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 Shinichi Furukawa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shinichi Furukawa. Show all posts
A few years ago, I posted an article for Shinichi Furukawa's（古川真一）"Cool Romantic"（クール・ロマンティック）, a B-side that was quite the AOR goodie. As I mentioned there, I couldn't find a whole lot of information on the singer and songwriter or all that many songs by him online, but this B-side was the flip side to a 1987 single titled "Day Dream".
The uploader for the video here, Lotus Ladybug, also noted the dearth of Furukawa's discography on YouTube, so we are all lucky that they were able to put up "Day Dream" itself. Written by Tomoko Aran（亜蘭知子）and composed by Chiho Kiyooka（清岡千穂）, I had wondered about waiting until Urban Contemporary Friday (aka tomorrow) to put this one up but listening to this pleasant medium-tempo number, I felt that "Day Dream" was straight-ahead pop compared to its AOR B-side. I didn't quite notice it with "Cool Romantic", but I realized that Furukawa's vocals remind me a bit of the golden voice of Christopher Cross.
Anyways, good to hear that "Day Dream" is back up and running.
Welcome to another Urban Contemporary Friday on KKP! I found one song here that so fits this genre that my heart weeps. Plus, it's a tune that was put up only within the last few days by a YouTuber named Good Old Days, and from what I've seen of his playlist, he puts up stuff by the more obscure acts including those within the City Pop/J-AOR realm. He's additionally stated that his philosophy is to keep a video up for three months before taking it down which I understand since the powers-that-be in Japan have gone on search-and-destroy missions, so I figure that this video will be up here until about early February 2023.
Usually with that caveat, I wouldn't touch the song since I would love to have it up as long as possible especially when it comes to City Pop, although videos taken down voluntarily or by force is a fact of life on the blog when I do my regular maintenance. However, despite the short shelf life, I'm making an exception for Shinichi Furukawa's（古川真一）"Cool Romantic" because it sounds so good.
As I mentioned, Good Old Days puts up the more obscure singers, and I had to search a bit for some nuggets of information regarding Furukawa. Fortunately, I could discover on Toshikazu Kanazawa's（金澤寿和）"Light Mellow" blog that the singer-songwriter had his big time in the late 1980s but then just shifted to background chorus duties behind Being acts including Manish, REV and ZARD in the 1990s. From Discogs, I gleaned that he put out a 1986 album "Sketch of Mind" (which apparently has a Doobie Brothers West Coast sound) and then a couple of singles the following year: "Andante"（アンダンテ）and "Day Dream" (Discogs notes that the latter was released in 1988 but Good Old Days and Kanazawa say 1987, so I'll go with the latter year).
"Cool Romantic", the song of this article here, is the B-side for "Day Dream", and it's a lovely light and mellow tune written by Kyoko Hoshino（星野今日子）and composed by the breezy-voiced Furukawa. It feels really relaxing with all of the appropriate instruments and arrangements, and I gotta say that the singer sounds just like a Japanese Christopher Cross (although Kanazawa compares him to Kazumasa Oda of Off-Course), and even the chorus for "Cool Romantic" reminds me of Cross' 1981 hit, "Arthur's Theme". For those who wish for their summer sunsets back, well, it looks like we have a melodic version of it right here. Enjoy the song while you can and thank you, Good Old Days, for the good old days.
