You know, some days I’m grateful I have a platform to highlight music that others might pass on. It’s why you get to hear albums like the late, great, Chika Ueda’s いつも 2人で (Always 2 People). While others might describe it as “more adult contemporary pap”, think of it as milquetoast, and file it under “too square to share”. I disagree. I happen to think highly of you. I happen to think you’ve developed quite the palette to differentiate quality from “waste of time”. If you’re an admirer of pop music – yes, that dreaded word “pop” – I know you’ll appreciate Chika’s story.
Classical music has always been a part of Chika Ueda’s life. From the age of three, Chika had been either performing, practicing, or composing music indebted to what she learned in front of her piano. Then, sometime in the late ‘70s, while attending Tokyo’s University Of Music, Chika befriended fellow classmate Yasuo Higuchi and pitched him the idea of starting a band.
Rather than fill any existing niche or prevailing trend, Chika and Yasuo enlisted other classically-trained friends and students of the conservatory to become a bit of an anomaly. As Chika Ueda and Karyobin, this band would be led on vocals and piano by Chika and on string quartet by the rest of the crew. It would be Chika’s brilliant, prolific songwriting and timeless feel that would lead them through six albums (released in the span of three years) where they successfully created their own territory: that of that rare bird, a “neoclassical” pop band. A rather memorable one at that.
By 1982, though, it appeared that Chika had more ambitious ideas to explore. Perhaps, ideas that would not fit the pigeonhole she had let herself fall through with Karyobin. After the dissolution of her band, in the course of two years, Chika began earning her stripes as a songwriter-for-hire for idol singers. Idols like Seiko Matsuda, Kazue Itoh, Tsukasa Ito would be the ones who were able to ride hit singles to great popularity, written by Chika. In a way, this new practice or hired work would allow Chika to build that confidence – to say: “I can be a pop star myself.”
In 1984, Chika did her darndest to make that pop dream a reality. Going under the name “Chica Ueda”, together with Mr. Anything Goes (Nobuyuki Shimizu) released the fantastic クラシェスト (Classiest) a foot-tapping bit of joyful music that showcased Chika’s stylistic chops in the realm of jazz, funk, and doo wop-influenced of-that-moment pop songs. However, as good as the album was, Chika’s debut did very little to force her label’s hand and they dropped her from their roster.
It was the disappointment of her debut that forced Chika to recede from the limelight and try a different way to keep her musical career going. In the span of nearly a decade, Chika would retreat into the 88-keys in front of her and become a wildly prolific songwriter-for-hire to new-generation J-Pop singers like Yuki Saito, Marina Watanabe, and Noriko Watanabe (to name precious few) that could appreciate her more mature stylings.
A turning point for Chika would occur in the late ‘80s, when she began to explore a solo career again. First came a quite intriguing instrumental album for the SOHBI jazz label. On Okite, which I’ll circle around to in the future, Chika used contemporary music production and instrumentation to create something that belonged in the vein of “ambient music”. Then a year later, in 1990 she signed with Warner Brothers and restarted her solo career with 1991’s I Will.
This new decade proved that Chika hadn’t lost that ability to create fruitful music for herself, either. Songs like “Lean On Me” saw her shifting towards more sophisticated sounds and a more tasteful, adult lean. Somehow, the titular track, “I Will”, became a hit in contemporary top-40 radio. If you can remember back to Anna Banana’s wonderful work, believe it that Chika had a hand on it. Right at the moment many Japanese listeners were at the cusp of placing her in the “Where are they now?” file, she was back, marking new territory.
For Chika’s next release, 1992’s 朝 昼 夜 晴れ (Morning, Noon, Night, Clear.) she became even bolder. Under the influence of club music, songs like “Home Sick”, “Snow In The Park”, and “That’s Why You Can’t” became these fiery soulful, uptempo jams that fitted their influences (house, New Jack Swing, and the new “alternative”) in perfectly with the forward-thinking J-Pop Chika was now crafting. Yet, for all the new ideas, Chika didn’t have the label support necessary to stay afloat. Once again, she was dropped and had to head back to writing for others.
One does wonder what was going on behind Chika’s life when she created いつも 2人で (Always 2 People). For nearly two years she spent time shopping around demos, until finally landing with the VAP record label – the first one to understand what she needed to get her next ideas out there.
By 1994, Chika had left Japan and ventured to America to make a living. It appears that marital troubles at home had fed an even further retreat from the limelight. With airs of melancholia swirling around her, she convinced her new label to send her to Paris to record at Studio Montmartre (the same place Leornard Cohen went to birth I’m Your Man). Far from home, closer to the source of her musical beginnings, Chika created something far more personal than she probably let on. Inspired by that classic Audrey Hepburn romance, “Two For The Road”, いつも 2人で (Always 2 People) could be her way (of sorts) to put the pieces together.
In songs like “彼と私とあなた” /“He, Me, and You” that dreamy atmosphere of the Parisian nouvelle chanson pop scene makes it first mark with smokey, downtempo, burn music fitting the environs. The duo-tipped “ガラスのマリアージュ”, a reimagining of Henry Mancini’s lovelorn sentimalism for a new era, touches on the same breathtaking meridian points hit by Francoise Hardy’s with equally haunting balladry.
Sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and quite adult, gone are the fey touches from Chika’s earlier career. いつも 2人で (Always 2 People) speaks to me (and I think many) because of the mature way it captures real-life romantic relationship in all its frequency range. Epic contemporary “adult” heart-breakers like “あなたに会うまでは”/”Until I Met You”, “Miss You”, and the titular track instill high drama to intensely personal micro-traumas, aired/meditated, on record.
When we get to hear glimpses of light shine through, on tracks like “Un Jour D’ete”, they feel well-earned and play out as calm, cool, and collected – all the rhythm of life, unfailing, finding movement in Chika’s world. My hope, as always, is that this album speaks to you as it does to me. “‘Tis better to love than to never love at all”, as they say. And いつも 2人で (Always 2 People) has something, I think, anyone can love.