it was first put up in 1971, it stuck out like a sore thumb in the middle of nowhere so I could only imagine what the first guests were thinking when they arrived. Of course, since then, the Keio has been swamped by fellow skyscrapers including other hotels.
I'd assumed that the Keio Plaza was actually put up a decade later but the program set me straight, and I also discovered that it was given its distinctive Z-shape (looking at the roof from the sky) so that every room had a decent view. As I said off the top, I was able to stay there for the better part of a week during an especially torrid summer, and my biggest memories included having the view of the soon-to-be complete Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building which struck me as looking like a life-sized version of the SDF 1 from "Macross" and having a fellow JET teacher/free spirited hippie type take me barefoot outside to the nearest international phone booth while my sweat glands allowed me to become a human sprinkler in the notorious heat and humidity of a Tokyo summer.
Although I only stayed there that one time in 1989, in the years since when I was actually living and working in the Tokyo area, I have used the Keio lobby as a meeting place for folks whenever we didn't want to meet up at the usually crowded JR Shinjuku Station, especially when our dinner venue was actually in West Shinjuku.
Well, I guess since I used the Keio Plaza Hotel as a target for this special ROY, I figure that I will just have to give another one for the Tokyo Prince Hotel sometime down the line since that place has even more meaning to me. In any case, I will provide the songs at No. 8, 9 and 10 for August 1989 on the Oricon chart this time around.
When I first heard the name for this New York State-based band, 10,000 Maniacs, I'd originally thought that it was some sort of punk outfit or heavy metal group, and therefore something that I should clear away from. Instead, it was into alternative rock and college rock, and led by singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant.
At the time that their 9th single"Trouble Me" was released in May 1989, I was just a couple of months away from taking off to Japan to start my first post-university job and so the nervousness and stress were rising like magma to the caldera. So with something like "Trouble Me", it was quite the melodic salve. For an alt-rock band, this particular song was very untroubling pop. It and the music video were so calming, folksy and whimsical thanks to the words, music and arrangement by Merchant and composer Dennis Drew that I swore that it was downright Canadian! I almost expected to see the CBC logo near the end of the video.
From what I've read of the "Trouble Me" article on Wikipedia, Merchant had written the song for her father who had been in hospital at the time. The music video has the singer help out an old woman to meet up with her friends in the neighbourhood and so I thought especially during these times of the pandemic, "Trouble Me" had me thinking about families worrying and trying to take care of their older members. The song was also a track on 10,000 Maniacs' 4th studio album"Blind Man's Zoo" which also came out in May 1989.
After the party-hearty New Wave of Wang Chung last week, I thought that this week's ROY article could be a little more chill.
Now, which songs were in the Top 3 positions of the Oricon May 1989 chart?
It's time for another Reminiscings of Youth session this week and for the second time, we have Pet Shop Boys following one of my very favourites of theirs, "Left to My Own Devices" from 1988.
As they say, timing is everything, and as it turns out, I had just arrived in Japan on the JET Programme when Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe put out a Japan-only short compilation album commemorating that country's part of their MCMLXXXIX Tour in 1989. Titled "In Depth" and released in July 1989, it contained their hits including "Always On My Mind" and the aforementioned "Left to My Own Devices" but it was Track 2 that got some new attention from me.
"One of the Crowd" is, as would usually be the case for a Pet Shop Boys song, immensely catchy and it was through "In Depth" that I first learned about this earworm by Tennant and Lowe, although I later read that it was a coupling song with the single "It's Alright" that was released the previous month. Still, it has remained the most notable song from "In Depth" for me because of those tribal rhythms, Lowe's vocoder intoning of fishing and my long wondering whether PSB was channeling either YMO or Kraftwerk when they came up with "One of the Crowd".
It's been over 30 years since this one came out but I certainly hope that some enterprising fellow might be able to put up some sort of computer graphics video based on the tune. All this time, I'd assumed that "One of the Crowd" had been placed in "In Depth" as a sorta/kinda comic admonishment against Japanese society's tendency to follow the crowd and fashion trends and so forth. But then, I went to the Pet Shop Boys Wiki where I found out that Tennant had once mentioned that "...Chris said in an interview on TV that he liked following fashion and that he didn't like to stand out, he liked to be one of the crowd" which became part of the lyrics for the song. It ended up that "One of the Crowd" was just Lowe goofing about, with his partner and the rest of the production staff having a belly laugh at the silliness of it all.
