SORRY

ABOUT THIS ALBUM

Released in 1981, SORRY is Mai Yamane’s second album and a particularly strong example of Japanese AOR built around a darker, more blues-rooted female vocal presence. The arrangements were divided largely between Shigeru Suzuki and Makoto Matsushita, two guitarists with very different approaches to urban studio music. Matsushita’s work on tracks such as “Out of the Night” and “In Love” brings the clean, harmonically precise AOR language associated with his own FIRST LIGHT, while Suzuki’s contributions add a looser and more organic guitar sensibility. Yamane’s voice is what unifies those worlds. Smoky, powerful, and rhythmically flexible, it gives the album more weight than the soft-focus image often associated with city pop. “My Saturday Man,” the title track, “Out of the Night,” and “In Love” move between soul, AOR, and night-oriented groove while maintaining a consistent emotional darkness. SORRY is valuable because it demonstrates how broad the Japanese urban-pop field really was: the same studio musicians and production ideas could support music that was far more bluesy, muscular, and emotionally direct than the breezier coastal side of the genre.