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.
Well, baseball season got officially under way earlier this afternoon for our local Toronto Blue Jays. Happily, their first game against the Tampa Bay Rays was a successful one with the Jays defeating the Rays 8-2, so I guess then that at least for today, Torontonians and the Jays are on....top of the world!
OK, let us all get our coughs out of the way after that last statement. It's very healthy to clear our phlegm. 😖Anyhow, for this week's regular Reminiscings of Youth article, I've returned to Carpenters and their hit single "Top of the World". Released on September 17th 1973, this may have very well been the first Carpenters' song that I had ever heard about since it just seemed to be getting onto the radio all the time when I was a kid. I didn't know what a steel pedal guitar was at the time but it's the chief instrument that has always gotten into my head whenever I heard this feel-good tune.
And though "Top of the World" has been categorized as a soft rock song on Wikipedia. it's because of that steel pedal guitar and the chorus work that has made me consider it as more of a country pop tune. As I said, too, it was a very successful one since it hit No. 1 on both the American and Canadian charts as well as in Australia. Even in Japan, it made it up to No. 21 on the regular Oricon charts.
"Top of the World" has gotten its fair share of covers over the decades, and my first reference to the song was through Shonen Knife's cover which I posted about back in 2017. Of course, because Carpenters are absolute legends in Japan, the original song has been used for commercials and even television dramas. As well, personally, my friends and I have performed this one all the time at karaoke. But obviously, none of us hold a candle to Karen Carpenter.
September 17th 1973 was also a date that does show what was up at the top of the Oricon single charts thanks to the site which I discovered a few months back. What was up at Nos. 1, 2 and 3...and for that matter, what was up at No. 6?
Welcome to the weekly Reminiscings of Youth, and all I gotta say here is that if anyone back in the early 1970s in California whose family was about to celebrate a wedding or a major wedding anniversary had watched this commercial for Crocker National Bank, they would have rapidly used up the tissue box. The jingle here was "We've Only Just Begun" by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols with Williams singing it.
I remember Williams back then more as a TV personality who showed up on comedy-variety programs such as "Laugh-In", so I had assumed that he was just a wisecracking comedian. It wasn't until much later that I realized his stock-in-trade was as a singer-songwriter. Certainly, I didn't know about him coming up with "We've Only Just Begun". According to the Wikipedia article for the song, it apparently worked a little too well for the Crocker Bank since it did bring in the young customers but they had no collateral for the loans, so the campaign ended up getting suspended.
Still, "We've Only Just Begun" made it onto Williams' 1971 album"Just an Old Fashioned Love Song". It's a very intimate and subdued love ballad that paints the picture of a newly-married couple perhaps having their first dinner in their new house (bought with a loan) consisting of a candle, a spread-out newspaper on the bare floor, a bottle of red wine and Spaghetti-Os. The hope is that it just gets better from there.
Fate had other plans for "We've Only Just Begun", though. Richard Carpenter saw the bank commercial and ran into Williams in the parking lot for A&M Records (both were contracted there) and asked the songwriter whether he could take a crack at the song. Williams didn't seem to have a problem with it, and so as any Carpenters fan would know, "We've Only Just Begun" was released as The Carpenters' third single in August 1970.
Richard and Karen Carpenter came to think of "We've Only Just Begun" as their trademark tune and I think that out of their huge discography, the song rates as one of their most Carpenter-esque creations. I mean, there are the horns, the lonely woodwind, Karen's incredible vocals and those harmonies between the siblings that still manage to raise the hairs on my neck. The song hit No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary charts for both Canada and the United States, and in the latter country, it stayed at the top for seven straight weeks and it was their most successful single. I recall hearing it plenty of times on the radio. Incidentally, when it was released in Japan, it did so under the title of "Ai no Prelude"（愛のプレリュード...Prelude to Love）.
To think, one of the most eternal romantic pop standards started out as a melodic plea to apply for a loan. Anyways, I managed to find a website listing the Top 10 on Oricon for August 3rd 1970. Unfortunately, I have yet to profile the Top 3 songs on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" but here are Nos. 4-6.
For this week's Reminiscings of Youth, perhaps I should have done this one a few days ago since it was indeed a rainy Monday, but what's done is done. In any case, the Carpenters' "Rainy Days and Mondays" can still hit me pretty hard depending on my mood after all these years, although when I first heard it as a kid on the radio, it was the melody and Karen's incredible voice that got into my head without knowing the lyrics.