Nothing profound or philosophical at all. However, it says something that even when the Boys are taking the piss out of something, it still comes out great. "In Depth" peaked at No. 18 on Oricon. So, what were the Top 3 Oricon singlesin that hot and hazy month of July in 1989?
Happy Sunday, folks! This may be the one and only instance in which I have a KKP article that I've categorized as a BEST but have also thrown in the Album label as well. That's because although indeed Princess Princess'（プリンセスプリンセス）"SINGLES 1987-1992" has a lot of their big hits, the band itself has maintained that it would never release a BEST album for their own reasons. So on J-Wiki, it's a BEST album but on Wikipedia, it's known as a compilation album. As such, I'll be peacemaker here and throw in both labels. Incidentally, there is a BEST album, "The Greatest Princess", which was released in February 1996, but this wasn't a case of the members finally acquiescing; those tracks were selected by the folks at Sony Records and no one in the band had any input there.
Anyways, "SINGLES 1987-1992" was first seen on CD shelves in July 1992 and here is the lineup:
Well, as you can see up above, most of their hits have been talked about on the blog but let's see what I haven't covered yet. The first track is actually something special made for this BEST album, "THE PRIVATE FANFARE" which is an orchestral piece created by vocalist and songwriter Kaori Okui（奥居香）, and it's done as a overture as if it were supposed to be adorning some epic flick's soundtrack. There's even a jazzy segment included. It goes to show that Okui wasn't just about the rock and according to her own J-Wiki article, she has provided music for at least one motion picture and one TV drama.
Following "THE PRIVATE FANFARE", it takes me until Track 8 of "SINGLES 1987-1992" before I can start talking about something new, and that is "GO AWAY BOY" which happens to be Princess Princess' 5th single from May 1988. One of their early pre-"Diamonds" releases, this was written and composed by band guitarist Kanako Nakayama（中山加奈子）, and it's a searing rejection by a woman against a now-former lover, although the hint within the lyrics is that she's hiding some massive heartbreak underneath all of the fury. With Okui's vocals and everything else in the arrangement, yup, this is the Princess Princess sound. The single peaked at No. 19 on Oricon and was a part of the band's 2nd album"Here We Are" from February of that year, placing in at No. 8.
"GET CRAZY!" is a fun-time romp which was Princess Princess' 6th single from October 1988. This time with Nakayama and Okui working on words and music respectively, the song sounds like a good ol' honky-tonk rocker about all of the trials and tribulations of love which is still all worth the while. "GET CRAZY!" got as crazy as No. 13, and it was included on the band's 3rd album"LET'S GET CRAZY" which was released in November that same year which hit No. 2.
Meanwhile, "My Will" was the band's 3rd single from November 1987 which seems to have a bit more pop in there than in the previous two tracks. I'd say that with those synths being used, it almost sounds a bit more New Wave even. Keyboardist Tomoko Konno（今野登茂子）provided the lyrics alongside Okui's melody about being someone having the spunk to take on the whole world. As with "GO AWAY BOY", "My Will" was also a track on "Here We Are" but a 1992 mix of the song is on "SINGLES".
I think that this is one single that perhaps I should have done as its own article but unfortunately I did forget, and it's one that comes later in February 1992, "Jungle Princess". Their 13th single by lyricist Konno and composer Nakayama, the lyrics describe housewives getting increasingly frustrated by their husbands being dragged further and further into work until something finally explodes, and I guess that the music video shows the aftermath with the band deciding to head out to the wilds of Las Vegas for some self-pampering. Fortified with a battery of horns and percussion, I can't help but get reminded of songs like Baltimora's "Tarzan Boy" and those "boom-laka-laka-laka" calls probably come from Sly and the Family Stone's"I Want to Take You Higher” from 1969. Strangely enough, their 13th single actually peaked at No. 13.
