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.
This was a touchstone song for me. I'd just started my 2-year life in Gunma Prefecture as a JET teacher, and I was watching "Music Station"（ミュージック・ステーション）, the long-running Friday night TV Asahi music show hosted by Tamori（タモリ）. "Music Station"came into its own as music ranking shows such "The Top 10"and "The Best 10"faded away. As with the latter two shows, "M Sute-"（M・ステー）had on the popular aidoru and bands of the day.
Then on that one Friday, Tamori introduced a band with an interesting name, "Dreams Come True". And I saw a couple of fellows bracketing this young lady with a cute bob and a million-watt smile. And she did what I'd never seen any singer or band do before on a Japanese music show: she screamed "HELLO! WE ARE DREAMS COME TRUE!!"in pretty darn good English. Then, they launched into this happy-go-lucky tune of a young girl sneaking home in the wee hours of the morning from her beau's apartment while trying to think up of an excuse for Mom (presumably, Dad had already gone to his 18-hour shift at the company). Since lead singer, Miwa Yoshida（吉田美和）, wrote the song, I've always wondered if it had been autobiographical.
「うれしはずかし朝帰り」(The Happy If Embarrassing Trip Home in the Morning) just sounded different. I'd heard that the band had spent some time in the UK, and the song definitely had that European feel to it...there were some surface resemblances between DCT and Swingout Sister. In any case, in retrospect, I always remember that moment in Music Station history as one in which kayo kyoku started giving way to J-Pop.
The single itself was released in September 1989, and it came on the album, "Love Goes On" which was released a couple of months later. Although the single managed to crack the Oricon 100, it was the album that made some big inroads, getting as high as No. 8 on the album weekly charts before finishing up at No. 34 on the 1992(!) Oricon Albums of the Year. But as any Dorikamu fan knows, it would be higher and higher for the band for the next several years.
Another pleasant surprise here. EPO (nee Eiko Sato...佐藤永子) has been another favorite of mine for several years with her version of a City Pop classic, "Downtown" and "U, Fu, Fu, Fu" (う、ふ、ふ、ふ）. With her bright, soaring voice, it was no surprise that many of her songs had become commercial jingles. One singer who can automatically brighten my day. She was born and raised in The Big City itself, Tokyo, and went to Matsubara High School in Setagaya Ward...her kohai happens to be another singer with a boomer of a voice, Misato Watanabe （渡辺美里）.
I own a few of her BEST albums but "Girl In Me" never showed up in any of them, and I don't think I ever came across an image of EPO as a sultry seductress. But coming across the video on YouTube, I've listened to it a few times already. I spoke about American pollination in my last entry concerning Momoe Yamaguchi. Well, EPO provided the Japanese lyrics, but Ray Parker Jr. wrote the notes (yup, a few years before "Ghostbusters") and he even backs her up on guitar. Another happy, happy, joy, joy tune which was a cover of a minor hit by Maxine Nightingale back in 1979 from her album, "Lead Me On". (the video is at the very bottom). For the video above, EPO sings "Girl In Me" from about the 1:20 mark.
BTW, EPO just happened to be the childhood nickname for Ms. Sato.
One of the wonderful things about my hobby is that I've been listening to kayo kyoku for all these decades...and yet I still get surprised at what I discover. Case in point: this album that Momoe Yamaguchi (山口百恵）released back in July1979, a little more than a year before she retired from the business for good. I came across this in my book on "Japanese City Pop" but didn't think there would be any singles from it on YouTube. And it's indeed hard to find the tracks for "Momoe Yamaguchi LA Blue" , but I did manage to find some examples of covers and otherwise.
Just by looking at the cover of "L.A. Blue", it was obvious that Momoe's 18th album would be quite different. From the electric blue neon signage to the image of a Los Angeles dusk, this looked more like something from an American AOR singer's collection. The songs were all written by Japanese artists but recorded in Rosu and arranged by Barry Fasman. The above video is a karaoke cover for the first track, "GET FREE", which was created by the prolific songwriters Takao and Etsuko Kisugi （来生たかお・えつこ）. The song has that drive-across-America feeling much along the lines of Canadian singer Patsy Gallant's"From New York to LA".
Around the late 70s and early 80s, there was a North American pollination of sorts with Japanese artists recording and seeking help from session artists such as TOTO's Jeff Porcaro and Steve Lukather. And even David Foster has been in a couple of duets with a couple of the big names in aidoru-dom (no, he didn't skip around or dance frenetically).
