WHAM! -- Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go

 

Well, after about a month, Reminiscings of Youth is back in the 1980s.

Fun fact here: there are already three WHAM! articles on KKP (two of them based on the same song) and yet this one is the first one to be placed as a ROY article. In fact, "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" is the first song by George Michael and Andrew Ridgely that I had ever heard, so my initial impressions of the duo had been of some really nice and insanely happy young men with an "UP WITH LIFE!" attitude. It wouldn't be a little later that I got to see their earlier videos with George and Andrew acting like antisocial London toughs in songs like "Wham Rap". 

Released in May 1984, little did a lot of us know at the time that this was just the beginning of the WHAM! steamroller, but with Michael's smoldering good looks and incredible voice, perhaps we should have known. Strangely enough, I don't think I ever heard "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" on the radio for some reason, and as such, I'm always going to experience it in my head with that impossibly cheerful video. I mean, I didn't know that oversized T-shirts were a fashion fad; in my case, it was always a necessity. In any case, "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" hit No. 1 on the American, Canadian and British pop charts.

So, what was also hitting the top of the Oricon charts in May 1984?

1. Checkers -- Kanashikute Jealousy （哀しくてジェラシー）

2. Akina Nakamori -- Southern Wind （サザンウインド）

3. Seiko Matsuda -- Jikan no Kuni no Alice（時の国のアリス) 

Wham!/Michie Tomizawa – Last Christmas

 

Source: https://www.discogs.com/pt_BR/Sailor-Moon-Merry-Christmas/release/6416512

Back in early December, at the beginning of one of the two year-end editions of FNS Kayousai (FNS歌謡祭), Johnny’s group Sexy Zone performed a song called “Last Christmas”. At first, I thought: here we go... Sexy Zone singing a cheesy Christmas song is probably not the best way to start a show. The thing is, while I generally don’t care for Christmas music, this one was somewhat cute, so I went back to look at the composer, and it was none other than George Michael. Shamefully, I haven’t heard this song before, or maybe didn’t pay attention to it.

I may be just a casual George Michael – or Wham!, for that matter – listener, but I’ve learnt to really appreciate some of their songs through the years, such as the silly, yet catchy “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”, the summery “Club Tropicana”, or the more disco/R&B outputs in the form of “Outside”, “Fastlove” and “Too Funky”, from George Michael’s solo discography. Also, do I need to say how gorgeous “Careless Whisper” is? Alongside Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and Spandau Ballet’s “True”, “Careless Whisper” is one of my favourite 80s ballads.

Back to “Last Christmas”, while I’d enjoyed Sexy Zone’s performance of the song very much, it only stuck on me when, days after watching FNS Kayousai, YouTube recommended Wham!’s original version to me while I was watching some random 70s/80s/90s music videos – from Japanese artists to American/British ones – on a Sunday afternoon. The song really shined that time, and it probably helped that I was listening to the original version, and not a Johnny’s group covering it.

Released in December 1984 by Wham!, George Michael’s duo with Andrew Ridgeley, “Last Christmas” was a hit back in the day, and apparently became a modern Christmas staple alongside Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You”, John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” (just out of curiosity, here in Brazil, there’s a famous version of John’s song, “Então é Natal” by singer Simone, that’s still huge after 25 years of its release), and maybe a couple of other songs (Sir Paul McCartney's “Wonderful Christmastime” is also a playful attempt, so kudos to him).

What surprised me the most, though, is that “Last Christmas” seems to be especially popular in Japan, since not only Sezy Zone sang it live on FNS Kayousai, but it was also played in 1992’s movie “Mirai no Omoide: Last Christmas” (未来の想い出 Last Christmas), starring Misa Shimizu (清水美沙) and Shizuka Kudo (工藤静香) – which, by they way, I also watched around Christmas time –, and served as the theme song for the 2004 Fuji TV drama called... well, that’s it, “Last Christmas” (ラストクリスマス). Other than that, it was covered by boy band/R&B group EXILE at some point, and also by Sailor Mars’ seiyuu Michie Tomizawa (富沢美智恵), from popular anime series Sailor Moon (美少女戦士セーラームーン), in November 1996.

Besides the original one, Michie Tomizawa’s version was the one that made me feel really good. EXILE is okay, but I couldn’t resist this lovely feminine voice with some cheesy dialogues thrown between the singing parts, where Tomizawa almost whisper some random things right into the listener’s ears. It’s cute, warm and even a little bit sexy at some points. Other than that, the strings in the arrangement are a very strong adition, and while there’s nothing wrong with the original synthpop arrangement, this more classical feel that only strings can bring really contributed to the song’s more traditional Christmas mood.

Tomizawa’s version can be obscure outside Sailor Moon’s fandom, and can sound a little bit gimmicky if you’re not in the right mood, but I liked it very much. Thankfully I’ve found it by accident on YouTube, so now I will certainly listen to it on heavy rotation, just like the original one, even if we’re not around Christmas time anymore. A good pop song is a good pop song!

WHAM! -- Last Christmas

Strangely enough, this was going to be another Xmas song that I was planning to put up alongside Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" since like that tune, WHAM!'s "Last Christmas" beat Carey's classic by about a decade as a standard Yuletide tune in Japan.