With a beefy drum-and-bass intro, I thought that I was going to hear Madonna's "Material Girl" when my ears first came across "Pilot ni Naritakute"(Wanna Become A Pilot), the band's 14th single from May 1992. Like "Jungle Princess", this was another Konno and Nakayama collaboration but this time, their songwriting roles were reversed. I think that a lot of Princess Princess' songs were meant as loud encouragement to listeners, and "Pilot ni Naritakute" is one example of Okui and company exhorting folks not to let the obstacles permanently bar them from their goals. This one hit No. 6.
As with the first track, the final track on "SINGLES" is actually a song created for this album, "Hareta Hi ni" (On A Fine Day). A pure pop song through and through, Okui provided the sunny music with drummer Kyoko Tomita（富田京子）writing the bittersweet lyrics of correspondence of someone saying goodbye to a dear person. The writer feels that they cannot reciprocate the love that the receiver needs but they also feel that they cannot return to just being friends...so, adios! Ouch!
"SINGLES 1987-1992" was Princess Princess' 3rd million-seller and it stayed at No. 1 for five weeks straight. J-Wiki also notes in its article that up to the release of "SINGLES", it had been extremely rare for a BEST album to become a massive hit that this one became (although I think Kazumasa Oda's"Oh! Yeah!" is one candidate and of course, B'z opened the floodgates with its BEST). One reason for the huge success was that hit singles such as "Diamonds" and "Oh Yeah!" hadn't gotten onto a Princess Princess original album before that point, so I think that even casual fans couldn't ignore this release. By the end of 1992, "SINGLES" was the 8th-ranked album of the year.
At the beginning of the 1980s, Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）was making her first strides to become the Queen Aidoru of the early 1980s. By the end of that decade, though, after getting married and having a daughter and then coming back onto the music scene, she was also blurring the line between teenybopper singer and pop star.
Personally, I'm always going to have a sweet spot for the early Seiko and her hits such as "Akai Sweet Pea"(赤いスイートピー）and "Aoi Sangoshou"（青い珊瑚礁）. Having said that, though, I'm also going to be curious about some of those songs that she released in the late 1980s and beyond. Case in point: her 27th single"Precious Heart" which was released in November 1989. By that time, I was comfortably within my JET life in Gunma Prefecture but I don't remember much about any television hoopla surrounding the single. I think that I probably remarked something along the lines of "Oh, that's Seiko. She's still putting out music, I see...".
But I do remember this commercial that was using "Precious Heart" as the campaign song. I would have thought that something as cheerful and dynamic as this particular single had been the theme tune for one of the dramas of the time. Actually, though, it was promoting Subaru's Rex ai which I guess is pretty nice music for a car. Plus, the ad has that more mature visage of Seiko.
"Precious Heart" also had that touch of happy pop/rock so when I read that Kaori Okui（奥居香）, lead vocalist of the really popular band Princess Princess（プリンセスプリンセス）, had come up with the music for Matsuda's own lyrics, I did go "Ah, naruhodo". The song does have that PuriPuri vibe. It also garnered a No. 2 ranking on the Oricon weeklies as it was placed on Seiko-chan's 16th original album, "Precious Moment", from December 1989. It peaked at No. 6 on the Oricon album chart.
Being a member of a certain generation, the first Batman that I got acquainted with was the TV version from the 1960s with the late Adam West as a campy Caped Crusader fighting with fists, batarangs and day-glow onomatopoeia on the screen. I hadn't known that Batman first appeared in comic books as a much darker and dangerous hero, but all that changed with Frank Miller's 1986 comic miniseries "The Dark Knight Returns" when the World's Greatest Detective was given his old obsessed personality back.
And that led to the stylishly gothic and ambitious Tim Burton 1989 film with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. That year was indeed the Year of the Batman with all sorts of news features, trailers, merchandise and talk about how a comic actor who was the goofy Beetlejuice the year before could ever become cast as the Dark Knight. There were tons of howling protest about Keaton's casting but apparently all that went away when the movie came out during the blockbuster season. Still, the actor and character had a mighty duel to fight against Nicholson's Joker who almost stole the entire movie.
