#80sidols

When I found out Patty had chosen a Miho Nakayama album for 80s idol month I was pretty ecstatic. Though I only have a random best of hers I'm more familiar with her work with Tetsuya Komuro (go figure!) particularly her hit singles "JINGI・愛してもらいます" and personal favorite "50/50". However I've always wanted to delve a bit deeper and CATCH THE NITE was a great starting point.

It's not that I find it to be a massive hit album with huge singles (though the album and its sole single both hit #1) it's more that it exactly portrays what I feel 80s Japanese pop music sounded like in my mind. This is what comes to mind when I envision Japan's booming economy and excess luxury. This is the album that would be blasting in the background as one wandered through the bright lit night in Ginza.

The good - We are immediately greeted with dance tinged pop sounds in the opening "OVERTURE" only quickly to be taken to the Minneapolis sound of "MISTY LOVE". It couldn't get anymore 80s than this unless Miho was a Prince protégé. This is the jam you popped into your tape deck when you went out cruising in the 80s.

I know Patty and Edu will probably chastise me for it but I unapologetically love "CATCH ME"! After the expected boring ballad ending of side A, this opens up side B with some Hi-NRG lite. It has all the elements of an early SAW single from the arpeggiator-esque synth riffs to the double bass but still manages to remain pop radio/idol friendly.

The bad - I know the 80s were all about overdrawn ballads but I have no love for "スノー・ホワイトの街" as it's clearly the weakest contribution to the set. It sounds like something Janet would have recorded for her first couple of albums before Control. Yes we all know the Japanese just HAVE to throw some ballads in there for good measure but this is just standard pop filler and nothing more.

The tragic - While the whole of the album sounds like it could have been from Beverly Hills Cop, "TRIANGLE LOVE AFFAIR" is probably the most disastrous. That chorus, the heavy kick drum, the grating sax solos! It's so 80s it hurts.

The ultimate tragedy however would have to be the album closer "花瓶". While it starts slow and semi-serious, it builds in the chorus right into adult contemporary territory. This continues for about 5 minutes and right when you think it's over we're met with perhaps the favorite 80s music trope, a dramatic key change! Oh but that's not all, here come the ridiculous back up singers singing over the top ad libs.

If Yoko Ono and Shiina Ringo had a child and sent her back in time to become an 80s idol, she would be Jun Togawa.

It's not an altogether accurate comparison, but it's apt. Jun Togawa occupies the space between Yoko's avant garde screeching and Shiina's love for theatrics and old school Japanese music. However, Jun is a better singer than the former and a better artist than the latter.

Jun's Wikipedia page notes, without any apparent irony, that mainstream success merely evaded Togawa. Listening to her music, I'm not convinced that mainstream success was ever her aim.  

The good - "好き好き大好き" is Jun Togawa's "DON'T LOOK BACK," an endlessly listenable pop gem. With a New Wave spy-movie soundtrack as the backdrop, Jun portrays a tone-deaf idol reciting lyrics, according to translations, such as "'Eros breaks the daily life and be crystallizing / Repeating the affairs instinctively in the Avici hell." It's pretty abstract stuff, maybe even lifted from a textbook (I imagine), and a rub on the idea that anything "serious" idols sing could ever be at all related to real people's realEmotion(s). And then after a synth flourish comes the chorus, where we find Jun braying in a delirious, now adult voice, "Kiss me until blood clots on my lips! Hold me until my ribs snap with a crack!" Is she denouncing the violence inherent in idol pop's heady declarations of love? Or is she saying that love is a lot more complicated than idol pop will ever be able to portray? Either way, it's a fabulous read of the genre.  

I find the rock-influenced tracks very good too (interestingly, they could've been on Seiko's SQUALL), with excellent moments like the overly enthusiastic shojou spoken word bit in "ヘリクツBOY," the breathless, made-up-along-the-way quality in "図形の恋" and the dual-channel vocals at the beginning of "遅咲きガール," but the showstopper for me is "オーロラB". It's really a beautiful, if forlorn, melody and the vocals are disarmingly vulnerable. It actually gives me a bit of a rock en espanol vibe, specifically "Lamento boliviano" by Los Enanitos Verdes (which, having been released in 1984, could be an influence for all I know), with maybe some Soda Stereo or something. Maybe I'm just used to reading accordions as Latin American.  

The bad - I really don't think there's anything bad here because everything is very intentional, but a few songs I'm not always in the mood for. "エンジェル ベイビー" is the most savage parody in the album, nestling extremely bad vocals in a relatively straightforward, treacly do-wop track. It's actually a cover of a 1960 song by a group called Rosie and the Originals, and although It has its charms, sometimes you just don't feel like listening to a train wreck, intentional or not. The other track I'm not as big a fan of is "恋のコリーダ," more on account of the "Showa tribute album" music than the actual vocals, which are in fact quite amazing. Her final phrase? Completely over the top and completely gorgeous. See? I have to say good things even about the "bad" songs.

The tragic - I would put "さよならをおしえて" in the tragic pile not because it's bad, or so bad it's good, but because it has the highest histrionic quotient in the album. Where Francoise Hardy's original sounds coolly disaffected, you don't have to understand Japanese to sense the over-the-top bitterness that permeates this version. It's like a New Wave "I Will Survive," and an epic Lip Sync for Your Life moment in my imaginary TV series, Matsuko Deluxe's Drag Race.