Miho Nakayama - After School

I must confess, I'm at fault here, yes... a long, looooong time since I posted some J-pop. Time to correct this, right? What better way than with some Showa Idol?
Nakayama-san, one of the four most popular, and active, idols during the 80's (alongside Shizuka Kudo, another favorite of mine). A big, big, name out there, but virtually unkown in the West. Super prolific, released a lot of records (apparently is still active), acted in various movies and TV dramas, big brands ads, and all that idol stuff. "After School" is her debut LP, the very first one in a line of, let me be honest, a dozen so-so ones. Well, what can you do, right? When you get into a two-to-three records a year streak, some of those are bound to flop (not commercially though).
So, what makes this one so worthwhile? Everything! "After School" is pure 80's awesomeness distilled. Cheese, when well executed, is overpowering, infectious even! This covers all the grounds for J-Pop, so much as I would even classify it as "my first J-Pop record", because of how "seminal" it sounds. That's the first one, in this niche, that you should hear, I believe. Every cliché, every timbre, every harmonic progression... it souds all too blueprint-ish. Every other record you listen, every anime opening and ending, will sound all too familiar.
Highlights are numerous. Take the lead single, "「U」", for example. Such an outstanding little cheessy number. But seriously, it's the perfect marriage of all the 80's Pop tropes, including, of course, the Sax solo. So catchy (that's the whole album, to be honest, all so cathcy)! Or "生意気", the quintessential kayōkyoku sound, super melhancolic, but danceable at the same time (most Post-Punk bands just wish they could couple both so perfectly). Or even the Hard Rock influenced numbers,"けんか友達" and "Heartbreak" (jeez-weez, Heartbreak... now that's some soundtrack worthy song... just listen and you will know what kind of movie I'm talking about!). Also, "あ・そ・び ", the titular track as it seems, is so memorable too. Even the ballads I really like, which are the type of songs I generally have a hard time liking, they're just so... i don't know, likeable here.
Anyway, I could just do a track-by-track review, that's just how good all of them are, but that would be boring. The production is just how you would expect it to sound, it's professional and competent, so not much to add in this departament. And, almost forgetting, her voice; it's cutesy alright. Not flashy, not like it really needs too (that's one aspect that I really like about J-Pop, they're not unnecessarily vibrato heavy, or "check out how high I can go" all the time). It's not sugarly cute, though; just the perfect middle ground, I would say.
Listen to it during your vacation, or after school, or whatever...