Interestingly that year was the same year that I graduated from University of Toronto and headed over to Japan to start my very first full-time job as a teacher on the JET Programme. In fact, I left Canada just a few weeks after "Batman" was released in theatres and it was the final film for me and my friends to watch together before leaving on my Japan odyssey.
There are all those YouTube videos of frenzied audience reactions for "Avengers Endgame". I remember watching "Batman" on the big screen and the audience then was just screaming and cheering right from the start when the title came on to Danny Elfman's epic theme. And it simply continued when key scenes came on such as the "Get in the car" scene. It was quite the experience and a fine cinematic sendoff for me to Japan. Incidentally, "Batman" didn't get out into theatres over there until December.
The JET briefing manual which I had received as part of my kit to get ready to teach the masses instructed me on how to use pop culture to make English more palatable to the kids. So I tried to infuse some of Batman and Joker into the lessons instead of Dick and Jane but the sage observation was that the superhero and supervillain were still more (not-Adam) West-centric, so perhaps Anpanman and Baikinman were better. The whole "Dick Tracy" thing the following year fared even worse, though I tried.
Within all of the Batman hoopla in 1989, only one incredible artist could make his contribution stand out and apart from everything Bat. Prince already has representation on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" because he provided dynamic singer Kahoru Kohiruimaki（小比類巻かほる）with a couple of tracks for her "Time The Motion" album which had come out the same year. Well, he also provided the film with his own creation "Batdance" which got the regal welcome in June 1989 when "Batman" was released.
Perhaps just like the movie, "Batdance", the song and the video, is epic and bizarre...and in addition, it's Princely! Naturally I was listening to plenty of Prince songs throughout the 1980s (and I'll have to cover "When Doves Cry" sometime soon as a ROY article), and therefore when I encountered "Batdance" on MuchMusic here in Canada, I just thought that this song could have only come from the mind and soul of Prince. It's got all of the rock, the funk, the dance beats and excerpts from the movie itself all smashed into a chaotic whole and visually expressed in the music video which could have played every night on stage off or on Broadway if Prince had desired it. Not surprisingly, "Batdance" hit No. 1 in both Canada and the United States.
I've read that Keaton is putting on the cowl again for "The Flash" which is scheduled to come out in a little over a year from now. Can only imagine the cheering that he will get when he shows up again to say "I'M BATMAN!".
The impression that I have about singer-songwriter Masamichi Sugi（杉真理）is that he's probably one of those folks who really enjoys setting up parties of all sorts ranging from the Xmas ones to the traditional year-enders in Japan, and I think that affinity probably transferred over to musical collaborations looking at his J-Wiki file. Seven years ago, nikala wrote about one such get-together featuring him and his fellow Sony stars including Yoshitaka Minami（南佳孝）and Kaoru Sudo（須藤薫）under the umbrella name of Pops All Stars to do a Xmas thing called "Yellow Christmas" via the "Winter Lounge" album from November 1986. I was reminded of the song recently from talks with Rocket Brown of "Come Along Radio" and Scott of his own J-Xmas podcast.
Well, just by luck last night, my YouTube browsings took me to the video for another Pops All Stars session called "Holiday Company", this time taking place several months later through "Summer Lounge" which was released in June 1987. With a slightly different and more expanded lineup consisting of the aforementioned Sugi, Minami and Sudo, along with vocal group Hi-Fi Set（ハイ・ファイ・セット）, rock band Princess Princess（プリンセスプリンセス）, singer-songwriter Tomoko Tane（種ともこ）, violinist Toshihiro Nakanishi（中西俊博）and singer-songwriter Seishiro Kusunose（楠瀬誠志郎）, this "Avengers" band of pop singers takes on Sugi's arrangement of hints of Steely Dan here and crashing synths there and even some doo-wop for some desire of fun-in-the-sun vacationing.
The video for "Holiday Company" also has the crew hamming it up as the most congenial corporate section getting ready for that annual company trip (with all of the typical cornball entertainment activities) on a yakata bune cruising down what I think is the Sumida River in Tokyo. I'm just trying to imagine Hi-Fi Set and Princess Princess boogying down in the same video while Minami is about as relaxed as I've ever seen him.
