Teresa Noda -- Yellow Moon（イエロー ムーン）

 

About a month ago, I brought aboard Teresa Noda（テレサ野田）and her third and final single from 1979, "Tropical Love". She may not have had a long career under her stage name (her real name is Tamaki Saionji（西園寺環）) but she did bring an interesting mix of reggae and disco into this particular single.

The same folks behind "Tropical Love": lyricist Kazumi Yasui（安井かずみ）, composer Kazuhiko Kato（加藤和彦）and arranger Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）, were also responsible for the B-side, "Yellow Moon". This one still keeps things within that relaxing mixture of reggae and disco but the pacing is even more laidback and Noda's voicing is more intimate as if the setting were an intentionally isolated table in some breezy bar in Falsworth. However, from Yasui's lyrics, the relationship has gone kaput and those vocals, though remaining soft and pliable, throw out a rather solid message of rejection.

Teresa Noda -- Tropical Love（トロピカル ラブ）

 

For some reason, I'd been under the impression that actress-singer Teresa Noda（テレサ野田）had already been on KKP but apparently not; this is her first appearance on the blog, so I bid her welcome. Maybe it was something about the name or a similarity in album/single covers.

Anyways, Noda hails from Okinawa as the daughter of a second-generation Japanese-American man and a Japanese woman (according to her J-Wiki profile, she had been far better in English than Japanese). She made her debut as an actress in the early 1970s and it would be another several years before she began recording those singles she released with the first one coming out in 1977. Incidentally, she's had a number of different stage names during her career including her real name of Tamaki Saionji（西園寺環）.

Her third and final single under the name of Teresa Noda to date is "Tropical Love" from May 1979 which was created by the golden duo of lyricist Kazumi Yasui（安井かずみ）and composer Kazuhiko Kato（加藤和彦）with Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）behind the arrangement. I'm not sure if it would be considered City Pop, but it does have those disco strings and a strong reggae beat. Noda does have a resonant and attractively creamy voice here.