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 Toshihiro Kirigaya. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Toshihiro Kirigaya. Show all posts
"Candy" is some nice urban groove with a direct lineage to Curtis Mayfield's"Tripping Out" and Tatsuro Yamashita's（山下達郎）"Amaku Kiken na Kaori" (あまく危険な香り）. What I think of whenever I listen to any of Naoko Gushima's（具島直子）creations such as this one and "Love Song" is the sweetness, and at the same time, some touch of nostalgia. Perhaps this is the reason for the mysterious charm that keeps the listener's attention.
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).
THIS IS CBS! Ach...no, it isn't. It's just the Shinjuku Eye.
We've had a few siblings represented on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" such as lyricist Etsuko Kisugi（来生えつこ）and her brother, singer-composer Takao Kisugi（来生たかお）, and of course, there are the sisters Iwasaki: Hiromi and Yoshimi（岩崎宏美・岩崎良美）. Now, we've got the brothers Kirigaya. Jin（桐ヶ谷仁）has been on a number of times now but tonight, I'd like to introduce his younger brother Toshihiro Kirigaya（桐ヶ谷俊博）.
Toshihiro Kirigaya, who also likes to go by the names Bobby Kirigaya or Kailani Lehua, made his debut in 1979 but his career of releasing records is very short with only four singles and one album up to 1981. However, he has produced other artists' works since then, such as one for Naoko Gushima（具島直子） and he's even been up with his brother Jin at live performances. According to J-Wiki, he has also been creating jingles for commercials and helping other people in the area of voice training.
His fourth and final single from 1981 is "Hitomi wo Tojite"(Close Your Eyes), an uptempo song that can be placed into the AOR genre. The fascinating thing here though is that the last time I wrote about Jin Kirigaya via his 1979 song "Return to the Sky", I pointed out how much the older brother sounded like a mix of Off-Course（オフコース）members Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）and Yasuhiro Suzuki（鈴木康博）. Well, right here with "Hitomi wo Tojite", written and composed by Toshihiro and arranged by bassist Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）, I can say that the younger brother also sounds like Oda and maybe even band Tulip's（チューリップ）Kazuo Zaitsu（財津和夫）. Coincidentally enough, the J-Wiki article also mentions that Toshihiro has also covered Oda's songs. Certainly, "Hitomi wo Tojite" has that folksy pop feeling of either an Off-Course or Tulip tune.
I remember picking up this album "miss G" by Naoko Gushima（具島直子）a couple of decades ago, probably because I heard some of the tracks being played on the store speakers...most likely Tower Records. And in all likelihood, one of those tracks was "Candy". As was the case with all of the other tracks, Gushima provided the words and music for this softly bouncy song which the blogger for Japanese-language "Music Avenue" described as being an example of Urban Mellow.
Not sure if Urban Mellow is an actual genre name (a love child of J-AOR and City Pop?), but I guess "Candy" would fit the title. In any case, it is a cafe-friendly tune with Gushima's velvety vocals reminding me a bit of another singer who was in the same ballpark, genre-wise, Toko Furuuchi（古内東子）. "miss G", by the way, was Gushima's debut album from 1996.
There's not a whole lot of information on Gushima unless you go straight to her website...not even a J-Wiki entry. She was born in 1969 in Tokyo, started learning piano at the age of 4, and then at 21, took those first steps into a music career as a backup singer and singer for commercials before releasing "miss G" some years later. According to her website, Gushima has released 5 albums up to now including her latest, which is also her BEST compilation, "magic wave" from 2009.
