ESSAY 14 1980: PINK LADY'S LOST YEAR "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." If 1978 was the year everything went right for Pink Lady, what with four straight number one hit songs, winning two prestigious music awards, playing before 100,000 fans at July's Jumping Summer Carnival, doing two shows in Las Vegas and starring in their own motion picture, then 1980 could be seen as the year everything went wrong. Dreadfully wrong. Thirty years after the fact, that miserable year remains a stark reminder of how quickly success could turn to failure in the world of pop culture. Mie and Kei's fall from prominence began in early 1979 after "Jipangu" failed to reach number one, snapping their impressive string of nine straight chart topping hits. Whether or not the infamous Kohaku Uta Gassen debacle from New Year's Eve 1978 was directly responsible for said collapse is debatable, and has already been debated in previous essays on this website, but one thing that can't be argued was that in the months prior to the emotional farewell concert in March 1981, Mie and Kei had lost their magic touch. Let's start with the music. In her essay, fellow fan Lady-X stated that the death of Disco, a staple of the Pink Lady sound had left the girls rudderless, and PL's handlers failed to compensate or adjust as Punk took over as the genre of choice. It had also been said that as Mie and Kei grew older, they wanted to evolve, to go beyond the cutesy bubblegum music that had made them so unbelievably famous (the girls were quoted as having said the lyrics on the U.S. album had that adult feel they liked), but worried that if they had, they'd leave their younger fans stranded, even though those very same fans were also growing up and moving on to other singers. In short, it appeared to me, as someone on the outside looking in, that both the girls, and their handlers had no idea how to keep the entity that was Pink Lady prominent in Japan's pop culture consciousness, and the end result of that uncertainty were the four songs released in 1980 that, in my opinion, totally lacked the essential fun and, yes, magic that made Pink Lady so legendary, greasing the skids for what would be the inevitable break-up. "Agiri Giri" (March) and "World Hero History" (May) were slick, soft rock numbers that were light years away in terms of style and lighthearted cheeriness like the PL pop tunes from 1976 through 1978. Don't get me wrong, the songs weren't bad, in fact, I thought they were rather good, in a way, they had that adult sound Mie and Kei preferred, but weren't true Pink Lady songs. Fans picked up on that right away as those songs weren't what they were used to hearing and didn't buy them, so they flopped badly on the charts. Then came the next two songs that were totally perplexing to me. "Utakata" (September) was, if you ever listened to it, a Japanese version of "Strangers When We Kiss" from the U.S. album, an unusual choice for a release. Next was a Japanese version of the theme from "Fame" (December) and that made no sense. It was like in the second half of 1980, PL's handlers had no clue whatsoever and were just throwing stuff up against the wall to see what would stick. And don't even get me started on the forever bizarre "Last Pretender" which was recorded around the end of the year. And since we're talking about 1980, you know I have to mention Pink Lady & Jeff. As longtime fans familiar with Pink Lady's history know, with Mie and Kei's popularity tumbling at home, their handlers dreamed up the not-so bright idea of sending the girls to the States to co-star with a then (and now) unknown comic on an NBC primetime variety show that wound up becoming one of the most infamous train wrecks in the history of American television. A train wreck Kei wanted no part of because she didn't want to be separated from her boyfriend, and that calamity spurred her to the fateful decision to end her partnership with Mie. By the end of the year, Pink Lady was sinking like the Titanic as the girls couldn't give their records away and were dead pop act walking after they announced they were breaking up. I'll never forget that brutally frank comment by a T & C staffer included in the Pink Lady entry from Mark Schilling's 1997 compendium, The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture, saying that Mie and Kei lingered a year longer than they should have. To put it mildly, OUCH! From the dizzying heights of unimaginable success in 1978 to near irrelevance less than two years later, that unpleasant turnaround made for quite a fall as Mie and Kei had gone from the penthouse to the outhouse while, behind the scenes, the coldhearted suits at T & C were already grooming their replacements. That slight, in particular must have stung the girls terribly after having been the toast of Japan. For a mega popular act like Pink Lady which, for a time was THE biggest thing around, you'd think they would've been deserving of a much better fate, especially when you consider how the first act in Mie and Kei's long and storied career ended on that cold, wet and overcast day at Korakuen Stadium. But then, when you consider all the angst Mie and Kei went through in 1980, that particular ending was almost par for the course. |
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