ESSAY 26
PINK PIVOT: TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE?
by Jeffrey C. Branch
The story of Pink Lady is one of success….and failure. I suppose you could say that this essay is about the latter, but, it is, in my opinion, part of that incredible mosaic surrounding two teenage girls from the sticks who came to the big city (Tokyo) and parlayed their drive and natural talent into becoming a pop music phenomenon in Japan, one that’s remained very much relevant for nearly half a century now.
What is that failure, you ask? Well, allow me to explain. From the start, the formula for success for Pink Lady boiled down to the cutesy, bubblegum songs like “Pepper Keibu”, “SOS” and “Wanted”, and since Mie and Kei hit the scene at the height of the Disco craze, that genre had been added to their repertoire, especially in their live shows where the girls covered Disco hits like “Stayin’ Alive”. Hell, two of their albums from 1979: “We Are Sexy” and the U.S. Album were almost completely Disco themed, and, let’s not forget the incendiary “Monday Mona Lisa Club” (my second all-time favorite PL song) from that year as well. However, everything changed, and not necessarily for the better following the one-two punch of the disastrous decision of PL’s handlers to have Mie and Kei shun Kohaku Uta Gassen in favor of a competing New Year’s Eve TV special that crashed and burned, and the sudden death of Disco as a musical force, replaced by punk which became the new flavor of the month.
By the time 1980 rolled around, it could be said that Pink Lady was adrift. Their impressive streak of nine straight number one hits ended after “Chameleon Army” came out in early December 1978, and none of the songs the girls released in 1979 came even remotely close to the lofty plateaus of their past hits. While it could never be proven beyond any shadow of doubt that the snub of Kohaku resulted in backlash against Mie and Kei, which, in turn, led to poor showings on the charts, that theory certainly couldn’t be dismissed out of hand, factor in the demise of Disco and suddenly, Pink Lady was rudderless. It was also around the same time that Mie and Kei, both in their early twenties, wanted to branch out, to expand their horizons beyond the bubblegum pop that made them famous and sing more adult fashioned songs, this pivot in direction resulted in “Agiri Giri” and “World Hero History”, songs that were literally worlds apart from the cute and sugary tunes the girls did four years earlier.
As with all Pink Lady songs that came out after I left Japan in early December 1978, I never heard those tunes until some twenty years later, when I did, I was impressed as I found them to have been stylish and sophisticated. Just like The Beatles who evolved from “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” to “Helter Skelter”, Mie and Kei graduated from teenagers to adults with their new musical style. Unfortunately, that sea change didn’t produce results on the charts, and subsequent releases in 1980: a cover of the theme from “Fame”, “Utakata”, a remake of “Strangers When We Kiss” from the U.S. Album and the incredibly bizarre “Last Pretender” also tanked, contributing to Pink Lady’s freefall. So, in the end, Pink Lady’s musical pivot flopped, and, no doubt, greased the wheels of their breakup a year later, but, hey, at least the girls tried, and, at the end of the day, that was the important thing.
ABOVE: Click on the sleeves to hear the original songs