"Dancin' In The Rain" is the final track on "LA Blue". I can't quite describe it exactly but it seems to come across as a mix of a typical Momoe ballad and a love song from California. Shogo Hamada（浜田省吾） was responsible for the contemplative melody and Kei Yokosuka（横須賀恵） wrote the lyrics. Just to let you know, Kei Yokosuka is just the pen name for Momoe herself.
Here is another ballad from the album, "Cry For Me" which was again written by Kei Yokosuka and composed by Jun Hatano（波多野純）. The YouTube video is a bit rough but it's interesting to see Yamaguchi perform it on "Music Fair".
And this is "Neko ga Miteiru"（猫が見ている...The Cat Is Watching）, a light disco-funk piece which was written by novelist Mitsuhiko Kuze (久世光彦...under his pen name of Natsu Otani) and composed by guitarist-singer Fujimaru "Fujimal" Yoshino（芳野藤丸）. In a way, it sounds like it should belong as part of a score for one of those 70s cops-and-robbers shows.
I'm not sure how rare "LA Blue" is nowadays, but if it is of a reasonable price, I wouldn't mind acquiring it myself. As for its success on the charts, it went as high as No. 2.
If you are curious about the album, it is actually on Amazon.jp.
1. Yumi Matsutoya Delight Slight Light Kiss
2. Toshinobu Kubota The Baddest
3. Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi Showa
4. Akina Nakamori Best II
5. TM Network Carol
6. Anri Circuit of Rainbow
7. Boowy Singles
8. Hikaru Genji Hey! Say!
9. Shizuka Kudo Gradation
10. Hound Dog Gold
Yes, I always appreciate it when the singers give their albums English-language titles. A bit of "a small world"piece of trivia here, referring back to the previous entry of Miki Imai(今井美樹): one of the six men who made up the 7th-ranking Boowy, Tomoyasu Hotei(布袋寅泰）, will not only become her collaborator in the 90s but also her husband. Hotei is also the composer of the "Kill Bill"instrumental theme song.
No. 8's Hikaru Genji(光Genji) was the top group in the Johnny's Jimusho male harem, before SMAP started its long reign. Of course, now its Arashi.
Lovely song, sorry about the title. Chika Ueda (上田千華), singer-songwriter, came up with this along with lyricist Masami Tozawa（戸沢暢美）. Not sure if it had been a late night for them, but I could imagine the situation with the two partners:
Chika: OK, OK, we gotta get this title out of the way by morning... Masami.: Right, right...but I can't come up with anything. My mind's fried! Chika: OK, OK, OK....I got an idea: give me a dance, an emotional adjective and...and...and a shoe. Masami.: Wha--...Boogie Woogie....lonesome....high heel Chika: Eureka!
Of course, that is all conjecture. I tried looking up an interview with either Ueda or Imai about how this title was formed but no luck so far.
In any case, Miki Imai (今井美樹)...yeah...in the late 80s, with kayo kyoku about to diversify into J-Pop's many paths, there was a small trend of female singers with mellow AOR-friendly voices taking on some medium-tempo ballads and happier tunes. In 1989, the model-turned-singer Imai released her 4th album in 1989, "Mocha--Under A Full Moon", and this was the 3rd track. Listening to this slow jazzy song kinda makes one wanna brew up that mocha and curl up in an armchair on a rainy, lazy Sunday. The album itself got about as high as No. 5 on the Oricon charts.
Six months later, Imai's first Best album, "Ivory"was released with "BWLHH"as one of its hits.
Yup, this is definitely showing my bias, but that's what a blog is for. Ruiko Kurahashi (倉橋ルイ子） is one of my unsung heroes in kayo kyoku. She never became a superstar like Seiko Matsuda (松田聖子) or Akina Nakamori (中森明菜), and most likely 9 out of 10 Japanese people I ask who are even around my own age will just shrug their shoulders in ignorance if I ask about her. And yet, she has a small, very dedicated following in Japan and in Hong Kong. I actually first found out about her through that Chinatown record shop, Wah Yueh. I bought my first album of hers there, and I even bought a bootleg tape of hers that originated in HK.
Her specialty is pop ballads, and far from the frenetic bubblegum pop of the aidoru scene, Kurahashi has had this very languid and breathy delivery paired with more European-sounding melodies, although some of her more uptempo tunes are more into the kayo kyoku vein of the times.
"Never Fall In Love"is a very typical Kurahashi ballad. It came on her very first album release "Without Sugar"in 1981, an album that is now very hard to find anywhere. But I had a very generous friend who was able to burn a copy of it for me and even reproduced the cover. This particular ballad was composed by Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）, one of my favourite guys to make this sort of song and prolific lyricist Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）came up with the words.
The video above has the slightly more oomphed-up City Pop version of the song. Nice, too, but somehow I prefer the original version.
