We all have our soft spots. Lately, for me, it’s been sharing certain kinds of “rainy day” albums tailor-made to appeal to the more mature audience. Less fussy with sonics, less messy with pretentiousness, these are the kinds of albums that I’d like to think others would find as graceful, sophisticated, and measured as I do. They’re albums like those by Yukio Sasaki’s Jealousy, whose classy atmosphere seems to hover out of time.
For those who’ve yet to encounter Yukio’s work, one word might easily encapsulate his music: “tender.” Yukio is known in Japanese cultural circles for his iconic early ‘70s career that blurred the lines between folk, pop, and soul music. It’s on albums like ほーぼー that many “new music” fans got to experience and fall in love with that wonderful voice of his, one stuck in that perfect, middle range, positively beaming with a certain warmth that could only be produced in ‘70s soft rock. It’s what made his name a sort of calling card among other Japanese musicians, earning him the title of “musician’s musician”.
Looking back, we’re fortunate to have experienced Yukio’s music. Yukio’s entry into the music industry happened later than most. Born on September 3, 1950, in the Moto district of Miyagi Prefecture (now Kitakami Town), Yukio Sasaki grew up as the youngest among his siblings. When he was in first grade in 1957, his family relocated to Sapporo, specifically to its Shiroishi Ward. There, as a teenager, he attended Horohigashi Junior High School and later Hokkaido Prefectural Higashi High School, where he developed a passion for music, particularly for bands like The Ventures and The Beatles.
In 1967, while in high school, Yukio formed a band called “The Rockets” with some friends from his tennis club. Taking on the role of lead vocalist, they performed covers of popular bands like The Spiders, The Tempters, and, of course, The Beatles. Music became a significant part of his life, but it also led him to fail his university entrance exams in 1969.
During a period of reflection, where Yukio seemingly lived the life of a “ronin” or hippie, unable to find work or home, Yukio found solace in the literature of Dostoevsky, which would later influence his lyrical, artistic style. In 1970, he enrolled at the Sapporo branch of Hokkaido University of Education. Around the same time, he joined the university’s folk club, where he co-founded a band named “稲村一志と第一巻第百章” (“Kazushi Inamura and Chapter I, Chapter 100”) with some close friends. Together, they dedicated themselves to covering Beatles songs and even participated in the Yamaha Light Music Contest, where they achieved notable success.
However, as time passed, Yukio felt a disconnect between his musical aspirations and the direction of the band. In 1975, he made the decision to pursue a solo career, focusing on creating original music in the vein of singer-songwriters popular at that time. However, it wouldn’t be until Yukio entered and won the Grand Prix of Yamaha’s prestigious “Popular Song Contest” or Popcon that he could parlay his ideas into a record deal and release.
It was Yukio’s debut single, “君は風” (Kimi wa Kaze) – the song that won him that contest – which was released in 1977, that marked the beginning of his solo journey. Somehow, this became the theme song for the TV show on NTV and propelled his debut, ほーぼー, to the top of the Oricon charts, finding him compared or thought of as a Japanese equivalent to Jackson Browne or Dan Fogelberg. Listening to the track, it’s not hard to understand why. Light as a feather and laced with Yukio’s honey-sweet voice, its slightly melancholic, lilting tropical melody struck that same nerve early Happy End tracks did and hearkened to the burgeoning “City Pop/new music” scene bubbling up.
Three more albums would follow. From 1979’s ワン・オン・ワン (“One On One”) to 1982’s イエス！ (“Yes!”), each one saw him grow into what would become his signature troubadour balladeer style. Whether tackling lite-funk, electro-pop, or updating his country-rock roots, Yukio easily found a way to keep pace with the AOR/adult contemporary scene exploding in bubble-era Japan. Yet, for all the success and work, Yukio appeared to have soured with his music and found himself at the end of 1982 in a creative nadir. By 1983, he returned to Sapporo dejected and quietly retired from the music industry.
One does wonder what fully occurred between 1982 and 1989, when Yukio felt safe to come back to music. That welcome was short-lived, though, as early sessions for what would have been his comeback album in L.A. would be marred by the theft of that unreleased album’s master tracks. Forced by that untimely setback to redo his music, it appeared that Yukio said “screw it” and shifted direction altogether.