It also appears that Sugi kept the good times going for some years with a number of multi-singer projects going into the late 1990s. Once COVID is finally over, I can imagine that a lot of corporate sections will be more than happy to get into the party mood.
Seeing Marcos V's article on what he has been listening to in the early part of 2017 and reading about singer/actress Arisa Mizuki（観月ありさ）, I remarked that after her impressive debut with "Densetsu no Shojo"（伝説の少女）, I had listened to one of her later singles, "Too Shy Shy Boy!" and came to the conclusion that I probably wouldn't be picking up any more CD singles by her.
As an aside before the main event, I wanted to mention that I believe I had seen one of her commercials just before she debuted as a singer around the turn of the decade. It wasn't the one above but I think it was for Shiseido in which a teenaged Mizuki basically stared/glared at the camera for the entire time without mentioning a word. My impression was "Ohhhhhkay....I am going to take a step back...no sudden moves...". Rather intense look, she had.
Anyways, getting back onto topic, I listened to Marcos' Arisa entry on that article, "Kimi ga Suki Dakara"（君が好きだから）, and actually found it quite nice. The Yuming (ユーミン) touch helped. So, I felt that perhaps with the passage of time along with the accompanying nostalgia, it was time to give the singer's discography another look-see.
Therefore, I chose her 2nd single right after "Densetsu no Shojo", "Eden no Toshi" (City of Eden), from August 1991. Surprisingly, it's a nice and light cheery tune. It probably won't ever get into the Top 10 of my own favourite songs but it's pleasant enough.
Written and composed by Ami Ozaki（尾崎亜美）, part of the reason that I went off to purchase "Densetsu no Shojo" was that Mizuki seemed to channel its songwriter's delivery. With "Eden no Toshi", she seemed to channel that ability even more for the composer of the song, Kaori Okui（奥居香）, namely the lead vocalist for the band Princess Princess (プリンセス・プリンセス). The band itself could have easily covered this song at one of their own gigs and it would have sounded right at home. Shun Taguchi（田口俊）took care of the lyrics.
Selling 180,000 copies, "Eden no Toshi" soared all the way to No. 5 on the charts and even sneaked onto the Top 100 of 1991, ending up at No. 91. The song is also in her debut album, "ARISA" from December 1991 which peaked at No. 8.
Good golly! George Michael on Xmas Day and then today I get this news. I'd heard about Carrie Fisher's heart attack on that flight over to Los Angeles before last weekend and knew that she was in a bad way but the prognosis was that she was stabilizing. I took that to mean a hopeful thing. Unfortunately, the news came out this morning that she had passed away earlier today at the age of 60.😢
Fisher may have worn a number of hats in her career but it would always be her cinnamon bun do that I will remember her for. Of course, it's Princess Leia. When I had first heard of "Star Wars" decades ago and finally got to see it at the theatre, my impression as a callow youth was that as a princess, she would be the usual Disney damsel-in-distress. Instead, she was a 19-year-old cranky, snarky and tough belle who could go toe-to-toe with dashing-but-mercenary Han Solo. She didn't smile all that much during "A New Hope"...and frankly, how could she when the Death Star blew up her adopted planet and all her loved ones right in front of her eyes?
However, there is a trope that I found on the website "TV Tropes" called "When She Smiles" which describes a usually dour-faced character in pop culture who suddenly lights up the room...and fans...when he or she finally gives that rare happy look. That smile finally happened at the end of "A New Hope" during the medal ceremony for Luke Skywalker and Han, and I can remark that those guys' reward was just as much Leia's smile as it was those medals and recognition that they struck a blow against the evil Empire. Carrie Fisher probably melted a whole lot of hearts when she smiled in those photos but her passing broke a whole lot of them today.
So I was left thinking about how to pay some tribute through the blog, and decided to go with an old Princess Princess song. Nope, it isn't a smooth segue but it's the best I got. In fact, I have here the band's debut single under their Princess Princess moniker, "Koi wa Balance" (Love In Balance). Strangely enough, there is something fitting about going with this song for this tribute to Carrie Fisher since there has been that overarching theme of providing balance to the Force.