Created by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols as Karen and Richard's April 1971 single, "Rainy Days and Mondays" zoomed up the Billboard singles charts to reach No. 2, just behind Carole King's"It's Too Late/I Feel the Earth Move", itself no slouch in the legendary pop song category. In Canada, it peaked at No. 3, although on the Adult Contemporary charts for both the US and my country, the song did reach No. 1. Of course, along with Karen's vocals, it was the harmonica, the sax solo and those famous Carpenters harmonies that have stayed with me despite the theme of sadness and loneliness.
Who were some of the winners at the Japan Record Awards in that year of 1971?
A few weeks ago, I started off the annual Xmas segment of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" with the jazz version of "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town" via Tony Bennett in the weekly Reminiscings of Youth article. Well, once again, I'm going with something Xmas-y for this week's ROY and though it was released when I was but a wee lad, I didn't actually get to know about it until I was well into adulthood. In fact, I was on my second tour of duty in Japan.
From Wikipedia
Over the years, I've said that jazz, Charlie Brown and Norman Rockwell go great with Christmas. I can also add The Carpenters. I mean, look at that cover for Richard and Karen's October 1978"Christmas Portrait" album. It absolutely rocks Rockwell well (yes, I'm being cute here), although the cover was actually designed by Robert Tanenbaum based on a 1960 Rockwell painting, according to the Wikipedia article.
As I mentioned above, I first heard "Merry Christmas, Darling" by The Carpenters somewhere and sometime during my life in Ichikawa, and quickly opted to track down "Christmas Portrait" at one of the major CD stores in Tokyo. What I hadn't known is that "Merry Christmas, Darling" wasn't a 1978 creation by the duo but a song that was first released as a single in November 1970! The history behind it goes even further back according to the Wikipedia article which was itself based on a Randy Erickson article printed in "La Crosse Tribune" back in 2005:
The lyrics were written in 1944 by an 18-year-old Frank Pooler, which, according to him, were about a love interest he had at the time. 22 years later in 1966, when he was choral director at California State University, Long Beach, two of his aspiring music students, Karen and Richard Carpenter, who were beginning to have success as a local band, asked him (their favorite professor) if he had any ideas for holiday songs. According to Pooler, they had become tired of the standard holiday songs they were singing. Pooler gave them the lyrics of the song he had written from years before, and told them he did not think much of the original melody. According to Pooler, Richard wrote a new tune for the lyrics—the tune currently used—in 15 minutes. Four years later, in 1970, the Carpenters first recorded and released it as a single.
Always love a song with an interesting story. In any case, the combination of Pooler's lyrics and the new melody by Richard (and The Carpenters are considered to be music legends in Japan) were magic made in heaven, especially in my old stomping grounds because the story sounds perfectly made for Japanese audiences. I've heard a number of J-Xmas tunes (such as "Midnight Flight: Hitori Bocchi no Christmas Eve") over the years which involve the melancholy plot of being apart during the Yuletide with only the mutual Xmas wishes between a couple tying them together, and the same thing is happening here with "Merry Christmas, Darling".
I've read that the 1978 version in "Christmas Portrait" is slightly different in terms of Karen's lyrical preferences but basically the melody and arrangement are the same. Anyways, "Merry Christmas, Darling" is another go-to standard in the run-up to December 25th for me, and even listening to some of their versions of the Christmas classics through "Christmas Portrait", Christmas and Carpenters go together like candy and cane.
Well, considering how late in 1970 the original single came out, I guess we can make our kayo comparisons through what won the Japan Record Awards that year. None of them, though, are Xmas-y in nature.
Almost to the day a year ago, I wrote up a Reminiscings of Youth article on Carpenters'"Close to You", arguably one of the most well-known songs by the sibling pop duo of Karen and Richard Carpenter from 1970. Naturally, hearing Carpenters songs on the radio while I was a kid was par for the course.
When I first went to live in Japan, I soon realized that the Carpenters had even more fame and love in the country of my ancestors than in the United States. In addition to the usual hits, I even discovered a song by them that I hadn't heard before, shockingly enough. And that song was "Yesterday Once More". It was originally a Carpenters single that was released in May 1973, but the first time I heard it was as a the theme song for "19xx Bokutachi no Natsukashii Melody"（僕たちの懐かしいメロディー）, a late-night (or early-morning) Fuji-TV series that quietly showcased some of the oldies from Japanese pop. I remember catching it as I shivered underneath my futon in the wintry depths of Gunma Prefecture in 1990. There was nothing like the velvety voice of Karen to keep me warm before the kayo poured out. Ironically, videos of the show on YouTube have now garnered a lot of nostalgic feelings for it, a show that had been produced to display the nostalgic songs in the first place.
