About

One of the giants of Japanese pop music, Taeko Ohnuki began her career as a founding member of Japanese pop band Sugar Babe alongside Tatsuro Yamashita. Though the group failed to achieve much success, they would prove to be highly influential to the city pop sound that would explode in the late ’70s into the ’80s. Sunshower by Taeko Onuki stands out in the City Pop genre for its sophisticated blend of pop sensibilities with experimental elements, showcasing a range of styles from jazz to funk. Released in 1977, this album features an impressive lineup of musicians, including Ryuichi Sakamoto and Haruomi Hosono from Yellow Magic Orchestra.

The album's tracks, such as "Tokai" exhibit smooth jazz inflections and funky rhythms, creating a captivating and unique sound. Despite City Pop's association with luxury and sophistication, Sunshower goes beyond typical pop conventions, offering depth and complexity. The album's experimentation with different genres and its refusal to conform to traditional pop norms set it apart, making it more timeless sounding in the genre's history. The reissue on vinyl allows a new audience to appreciate the timeless appeal and innovative nature of this album. — (via Juno)

—

One of the giants of Japanese pop music, Taeko Ohnuki began her career as a founding member of Japanese pop band Sugar Babe alongside Tatsuro Yamashita. Though the group failed to achieve much success, they would prove to be highly influential to the city pop sound that would explode in the late ’70s into the ’80s. Ohnuki’s sophomore album, the masterpiece Sunshower, often gets labeled city pop, but actually precedes the glamorous, metropolitan style that the genre is known for and touches on subjects closer to home. Notably, this album features one of the most stacked lineups we’ve ever seen with pre-YMO Haruomi Hosono and Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tatsuro Yamashita on backing vocals, guitar legend Kenji Omura, and Sadistic Mika Band bassist Tsugutoshi Goto. — (via In Sheep's Clothing Hi-Fi)

—
Taeko Onuki, once a member of Sugar Babe, was onto something with 1976’s Grey Skies. While it wasn’t all that it sought to be, it was a record with surefire ambition; it had personality in spades and tended to overachieve when it fell short of the mark and into the grey area of adequacy. For an artist setting out on her own, Onuki had yet to reach, nor comprehend the heights she could reach as a solo musician. The hard part was recording an album that could set her apart from the rest; she had an all-star lineup returning from Grey Skies, the most notable being Ryuichi Sakamoto and Haruomi Hosono of Yellow Magic Orchestra fame, with Sakamoto bearing the duty of putting together the arrangements and musical direction for the recording of Sunshower. Grey Skies could be easily seen as Onuki and Sakamoto’s dry run, an album that tested the brawn of its composer and those who accompanied her but at the end of the day, it was your average City Pop album. Sunshower benefits from two things in exact; it has the infectious catchiness of your regular old pop song in unison with soothing harmonies and a smoking hot band laying down grooves bound to worm its way into your head, and it has the capability to experiment with the pop art form and could afford to take risks with deep cuts such as the delicate ambiance of “Sargasso Sea” and the classical-meets-funk fusion “Furiko no Yagi” to back it up.

The inclusion of eclectic mood pieces makes the charm of Sunshower all the more apparent. It’s a record with blatant jazz inflections so smooth, so cool, that it’d be jarring not to hear a stylish melody joining Onuki’s soft voice on a song like “Tokai,” where the harmonies and electronic jittering are a part of why that song works so well. Were you to take the safety net of jazz and funky rhythms out of Onuki’s cunning hands, Sunshower would be a record without its character – it’d still have its talented ensemble and creativity.

If you were to ever find yourself in a situation where you had nothing to listen to and needed a record to simultaneously entertain you and enhance your appreciation of pop music, Sunshower would, without a doubt, do just that for anyone. I won’t go as far to say it’s the “definitive” City Pop album, but for a genre with very little to offer outside watered-down jazz funk clichés and folk pastiches, it’s the closest you’ll ever get to “definitive.”

It’s not about the way Sunshower presents itself to its unsuspecting listener, but more about how it sets its case. It’s convincing in its conviction to exceed expectations and does more than enough to cast aside the tropes unbecoming of its creator, no matter how busy its songs sound or how nuanced they are. But most importantly, to the album and to City Pop as a genre, it is willing to accept that the glamour of city life isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. To languor in decades of obscurity (despite Onuki being one of the more successful artists from the City Pop boom) without so much as seeing widespread reappraisal is unbecoming of an album like Sunshower, and only goes to show how ahead of its time it is despite its accessible approaches to experimentation and its rejection of the grandiosity that found its way to so many other records of its time. — (via Sputnik Music)

↓
Label: Crown / Panam
Series: City Pop On Vinyl 2025
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Limited Edition, Reissue, Clear Pink Vinyl
Reissued: 2025 / Original: 1977
Genre: Funk / Soul, Pop
Style: City Pop, Funk, Jazz-Funk, Soul, Kayōkyoku, Vocal

File under: Japanese Pop
⦿