[Soft & Sunny]
No.53 "Seven O'Clock News" by Pizzicato Five

news-continents-newspaper-globe Photo by geralt, pixabay.com under pixabay.com license

Hi. Today's song is "Seven O'Clock News" by "Pizzicato Five".

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Index

1. Song data
Title	Seven O'Clock News
Artist	Pizzicato Five
Album Title	Couples
Track No.	7
Duration	2:26
Released	1987
Publisher	CBS Sony
Lyricist	Yasuharu Konishi
Composer	Ryō Kamomiya
Arranger	Tomoki Hasegawa, Daisuke Inoue

About the creators

Yasuharu Konishi is a founding member of the band, and had been a key man for the '90s J-pop.

Ryō Kamomiya was the 1st keyboardist of the band, and also a composer in the group.

Both Tomoki Hasegawa & Daisuke Inoue are keyboardists and arrangers, particularly active in the game music.

Cover art today

AD : Amazon.co.jp (via af.moshimo.com)

Couples

(Digital music, Amazon.co.jp)
Pizzicato Five, 1987. 2016.

* The above is a link to the full album. For single song, please check here.

Song image & Lyrics

▼ Memo

Link to the lyrics

uta-net.com, Seven O'Clock News

▼ Copyright notice on the lyrics link

Sound impressions

Light & cheerful

This is an upper middle speed light cheerful pop song, with a hint of old French popular music.

The ensemble of the drums, the bass, and the acoustic guitar creates a happy lyric rhythm, and the sound of piccolo and flute add some cuteness to the song.

A classy background seems to come from the beautiful harmony of strings, and the gorgeous atmosphere is a contribution of the horn section.

And the notable point is this very relaxed duet by Mamiko Sasaki & Ryō Kamomiya. This is the one of the feature for "Shibuya-kei" sound.

Reference

Wikipedia EN, Pizzicato Five

Google translate(en)

Wikipedia JP, Pizzicato Five

About Google translate

About the artist

"Shibuya style"

Pizzicato Five debuted in 1984 with single "Audrey Hepburn complex". Since then, 24 singles, and 13 original, 18 best, plus 11 other albums has been released until now.

(Wikipedia-en, Pizzicato Five)

Their debut song "Audrey Hepburn complex" was a stunning unique and stylish song in the Japanese popular music at that time.

Melody, lyrics, sound, and promotion video... from any point of view, the qualiy of the song was far ahead of the times.

Amazon JP(en)
Audrey Hepburn complex

Audrey Hepburn complex
Pizzicato Five
(No. sample)

This song was strongly supported by core music fans.

Such songs tend to sell less than the ordinal popular songs, since it means the song is not in a commercial zone at least in the present moment.

3 years later, by the suggestion of promoter, they had switched 2 members, namely main vocal and the keyboardist.

The band became more like an ordinal pop-rock group than before. But commercially, it seemed a right decision.

Since then, the band became one of the most popular group, thanks to the active character of the vocalist, Maki Nomiya.

They broke up in 2001. But their name is still well known as a great band.

The group is often called the roots of the "Shibuya-kei"(Shibuya style).

The word "Shibuya-kei" has no particular meaning in itself, but conveniently used to describe the '90s soft, stylish and urban pop-rock like "PIZZICATO FIVE", "Flippers guitar" did.

"Shibuya" is an area name of a shopping and business hub in the center of Tokyo.

In the 90s, Shibuya was the epicenter for fashion and the cultures of the young.

Tens of thousands of young men and women were strolling from the morning to the mid-night.

At the same time, Shibuya was a center for music. Big CD shops like Tower, HMV, Wave, Virgin... located close to each other, and were competing to promote more stylish music.

Additionally, hundreds of small maniac CD & Vinyl record shops were also gathered in a small area of Shibuya, and thousand of music fans were walking around the town everyday in search of prey.(The writer here was one of them.)

Under the circumstances, the new style music like "PIZZICATO FIVE" was playing became popular among those people. And the music began to be called as "Shibuya-kei".

For more precise and detailed explanation, please see the Wikipedia "Shibuya-kei".