The Affair

8 Apr 2013

Jukebox: Kazuhito Murata

While The Affair loves its funk music, it also embraces pop and rock from around the world, especially in languages other than English.

For those who have visited my personal blog, hikarublue, you might be familiar with the occasional jukebox posts, where I like to highlight a particular artist or a particular theme.

For the inaugural jukebox for The Affair, the honours go to Kazuhito Murata.

Kaz comes from that genre of Japanese artists in the 1980s who were highly influenced by the Beach Boys, and added a bit of doo-wop and soul mixeed in with surf rock to the Japanese pop/rock scene.

He does cross a lot of genres (but then one of the great things about 1980s pop music was that you could seemlessly transition genres in the middle of a song and everyone loved it as a pop song).

Here’s a sampling of some of his work:

See You Again

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTf5RuLDvPw]

(You can hear the doo-wop influence. Kaz is one of the few artists to whom I can listen to do a ballad because he gives his all, and genuinely emotes)

One of his first hits from 1982, “You can call me”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khAH4rSKePw?rel=0]

And finally, We Love You

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6jpwWmSP1g?rel=0]

As you can tell by his cartoon self, Kaz likes to style himself as a bit of a Japanese answer to Jimmy Buffett.