Y'know...if there were ever a theme song for the ROY articles or for the blog in general, it would be "Yesterday Once More" since the vast majority of the entries here is all about the nostalgia and good ol' days of music and kayo. The whole song sounded nostalgic even when it was first released in the early 1970s, and I've found out that this was totally intentional according to the Wikipedia article for the song since it goes along the 50s progression chord that was all the rage for songwriters back in the 1950s and early 1960s. Apparently one of the number of nicknames for it was the doo-wop progression.
I've found out over the years since watching "19xx" that "Yesterday Once More" has also been a popular karaoke tune to be warbled among the students that I've had; it's up there with "Top of the World" and the aforementioned "Close to You". To be honest, I've had a go with "Yesterday Once More" a few times myself at places like Karaoke Kan and Big Echo with varying results.
Furthermore, according to that Wikipedia article, the song hit No. 1 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart and has become the Carpenters' biggest-selling single worldwide, so I've definitely been missing out on some information there. And it doesn't hurt that Richard has stated that "Yesterday Once More" is his favourite creation. For me, though, no matter how much I listen to it, I will always think of it as the theme song for "19xx".
So what were the singles that got released in May 1973?
When I first heard this song by the soulful Shun Sakai（酒井俊）, I was going "Where have I heard this one before?". The video above (which got taken down to be replaced) actually has the translation into Japanese for the title "Anata no Tame no Uta"（あなたのための歌）which threw me for a brief loop until I figured out it was "A Song For You". And this was a tune originally created by the late singer and pianistLeon Russellback in 1970.
Sakai is a singer that I had introduced earlier this year in May when I wrote about "Dancing Waves" recorded by Sakai in her collaboration with the fusion band Special Jam Company back in 1979. In that same year, she also released her 3rd album"My Imagination" and her cover of "A Song For You" is the ballad that ends the album. It's an especially soulful and bluesy version of the Russell classic with the singer putting plenty of heart on her sleeve with a voice that sounds as if it has gone through some interesting times. I also found out that there are also some big names backing her up including the amazing Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）on electric piano, Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）on drums and Masaki Matsubara（松原正樹）on electric guitar. The band gives a very laid-back performance that fairly glides over the surface of the water here.
The first time, though, that I got to hear "A Song For You" was via The Carpenters' take in 1972 on the album of the same title. Indeed, it is very Carpenters in sound.
Interestingly enough, I never got to hear the original by Russell until tonight. What's remarkable about "A Song For You" here is that although the melody has always kept its mellowness, Russell seems to be straddling that line between keeping things cool and really releasing his emotions. Unsurprisingly, he's the one who comes across as being the most elegiac for a life that's been truly lived...warts and all. Russell passed away in late 2016.
As for Sakai, she's been living in Vietnam since 2013, according to her J-Wiki article.
One thing that I hadn't known about The Carpenters before I started this Reminiscings of Youth article tonight is that Richard and Karen didn't have their first TV special until 1976! I was close to eleven years of age by that point, and the reason that I am surprised is that in my increasingly hazy memories of my early childhood is that I'd assumed that the famous duo were having specials since the 1970s and their career began. They just seemed to be ubiquitous on television and radio with their easy listening songs such as "Sing", "We've Only Just Begun" and "Yesterday Once More".
I'm not sure how The Carpenters are remembered in their native United States or up here in Canada. The fact that I've barely heard anything about them on this side of the Pacific in decades is quite telling, though, since in Japan, they're adored as pop legends along the same lines as The Ventures and The Beatles. I basically had my reunion with Richard and Karen and their music thanks to my life in Japan.
A couple of their songs have become theme tunes verbatim for Japanese dramas, a lot of their tunes were part of commercials, and even a Fuji-TV nostalgic music show is now permanently intertwined with "Yesterday Once More". Plus, there's the fact that the longer one goes to karaoke with friends, the higher the chances that a Carpenters song will be sung.... that is from personal experience. I've even bought a couple of their BEST compilations.
I think the last Carpenters reference I saw on this side of the Pacific was a montage sequence on "The Simpsons" when Homer first set eyes on Marge. "(They Long to Be) Close to You" was probably meant as a humourous counterpoint but it ended up for me at least being surprisingly poignant and moving.
