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 Reiko Takahashi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reiko Takahashi. Show all posts
I actually placed this news as an addendum to the article on Reiko Takahashi that I had written back in early February this year regarding "Let me into your place ~Sunset Road~"（サンセット・ロード）. However, I then decided that I just didn't want Takahashi fans to just bump into this fact days, weeks or even months down the line through an article that they had already seen, and I gather that for these same fans, this is a "Stop the presses!" moment. So I've given the news its own article.
A few days ago, a Canadian YouTuber by the name of Goosebumps Radio was able to interview Takahashi (now known as Rayco) for a little over half an hour on her career, the whole City Pop boom and even the mysterious Akiba Tape. So, why not give them a listen if you haven't already done so? It's definitely not too late (inside joke).
(Admittedly, what's written below may be old news to her fans so please bear with me here.)
In the years that we've been writing on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", we've realized that a few singers got their fifteen minutes of fame only to disappear completely from view. Takako Mamiya（間宮貴子）and Meiko Nakahara（中原めいこ）are two notable examples. Maybe another one was Reiko Takahashi（高橋玲子）who a lot of fans know for her super cheerful City Pop"Sunset Road". She released her two singles in the late 1980s and that was all she wrote seemingly.
Well, commenter Robert B. contacted me last week and informed me that he had found this new Reiko Takahashi YouTube channel established by the singer herself on January 27th last week, which includes a video containing a brief statement of gratitude from her for her fans' support back in the 1980s and currently. The number of comments for it has made a steady line upwards.
Then a few days later, the YouTube channel Kimi no Station: The Home of City Pop posted an English-language version of Takahashi's "Sunset Road" with the added subtitle of "Let me into your place". According to the blurb under the video, this version was only available on the tape cassette form of the July 1st 1987 single.
Also through the blurb, I discovered that Takahashi under the new name of Rayko was a part of an all-Japanese house band that played on Season 5 of "The Eric Andre Show" back in 2020. You can see her at the upper right of the screen at the 8-second mark. Plus, you can check out her Instagram account. Thanks to Robert B. for the tip.
As Kayo Grace Kyoku gets ready for her own New Year's Eve party, I also have to take care of something. One commenter a few days ago asked me about one remaining song in 80s aidoru Reiko Takahashi's（高橋玲子）brief discography which was the B-side to her 1986 debut single, "Love Song wa Utaenai"（ラブソングは唄えない）. Noting that this is the final day of 2024, I should clean things up as we make the transition into a new year.
That B-side is "Kitto Only You"(Only You For Sure) which was created by the same tandem behind the A-side, lyricist Junko Sato（佐藤純子）and composer Hiroaki Serizawa（芹澤廣明）. As would be the case for a Serizawa composition, there is that rock taste in there bordering on West Coast AOR, and Takahashi retains some of that languid Shizuka Kudo-like（工藤静香）feeling in her vocals although in that lower register aside from the chorus. Generally, "Kitto Only You" has a more upbeat feeling than the more urgent "Love Song wa Utaenai".
Unless something really big comes up, this will be my final entry for 2024. If I'm not mistaken we will finish this year with 1,032 entries and I'd like to thank anyone who has come onto the blog for contributions, commentary or just plain reading this year. I hope that we will continue to do the same in 2025. Happy New Year and we'll see you tomorrow on January 1st.🎉
It's hard for me to imagine but it's been over three years since I posted Reiko Takahashi's（高橋玲子）"Sunset Road"（サンセット・ロード）that I first heard as a Vaporwave treatment before hearing the original and slower-tempo second single from July 1987.
Well, I've now gotten to hear the B-side to "Sunset Road" and it's also a pretty darn good tune. "September Blue" tends more toward the City Pop side of things compared to the AOR sense of "Sunset Road". The lyricist Junko Sato（佐藤純子）and the arranger Keiichi Oku（奥慶一）also took care of this one as they did the A-side, but this time, instead of Kingo Hamada（濱田金吾）, the composer is Hideya Nakazaki（中崎英也）. Listening to it a couple of times now, I get that feeling of Anri（杏里）through the vocals and arrangement (including the horns), and so I'm left wondering about the fact that Takahashi only released those two singles.
Last July, I wrote about aidoru Reiko Takahashi（高橋玲子）and her 2nd single, "Sunset Road", a really perky tune that perhaps had some AOR and/or Vaporwave ambitions. As I mentioned in that article, I couldn't really tell whether she was considered to be an aidoru or not, certainly not based on "Sunset Road".
However, listening to her debut single, "Love Song wa Utaenai" (I Can't Sing a Love Song), from November 1986, I think that aidoru label sticks to her more faithfully here. Written by Junko Sato（佐藤純子）and composed by Hiroaki Serizawa（芹澤廣明）,"Love Song wa Utaenai", is a totally different animal from "Sunset Road" in that it's got that dynamic motorcycle rock n' roll sheen through the synthesizers, not surprising because Serizawa did create "Shojo A"（少女A）for Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）and "Gizagiza Heart no Komori Uta"（ギザギザハートの子守唄）for Checkers a few years earlier.
The other interesting thing is how Takahashi sounds here. In the first verse, she sounds a bit like Hiroko Yakushimaru（薬師丸ひろ子）but then when she goes into the main chorus, she comes across like Shizuka Kudo（工藤静香）. It just makes me wonder how her voice would have further developed if she had released more than two singles. "Love Song wa Utaenai", incidentally, was the theme song for the second series of a Fuji-TV drama, "Tsuma-tachi no Kagai Jugyo"（妻たちの課外授業...The Wives' Extracurricular Activities）.
March 11th 2025: Commenter Robert gave me the tip that a YouTuber, strudders 4444, has been able to convert the above footage from an obsolete VHD medium and it features a shortened performance of Takahashi's song. Thanks to strudders 4444 and Robert.
Managed to find one of the rarest of the rare, I believe. Virtually the only information that I could find about the Tokyo-born Reiko Takahashi（高橋玲子）was at Idol.ne.jp*, and that was only to list the mere two singles that she'd released in 1986 and 1987. I wasn't even sure whether she was an aidoru since I've seen other singers at that site, and they were definitely not teenybopper singers. I could only get some confirmation by going through three pages of Yahoo.jp and discovering that she had been included on a 1988 aidoru calendar that was being sold at Rakuten, and that's now sold out so I couldn't see what the calendar looked like.
Anyways, now that I've finished my harangue of sorts, I can introduce that second single by Takahashi, "Sunset Road" which came out in July 1987. Written by Junko Sato（佐藤純子）, composed by City Pop prince Kingo Hamada（浜田金吾）and arranged by Keiichi Oku（奥慶一）from the band Spectrum, "Sunset Road" is pretty perky as if it were introducing the weather segment on a weekend news broadcast. But as an aidoru tune, it's got some pleasant AOR feelings and Takahashi's vocals are fine to the extent that I think it is a pity that she never got her full due in more singles or a single album.
Strangely enough, the first version of "Sunset Road" which I heard was one that had been mysteriously sped up, but perhaps there was method behind the madness since it actually sounds rather nice here, too. Maybe the uploader had some Vaporwave ambitions. It actually took me a couple of listens to realize that Takahashi sounded a little too Minnie Mouse to be normal.
*January 28th 2026: For whatever reason, the site has disappeared.