Just within the last few hours, though, my planned article has now become a eulogy on hearing the news of George Michael's passing at the age of 53. My brother and I were talking about him over Xmas dinner tonight and although I knew that the man had his problems, I had no idea that he would leave this mortal coil so early.

"Last Christmas" was released all the way back in December 1984 as this amiable song with synths and jingle bells and Michael's soulful voice. I first heard it as a track on one of the two CDs that I have of the band, "Music From The Edge of Heaven", that came out in 1986. It automatically appealed to me but I didn't know that it also appealed to a great many people in Japan and Japanese pop culture, for that matter. I've seen it used as a background song for a fantasy movie starring Shizuka Kudo（工藤静香）and there's at least one cover of the song by a Japanese artist, Toko Furuuchi（古内東子）.

On its release in Japan just a couple of weeks after its release on December 4th 1984, "Last Christmas" managed to peak at No. 12 on Oricon.

At this point, I'm pretty sure that the news has started to trickle out over in Japan and there will be some very shocked people that the golden voice behind this Xmas standard has been silenced permanently. And to think that Michael passed away right on Christmas Day has given "Last Christmas" a certain darker tinge.

2016 began with the deaths of Natalie Cole and David Bowie after which followed a veritable flood of music artists passing in an untimely manner. Now, it's George Michael and we still have a week left.

Fumiko Sawada/WHAM! -- Aishuu no Mexico （哀愁のメキシコ）

I always liked coming across and then writing about a song that has quite the story to it. And this is one of those songs.

Yup, one part of my 80s listening music experience involved Wham! It was often the case that I would see George Michael and Andrew Ridgely going up the charts as much as Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe from the Pet Shop Boys. Hey, "Careless Whisper", "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go", "Young Guns"? Indeed I listened to them and saw the videos on high rotation.

One night, one of our classmates in 3rd-year Japanese class at U of T had us over to his apartment for a party. It was about 1986 and so Wham! was pretty much near the end of their time but over the stereo, I heard a song that was just released by the duo, "Where Did Your Heart Go?" that hit the top of the charts in the UK but did only modestly in the States and Canada. Anyways, my friend who also knew a bit about some of the old Japanese kayo (and incidentally was one of my fellow classmates who went with me on that fateful 1981 trip to Japan) nudged me and asked "Hey, doesn't this sound like enka to you?"

Wham! doing enka? For the first couple of seconds, I thought my friend was imbibing a little too much of the Labatt's (our Canadian brew, eh?). However when I heard that instrumental bridge on "Where Did Your Heart Go?" with the saxophone followed by Michael vocally bleeding his heart out, I suddenly went "Well, maybe I'm imbibing a little too much of the Labatt's...". Uh, nope. Actually, I realized that my buddy had a point, although knowing what I know now, I would put it more in the Mood Kayo category, perhaps closer to the European enka category that the late Teresa Teng (テレサ・テン) seemed to inhabit sometimes.

In any case, the revelation was such that the story has stayed with me up to the present day. And I could have seen George and Andrew appear on "Enka no Hanamichi"（演歌の花道）...or not.

My old university story and Wham!'s final original single has led me to a cover of that very song by a Japanese aidoru.

I first discovered this cover titled "Aishuu no Mexico" (Sorrow-Filled Mexico) on a compilation tape of aidoru music that I had borrowed from a friend. I'm quite a bit more into finding about the singers and songwriters of kayo kyoku than I was back then, so back then I tended to listen to something on the tape recorder and then forget about it, which meant that I didn't bother finding out who sang this particular tune.

Well, it turned out to be this aidoru with the name of Fumiko Sawada（沢田富美子）although she sang "Aishuu no Mexico" under the name of Maria Sakurai（桜井真里亜）as part of a very small comeback in November 1986, just a month after the Wham! release. To explain, the Nagoya-born singer (born in 1961) first started out as a model and had a high-rolling hobby investing in real estate at the tender age of 19 just when she started the aidoru part of her career to the extent that she now owns several buildings in the high-rent areas of Ginza, Akasaka and Azabu in Tokyo! Incredible what one can find out from J-Wiki.

Her official debut as a singer was in 1979 but she already was or would become a multimedia presence with radio show/variety show/commercial appearances and even some roles as a seiyuu. Her initial singing career stopped in 1982 but as I mentioned earlier, she released one more song which was that cover of "Where Did Your Heart Go?" known as "Aishuu no Mexico" with Rei Nakanishi（なかにし礼）providing the Japanese lyrics. I can honestly say with Sawada/Sakurai's shrill voice, it was a pretty aidoru take with none of the soul that Michael provided.

There were no more songs from Sawada after that but I don't think she's particularly ailing with all those buildings of hers in downtown Tokyo. I wouldn't be surprised if she tried to grab some of our structures in Toronto considering the insane market here. The only way that I could ever get a house of my own in this lifetime is if I moved all the way up to Nunavut.

However, the story keeps on giving. I found out that "Where Did Your Heart Go?" was not even an original by the Wham! boys. It was originally written and recorded by the group Was (Not Was) all the way back in 1981. Listening to this first version, I still think Wham! did it best.

And for those like me who were everywhere into 1980s pop, Was (Not Was) were the same guys behind the out-of-nowhere hit from 1987, "Walk The Dinosaur".

Gotta say, that was a pretty chock-filled article tonight.