And I guess that's why out of the entire Carpenters discography, "Close to You" will be the song for me by Karen and Richard. Released in May 1970, I was surprised to discover that this Burt Bacharach and Hal David creation didn't get its first rodeo with The Carpenters. Actor Richard ("Dr. Kildare") Chamberlain, Dionne Warwick and Dusty Springfield all had their turns at it in the 1960s before The Carpenters recorded the definitive version of the ballad. I mean, perhaps I'm dating myself considerably more here but this would be an ideal (if a tad cornball) tune at the end of a prom. Mind you, "It's Been a Long, Long Time" might have taken over for about a year since "Avengers: Endgame" (that movie still packs a mighty Thor wallop).
So, what were the big hits during that time in Japan? Well, unfortunately, I couldn't track down any of the May 1970 Oricon hits so I'm once again going with certain award winners at that year's Japan Record Awards (its 12th, to be specific).
Best Performance Award: Hiroshi Uchiyamada and The Cool Five -- Uwasa no Onna
Yup, I've had a blog on popular Japanese music for over 5 years but I had never brought in Shonen Knife（少年ナイフ）. How dare you, J! OK, mea culpa here...however in all honesty, the most famous Japanese band that was not really all that famous in Japan wasn't all that high on my list when compared to folks like Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）and Anzen Chitai（安全地帯）.
Over the years I did hear about the original lineup of Naoko Yamano（山野直子）, Michie Nakatani（中谷美智枝）and Atsuko Yamano（山野敦子）and their brand of grungy rock and pop since the band was getting accolades from all sorts of rock bands including Nirvana. But did the media in Japan ever cover the ladies? For the most part, nada. Then many years into my stay in Ichikawa, I saw a commercial on TV which featured a slo-mo video of a bullet going through and destroying an apple while a Shonen Knife tune was playing in the background.
And this was the song, a cover of the Carpenters'"Top of the World" which was a track for an alternative rock band tribute to the legendary 60s/70s American pop duo, "If I Were A Carpenter" in 1994. I was rather musing about this situation since Karen and Richard Carpenter seem to be so beloved in Japan that they probably would have gotten onto the fast track to Japanese citizenship that only some foreign-born sumo wrestlers ride if they had asked. The Carpenters are more popular there than they are in their native America. So to imagine Shonen Knife tackling one of the Carpenters' hits, perhaps the Yamanos and Nakatani may have been going fairly nuts at the possibilities.
The album "If I Were A Carpenter" managed to peak at No. 70 on US Billboard while in Japan, it got as high as No. 95 on Oricon. If anyone can recommend any of Shonen Knife's original songs to me, that would be great. I will let Wikipedia provide all the information about the band.
And for comparison's sake, here is the original version that was always popping up on the radio when I was growing up.
Gotta admit...I was inspired to put this one up since I'm also currently watching a Tony Bennett special celebrating his 90th birthday. Being a semi-fan of jazz, Bennett is probably one of the few vocalists around that I would make time on my schedule to catch him on TV which isn't all that easy to do. And so far, I've seen folks like Lady Gaga, Kevin Spacey and Canada's own Diana Krall hit it out of the park with their renditions of the legend's classics. I even own one Xmas album by Bennett.
So here is Kei Kobayashi（小林桂）with his cover of the Carpenters' 1970 Xmas ballad"Merry Christmas Darling". I wrote an article for another Xmas song by him a couple of years back, "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" which is another cover that I liked by him. Unfortunately, I could only track down an excerpt on the Amazon page so I'm happy that I was able to find a whole YouTube video for "Merry Christmas Darling".
Kobayashi's tender delivery and the quiet arrangement centering on piano makes it the perfect song to listen to while wrapping those presents in the cabin on December 24th. Hot chocolate would be just the thing to drink while this is on the stereo...no marshmallows, though. The song was, like his rendition of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", placed on his 2001 album"Wonderland".
And for that added sentimentality, here is the original by the Carpenters. Just for the record, the music was provided by Richard Carpenter and the lyrics by Frank Pooler. After all these years, I still miss Karen.
One of the more interesting albums I've bought has been "Cure" by actress Miki Nakatani（中谷美紀）. I've never thought of her as having a particularly strong voice or a voice with a large range. For example, her very first single (and a song that I heard only for the first time some years after I'd bought "Cure"), "Mind Circus", was a pleasant enough mid-tempo pop song, but it sounded as if Miki had been struggling somewhat in the refrain.
But "Cure", her 2nd album released in September 1997, was a more comfortable one for her, it seems. As an actress, she's often appeared on a number of TV dramas and movies, and often in quirky roles as characters who are just a bit off. I think "Cure" kinda plays to that strength. As you can see from the photo of the album above, Miki looks like she entered one of those avant-garde Calvin Klein "Obsession" commercials. The album itself is all in black, and there are light chiarascuro shots of half of her face (shades of Ingmar Bergman), her hand and her bare foot. Go figure.
