This Showa Idol Quit and Started a Rock Band

Momoko kikuchi was among Japans top idols during the 1980’s, until she made the drastic decision to start over and form a… Rock Band??

Today, in celebration of Momoko’s 40-year anniversary as an entertainer, we’re going to explore one of the most drastic shifts seen during the Citypop era.

HUGE thank you to @yosoku_ - City Pop Translated, in collaboration with LonelyChaser, Windii, and InkaSubs for providing footage AND translated interviews that helped me a TON with this project!

This is my first Citypop video in a lil while, so I hope you all look forward to learning more about one of my favorite Japanese artists!

Happy 40th aniversary Momoko Kikuchi!

Misc footage credit:

#Citypop #Japan #futurefunk

[SakuraStardust]

Happy 40th Aniversary, Momoko Kikuchi!


HUGE thank you to Yosoku - City Pop Translated, in collaboration with LonelyChaser, Windii, and InkaSubs for providing footage AND translated interviews that helped me a TON with this project!



This is my first Citypop video in a little while, so I hope you all look forward to learning more about one of my favorite Japanese artists!

[KristaleeWolfe]

Momoko using that big ol English language dictionary to communicate with her backup vocalists at 20:50 is litterally the cutest thing haha

[Wnick]

Going from wanting to be an archeologist to a pop idol to a rockstar, she really had an intresting life

[THICCTHICCTHICC]

Fenale citypop artists were incredibly willing to risk it all for good music honestly. There's so many good citypop albums with experimental sounds and people shredding on guitar.
Taeko Ohnuki albums especially are just her with a supergroup band backing her.
Tomoko Aran almost has industrial sounds sometimes and basically made music that sounds like Prince before he was doing it.
Incredible era of music for Japan. RA MU's Thanksgiving is one of the most perfect albums I've ever heard. Tim Rogers (Action Button) also ranks it as one of the best he's ever heard and he's a Japanese music nerd.

[sulichaisitabutra]

Your Momoko Kikuchi contents are very comprehensive for an English channel, as an avid Momoko fan I'm deeply touch. I love her works in music, movies and TV series immensely. Momoko Kikuchi's music is mesmerizing and timeless even prior to City Pop hype. Some might say Tetsuji Hayashi is behind her unique music and she is all that but I think time had proven that her angelic whispering voice is one of a kind from that era especially from a mainstream super idol.

[danteshollowedgrounds]

Rest in peace to those other bands and Japanses singers that never made it.

[overlordfigmori]

FINALLY! Despite brief, I'm glad my boy Tetsuji Hayashi was mentioned! I feel people severely underestimate his contribution to the citypop and overall jpop scene! Though his work with Momoko should be more than 15 songs no? He's literally credited as the sound designer on Momoko's first 4 albums. Regardless, he's imo the King of Mellow CityPop, check out POP×ART his last solo album and his magnum opus

[frostare]

Myyyy... she really IS an idol, in the western definition of "idol", too! I admire her resolve and courage. I... overcame my shyness and congratulated Momoko Kikuchi on her Twitter account. =D

[CookyMonzta]

Actually, they were already into R&B in the 1980s. Cases in point: Tatsuro Yamashita, Toshiki Kadomatsu and Hitomi "Penny" Tohyama.

[AngelicParasol]

I'm so glad she did what she did moving from idol to band because one of my favorite songs by RA MU is Rainy Night Lady

[onyankoclubcentral]

Momoko was so ahead of her time for this. It's amazing now that more and more Japanese young people (and adults too) are re-evaluating Ra Mu and love it!
Nice record collection by the way!

[QualityPeepersRodan]

Fantastic work on this one, miss Sakura. I learned a lot about things I didn’t know before. Best narrator on youtube 😍

[philtkaswahl]

Would be archeologist, then actor, then idol, then rock star.

Man, there could be anime and/or live action adaptations for this story.

[tylerf]

Commenting to help with the algorithm. Also new vid let's goooo

[TankHardcheese]

It's a total shame Ra Mu only released one album and weren't given their due respect until *decades* later, but at least Momoko set out to do something different and challenge herself and by God, no one can take that away from her.

[fairycorenerd]

I saw that this video had been uploaded 8 minutes ago and burst out laughing as I had just finished that disturbing photos or media from japan video before going to your home page wanting to watch more 😂😂

[rudetuesday]

Thanks for helping me fill in some gaps in my knowledge! I saw and heard some of this in real time, before I had learned any Japanese at all. Local TV stations sometimes broadcast an hour or so of Japanese TV clips here in the US, without subtitles. Music stores carried very few imports--and they were expensive. A friend's son brought a Ra Mu cassette back from a trip, and I loved what I heard.

[tanireed]

Hi Sakura! I don't know if you'll see this... Well, I'm fan of visual kei bands, and one band that I particularly love it's Croix Allcine. Croix Allcine was a band that formed in 2000 and disbanded in 2000, lasting less than 1 year on the Japanese visual kei music scene, and having only 4 songs, 1 of them was instrumental. The band is slightly known for being a previous project of Kiwamu, famous for bands like BLOOD and GPKism. I really wish you could do some research on them. I know that visual kei bands in the 90s-2000s didn't last long, but Croix Allcine intrigues me because no one's whereabouts are known, the band's website was poorly archived on the Wayback Machine and I can't find anything about them by searching in Japanese . If you read it, I appreciate it.

[panchboy]

Babe wake up new Sakura video! (I fucken love Sakura stardust videos)

[PiratePrincessYuki]

Kinda reverse to me, raised to be a musician I got bit by the ocean and became a marine biologist.