Rather than go back to what he knew, Yukio convinced his new record company, WEA (Warner Elektra Atlantic), to finance a trip and session elsewhere. Inspired by the next-gen AOR and UK-based sophisti-pop scene – think Chris Rea’s “On the Beach,” the minimalist blues of groups like Dire Straits, or Everything But The Girl – Yukio convinced them to send him to London to live and book studio time with artists like Max Middleton, Kuma Harada, and Linda Taylor, all important session musicians who were helping shape the contemporary evolution of UK soul music.
What would come out of these sessions was an album that would hover around themes of love and heartbreak. A classic breakup album, Jealousy, felt like Yukio’s most personal and intimate album to date. To this day, Jealousy feels like each song wasn’t afraid to linger on a specific topic close to Yukio’s heart. With most songs hovering above five minutes, as a listener, you were invited to luxuriate or soak in the elegant expression he could eke out.
The opener, “雨のMilk Tea” (“Ame no Milk Tea” – Milk Tea In The Rain), sets the mood instantly. Over six minutes, Yukio unfurls a transformative version of Marina pop music, juxtaposing the seeming freedom of yacht life with the heady steam one truly feels when being set out to sea, emotionally. It’s a gorgeous track with an equally moody see-sawing atmosphere. Those allusions I made to that fiery minimal blues of Dire Straits are clearly felt in tracks like “Banana Moonの片思い” (“Banana Moon no Kataomoi” – Banana Moon’s Unrequited Love) with over six minutes of emotional cauterwhaling cresting with the memorable line, “fuck your life.” What would follow is nearly fifty minutes of near flawless adult contemporary.
You get the McCartney-ish “Cry For The Moon.” You get the smokey jazz pop of “月夜の晩には” (“Tsukiyo no Ban ni wa” – At The End Of The Moonlight). Allusions to so many ways one can get tangled up in blue abound. The groovy bump of “Boat People (遙か東シナ海)” (“Haruka Azuma Shinkai” – Boat People (Far East China Sea)) adds more of that dark, minimal, blues Yukio should have experimented with more in the past.
Of course, one of this album’s highlights, its Walearic title track “想い出にJealousy” (“Omoide ni Jealousy” – Jealousy In Memories), finds Yukio going down to a hidden well of Brazilian influence that informed his best songs in the past. On this one, the sway of its samba funk sounds like it’s always one hip shake and calypso drum away from being whisked away to sea. Jealousy, if you step back, appears to show the destructive allure of envy and attachment.
Melancholic ballads like “Lonely Christmas Bell” reveal the pain of lingering rejection, using slow blues, seemingly, trying to coax Yukio’s tender vocals to such realization. The Meters-inspired New Orleans funk of “Missエルジーの悲劇” (“Miss Eruji no Higeki” – The Tragedy of Miss Elsey) rectifies this by finding inspiration in self. Jealousy plays out through all the stages of grief from denial to acceptance. And one of its most impressive tracks is the one hovering at the border of depression and acceptance.
On a personal favorite, “Shadow Lady,” a gently percolating post-disco, post-bossa nova groove, burbles like the bubbles on your favorite shaken cocktail, drunkenly reveling in the only companion soothing his loneliness: a glass of whisky. It’s a messy song that justifies itself in the gorgeous complexity of Yukio’s gently detached singing and its dance with the steady-as-it-goes rhythm that can’t bring itself to bubble over its floating tempo.
Jealousy ends on the silvery sound of “September Valentine ・From London With Love・,” a song that finally reaches those Dylan-ish highs all the best singer-songwriters aim to reach but (whether fate, taste, or sense) fail them the first time around. In plaintive, matter-of-fact, lyrics and “grown” singing, Yukio hits those lived-in notes and those wonderful words and music that can only be reached when you’ve gone through some – pardon my French – shit…and decided to wipe it clean. Here was that same man, still tender, but with something else just as powerful to hang his hat on. And fittingly, it ends this whole shebang by trying to make some lemonade out of so many lemons.
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