Released in April 1987, "Koi wa Balance" wasn't an in-band creation as would be the case with many of their future hits. Vocalist Kaori Okui（奥居香）didn't provide the music; instead it was veteran composer Kisaburo Suzuki（鈴木キサブロー）who I usually associate with the much different Mariko Takahashi（高橋真梨子）. However, guitarist Kanako Nakayama（中山加奈子）wrote the lyrics.
It's always interesting to see how a famous band started from humble beginnings. And watching the video above, all of the ladies looked a lot less rock and somewhat more GAP Kids. The song itself was definitely more on the poppier side of things and the underlying melody reminded me of this old Italian standard from years ago. Apparently "Koi wa Balance" didn't chart but that's OK. Obviously the best was yet to come for Okui and company.
It's been a tough 2016 for our pop idol icons, folks...
(December 28th: And the sadness deepens....her mother Debbie Reynolds just passed away earlier tonight.)
Although my excitement at the time was understandably all focused on starting my very first post-university job in a foreign country and finally living life on my own, my bona fide collection of Japanese pop music started with my arrival in Gunma Prefecture for the JET Programme. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but years of owning a few LPs and tapes bought in Chinatown and taping episodes of "Sounds of Japan" would transition into a ravenous habit of purchasing tons of CDs in Tsukiyono-machi, the regional capital of Maebashi and the megalopolis of Tokyo over the next two years.
Looking back on those years and then comparing them to that July 1981 trip which launched my musical journey in the first place, I find it fascinating at how different music was between the beginning of the 80s and the end of that decade. The scene of fluffy-cute aidoru in frilly dresses and questionable bridgework had changed into a small cadre of mellow singer-songwriters in tandem with girl bands who wanted to rock out with their guitars or their voices. Plus, there was even more synth work but not to show off any blippity-bloppity technopop but to anchor songs in a somewhat more mature style.
When I moved into my room atop my host family's chiropractic practice, I turned on my TV and saw Yoko Oginome（荻野目洋子）, the super-dynamic aidoru of the mid-80s simply acting away in a drama. Things were indeed a-changing. In any case, I welcome you to Part III of the series.
1. B'z
Being blasted awake every morning by "Bad Communication" by B'z made sure I was aware of this band. B'z was part of the realization that I was no longer in kayo Kansas. Koshi Inaba and Takahiro Matsumoto（稲葉浩志・松本孝弘）were the introduction to the part of J-Pop that was now in full thrall to more eclectic bands.
2. Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）
(cover version)
I had to find out from one of my English teachers in class about who Kazumasa Oda really was. On finding out that he was that distinctly mellow voice on many an Off Course (オフコース) ballad, it was a revelation on how urban contemporary he became as a soloist. "Little Tokyo" was the template sound to me for this new Oda who was already turning out to be one of the coolest middle-aged guys in music.
3. Wink
My impression between 1989-1991 was that the old-style aidoru phenomenon was finally starting to peter out. And yet, when I arrived, the Wink duo of Sachiko Suzuki and Shoko Aida（鈴木早智子・相田翔子）had already made a huge splash with a style that seemed anti-aidoru: no bopping about and no emotion. Just near-robotic moves and expressions reminiscent of exquisitely handmade dolls. "Samishii Nettaigyo"（淋しい熱帯魚）is the song that I will always remember them for.
4. Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）
Speaking about anti-aidoru, Mariko Nagai may have had plenty of bopping dance style but I couldn't ever see her as an aidoru. There was a cuteness to her, to be sure, but not of the early 80s calculated variety but something that was far more girl-next-door and down-to-earth. In many ways, "Miracle Girl"（ミラクル・ガール）is the one representative song that symbolized the female pop sound of those years in Gunma.
5. Misato Watanabe（渡辺美里）
I already knew about Misato Watanabe while I was still an undergrad at U of T but spending the turn of the decade in Japan, I got to know far more about her thanks to the hit singles (such as "Summertime Blues") and albums that came out during my time there. And "Summertime Blues" was another one of those happy songs that also signified my 1989-1991 period.