And certainly having all of the songs composed and the entire album produced by Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一） adds to that feeling of "Cure" not being the usual pop album. However, it's not nearly as avant-garde as the pictures or the official videos may suggest. Basically, the album is split into two parts: most of the first half contains tracks that sound like indie pop ballads with a Beatlesque feeling; the second half brings in more dance club.
The first track, "Ibara no Kanmuri"(いばらの冠...Crown of Thorns) is a beautiful melancholy piece which vaguely hints through images of stardust and other metaphors to represent a romance long gone bad. Listening to Nakatani here and in almost every other song on the album, her voice delivers in a middle comfort zone. The lyricist here was Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）.
The reason I got the album in the first place was through the videos. A lot of Nakatani's music videos got good airplay on the music channels and "Countdown TV", and had the gamine singer in various psychologically symbolic imagery. Track 2, "Tengoku Yori Yaban"（天国より野蛮...Wilder Than Heaven) is the most uptempo track in the first half, with Nakatani traipsing through what looks like an abattoir or an inspirational setting for the guys behind torture porn hits "Hostel" and "Saw". Despite the grim scenes, the song, written by Masao Urino (売野雅勇）, is a hodgepodge of funk-pop with a beatnik flute (Takuo Yamamoto from Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra) thrown in at the beginning and a rock guitar near the end. Miki still has to go through a bit of English boot camp with her final verses.
As I mentioned above, the 2nd half of the album has the more techno tracks. "Torikago no Uchuu"（鳥篭の宇宙） written by Nakatani, is composed and arranged by Sakamoto almost as a tribute to The Pet Shop Boys and as music to be deposited into a David Lynch mindbending movie. The English title is "My Universe In A Birdcage", and Nakatani describes her world as a restrictive domain with freedom just away from her fingertips. There's a fair amount of a "Twilight Zone" aura in both her lyrics and Sakamoto's melody. I would almost expect Rod Serling to give the final words at the end of the song. I kinda wonder if Nakatani is trying to say something about the world of celebrity.
The weirdest track on "Cure" by far is the cover version of The Carpenters'"Superstar". With a dreamy/nightmarish arrangement by Sakamoto, and a distorted version of Nakatani's voice singing the famous song by Leon Russell andBonnie Bramlett, it sounds like something to be played way past midnight. There's almost a certain Marilyn Monroe-ness in Nakatani's delivery.
The final track to be profiled is one that brings back Nakatani from neo-Carpenters avant-gardism to good ol' techno with a tad of Latin stirred in. "Kinokhronika" is one of those titles that seems to evade definition...kinda like Phil Collins'"Sussudio". Urino's lyrics also seem to evade a regular narrative but heck, it's fun to listen to, as Nakatani pushes the pushbeats at a dash while imagining Sakamoto manning the turntables while wearing the shades and a backwards cap.
"Cure" peaked at No. 7 on the Oricon charts. Overall, I think it's one of those diurnal albums to listen to. Listen to the first half in the afternoon and then take that dinner break before returning for the second half at night.
The term New Music that Yumi Arai（荒井由実）had coined and Sakamoto (among others) had helped build into a genre had disappeared by the late 90s. But in a way, Sakamoto made a neo-New Music album of sorts with "Cure", something that can be backed up with veteran lyricists such as the aforementioned Matsumoto, Urino and Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子） for the last track. And even with the techno parts, Sakamoto didn't use any of the old YMO flourishes...they were neo-techno for him, so to speak. Always moving forward, never looking back.
There is a second disc included in the album which only has The Professor (Sakamoto's nickname) weaving a musical tapestry of sorts titled "Aromascape".
I mentioned a few entries ago about the late-night music ranking show on TBS, "Countdown TV" that I often caught during my years in Japan with those three CG characters as hosts. Well, in my earlier 2-year stint in Gunma Prefecture, I used to catch something similar on Fuji-TV in the wee hours. Not sure if it was on a Monday or Tuesday night but it was usually on after midnight.
"19XX -- Bokutachi no Natsukashii Melody" (Our Nostalgic Melodies) was perfectly made for kayokyoku fans like me. As we lay in the warm comfort of our futon, this half-hour program simply consisted of past performances from the 70s and 80s interspersed with scenes of the breaking news stories from that time. Each episode focused on a certain year, and the opening theme was always The Carpenters'"Yesterday Once More" which couldn't be more nostalgia-brewing.
It was always nice to head to slumberland listening to these old chestnuts.
