ESSAY 17
PINK LADY: BACK TO THE FUTURE
by Jeffrey C. Branch
I'm sure I've said a time or two or ten that Pink Lady became hugely successful as pop music icons because they had been in just the right place at just the right time, and let me put some special emphasis on "time" as that's the basis for this essay. As everyone here knows, Mie and Kei, born in the late 1950's, grew up in a simpler, less complicated era which helped a lot in making their name in the Japanese show business scene in the 70's. But what if things had been different? What if, by some twist of fate, the girls had been born in the late 1980's and made their debut in 2006 with the same brand of music that made them famous? Intrigued? Good. Let's explore the possibilities.
Mie and Kei met around 1973 when they were high schoolers and became interested in singing a year or so later, no doubt from listening to scratchy 45's of popular idols such as Momoe Yamaguchi, Junko Sakurada and Candies, on top of that, they would've been regularly glued to the TV, watching their heroines perform their hits on Let's Go Young. And, in their spare time, the girls might have written fan letters to their favorite singers. Now, had Mie and Kei been born thirty years later, they would've been listening to digital MP3's in the middle 00's of stars like Hikaru Utada, Namie Amuro and Morning Musume on their iPods or cellphones while watching YouTube videos of their favorites on computer screens. Meanwhile, a few clicks of a mouse would've taken the girls to information rich websites of singers they liked and sent email messages to them.
As for Mie and Kei getting their all-important big break via that televised audition, while Star Tanjo isn't around today, I'm sure the girls would've found a way to get themselves noticed nationally, perhaps there's a Japanese version of American Idol (which, when you stop to think about it, was pretty much what Tanjo had been, but without a Simon Cowell-like grouch as the host) they could've performed on. Had Mie and Kei gotten on some sort of talent show to showcase their singing chops, would they have been taken seriously wearing bib overalls and crooning some cutesy-pie song like they had done three decades ago, or would they had to dress more provocatively from jump street and sang something bolder in order to attract attention from judges? I would have to say "yes" to both, and, chances are, that would've bettered their chances for success.
With their feet in the door, I believe Mie and Kei would've been just as successful as in 2006 as they had been in 1976, if not moreso as their unique combination of catchy pop songs paired with those wild and wooly dance routines would have been a smash hit. On top of that, considering today's age of cosplay (costume play) madness among anime fans, Pink Lady's costumes only would have increased their popularity. I mean, can you imagine the scores of kids and teenagers prancing around in the silver sequined bodysuits and antenna hats from "UFO", the baseball styled rompers from "Southpaw" or those sassy flapper dresses from "Wanted"? And with sold out concerts combined with videos, podcasts and Pink Lady websites sprouting up like weeds by fans, the legend of Mie and Kei will have exploded in ways that just weren't imaginable back in the 70's.
This now brings us to the American equation. Two years after Pink Lady exploded on the scene, becoming the biggest thing in Japan since Godzilla, Mie and Kei caught the eye of interested parties in the U.S. In April 1978, the girls performed in Las Vegas, followed by "Kiss in the Dark" along with their first appearance on U.S. television a year later, and lastly (or, depending on your point of view, regrettably), Pink Lady & Jeff in 1980. Could lightning have struck in the same way for the girls in 2008 through early 2010? I would have to say no. Again, things were a good deal simpler for Mie and Kei when America came calling in the late 70's, without the benefit of YouTube, the public knew nothing about the girls, increasing the novelty factor considerably and, in turn, stoking interest, especially among teenagers when KITD hit the airwaves and became a sensation.
To be honest, I don't think the cute, bubbly image that made Pink Lady famous in Japan would have worked in America of the mid-2000's as teens, much more sophisticated than their peers in the 70's, preferred saucy and borderline raunchy pop tarts like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. In order to compete, Mie and Kei would had to have sexed it up greatly to have been noticed, and even then, the girls faced insurmountable odds since the track record of non-English speaking singers trying to strike it big in the States has been and continues to be flat out dismal. In fact, I seriously doubt that any of Japan's top singers, perfectly comfortable with being big fish in a small pond even bother trying anymore as coming to America to shoot for mainstream success would mean becoming small fish in a big pond, and, without fail, they'd end up drowning.
Television? Fuhgeddaboudit! Even with 57 channels and nothing to watch as Bruce Springsteen famously lamented in song, for two Japanese singers who barely speak passable English to attempt breaking into the ultra-competitive U.S. television market of the early 21st century would've been impossible. The comedy-variety show format which introduced Mie and Kei to American audiences in 1980 is long dead (and, according to TV historians, the girls unwittingly helped kill it), and I can't think of any other format on any channel that would've properly showcased their talents without subjecting them to embarrassment or humiliation for the sake of entertainment, or has anyone forgotten the hideously unfunny caricature that was the late Sid Caesar with his moronic and insulting "Papa-san" routine on PL & J which thoroughly disgusted fans like myself.
Finally, we come to the longevity issue. Pink Lady's amazing first run back in the late 70's seemed to go on forever, considering everything Mie and Kei had done, and it had been a lot, but only lasted five brief years before the one-two punch of slumping record sales and (in my opinion) burnout did in the girls, leading to their 1981 break-up. But in the mid to late '00's, without the pressures of satisfying Armani-clad masters in the boardrooms of talent companies like Trust & Confidence who, back in the day, drove their charges into the ground for the sake of profits (see Essay #1), Mie and Kei most likely would have thrived and kept their roll going for much longer. On top of that, the girls probably would also have had the freedom to write, maybe even produce their own songs, thus expanding their own legend among their legions of devoted fans.
So, what did we learn from this little exercise? That if the entity we know and love as Pink Lady had been born in the 21st century, Mie and Kei would still have become mega-popular in Japan, but, on the downside, they would have been mostly unknown in America save for the occasional YouTube video. That aspect can't be emphasized enough, because the tremendous exposure the girls gained on our shores in 1979 and 1980 helped them to become much more than a mere afterthought in our pop culture consciousness thirty years later, even if that had been the end result of their being a charming curiosity from a far off land. In any event, the wonderful magic that is Pink Lady is indeed everlasting.