6. Miki Imai（今井美樹）
(karaoke version)
If it hadn't been for that stopover at that comfortable lodge cafe between Maebashi and Tsukiyono, I may not have been able to discover the wonders of Miki Imai. Well, that's not true...the lady with the mile-wide smile was already gaining so much popularity that I would have found about her eventually. But that cafe setting while hearing the relaxing sounds of her "Natsu wo Kasanete"（夏をかさねて）pretty much imprinted my falling for the lass. A lot of girl spunk out there but Imai was lovely and mellow.
7. Princess Princess
There was no place to avoid Princess Princess and the band's megahit "Diamonds". The very happy song was all over media and it was already a favourite tune to play during the schools' Sports Day outings. Girl pop/rock was all the rage at the time I arrived in Japan and Princess Princess was the band to beat.
8. Noriyuki Makihara（槇原敬之）
Noriyuki Makihara broke out just a month before I was to leave Japan for home. But his "Donna Toki mo"（どんなときも）was so infectious and positive that I simply had to obtain the CD single before getting on that last plane home for Canada. And I finally got it in a department store in Kumamoto City. It may have been the first disc that I ripped open on getting back to my family's condo.
Although the above are my standout singers, there were so many others who together with those above trailblazed a new path into Japanese popular music, and things got more interesting when I returned to Japan a few years later for a far longer stay.
In one of those "nostalgia from my JET days" moments, I'm putting up this article about Princess Princess'（プリンセス プリンセス）11th single from May 1991, "KISS". First hearing this through the commercial of a Suntory drink, I ended up getting the CD single. Plus I did find the CD cover of the band members looking like they were modeling all of the female hairstyles of the early 90s rather intriguing.
When it comes to Princess Princess songs, I tend to classify them into two types: their happy-go-lucky pop material such as their mega hit "Diamonds" and their pop-rock-it-to-the-wall stuff such as "Oh Yeah!". "KISS" definitely falls into the former category. The song has a pleasant melody line with a fairly lush piano-and-strings riff in the middle followed immediately by a nice guitar solo. My compliments go to vocalist Kaori Okui（奥居香）, guitarist Kanako Nakayama（中山加奈子）and drummer Kyoko Tomita（富田京子）who created this No. 1 hit. In fact, "KISS" has ended up being their final No. 1 hit to date with the song becoming the 26th-ranked single of the year. It didn't get onto an original album but is included on their special album of singles "SINGLES 1987-1992" from July 1992. The Princess Princess brand was still high up there since it stayed at No. 1 for 5 straight weeks and became a million-seller.
For me, Princess Princess would always be the band that signified my time in Gunma from 1989-1991 in the same way that the Yellow Magic Orchestra did during my 1981 summer vacation with my classmates and that TRF did in the first couple of years of my very long stay in Japan between 1994 and 2011. Those 2 years in the Japanese Alps were often filled with "Diamonds" and "Oh Yeah".
Princess Princess' 18th single"The Summer Vacation" from May 1994 was a disc that I picked up probably several years after its initial release since when I did come over late in that year to start teaching in the Tokyo area, I didn't hear anything about the band anymore. It was pretty much time for the Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）steamroller with acts such as the aforementioned TRF.
Listening to "The Summer Vacation", it was very different from that more famous and more popular summer song that Princess Princess created in the late 80s, "Sekai de Ichiban Atsui Natsu"（世界でいちばん熱い夏）. That latter song was firmly planted in Japan and at that time, but "The Summer Vacation" seemed to take a time warp back into the 1960s and head over to the States. Vocalist Kaori Okui（奥井香）and lead guitarist Kanako Nakayama（中山加奈子）, the same duo behind one of their biggest hits of "Diamonds", took care of this song which sounds like a mix between an upbeat Tom Jones tune and a 1960s breezy American sitcom set in New York (the ending reminded me of "Love American Style"). It was actually used as an ending theme for one of Beat Takeshi's many variety shows.
The song is probably one of the few in the band's discography that wouldn't be anywhere near being called a rock song but neither was "Diamonds". "The Summer Vacation" peaked at No. 21 on Oricon. It may have been quite different from the usual Princess Princess tune but I could quite imagine the band in a convertible bombing down the Ventura Freeway while this is playing.
And hey, why not? Here's Tom Jones with "It's Not Unusual".
