Make Believe Mailer 53: Give Me Up

OOOOOOOOOOOH!!!

When I need comfort in the topsy-turvy 2020s, I turn to Michael Fortunati’s soul leaving his body from the middle of a Saitama shopping mall back in 2018.

Are you ready!?!?

Everything about this food-court-adjacent recording is spellbinding. Fortunati — Italo Disco dandy, Eurobeat pillar, keytar wizard — isn’t phoning it in for the fans who have schleped out to the Lake Town outlets in Koshigaya. He’s bouncing around stage, slapping his instrument and getting the crowd riled up with a stream of “woo woos!” Those in attendance, meanwhile, raise from the middle-aged who almost certainly grew up hearing Fortunati playing in Roppongi discotechs, to kids brought out by their parents falling into the prior category dutifully clapping around. Look to the left, meanwhile, and you can see random shoppers heading up to the Montbell discount store on the escalator looking at the spectacle.

It’s ridiculous, but for a hair under five minutes, none of that matters. Here’s an artist plugging into their creative high to a two-story crowd, the bulk of which are mouthing along to every word and just letting any hesitation slide away come the chorus. That it all plays out in the center of a mall only heightens the experience. Again, pure absurdity…you can see signboards for crepes in the background. Yet the fact everyone involved…performer and fans…treat this like they are in the middle of the fucking Tokyo Dome makes it all the sweeter.

The older I get, the less interested I am in dealing with absolutes. “The best” becomes more of an annoyance to deal with than a challenge to meet, whether talking about albums or movies or tacos in the greater Kanto area¹. And yet…whenever I hear Michael Fortunati’s (real name Pierre Michael Nigro) 1986 song “Give Me Up,” I think “is this the absolute best pop song ever written?” It’s euphoric but tinged with just a little sadness for having to move on, yet ultimately choosing to barrell ahead on stupid joy rather than weigh situations out. It’s Italo Disco at its finest, cheesy thanks to choice of synthesized sounds but all the richer because of those goofus decisions. Sure, you can pluck away at a guitar and bear your soul with technical prowress, but that sounds artifitical, downright trained. Now, slap away at a keyboard and just work through it? That’s real.²

What pushes it over for me personally, though, is how it ripples through pop history. “Give Me Up” has inspired countless semi-covers that have become hits in their own right…in the Western world, Bananarama’s “I Hear A Rumor” stands as the best example, even if the producer involved waved that off as coincidence due to prevailing Europop trends.³ Yet it is in Japan where the song has gone from point of reference to production of reverence. Seeing as Italo-Disco and Europop became the foundation of J-pop in the 1990s, and that this song was popular enough to warrant Fortunati performing on TV in the ‘80s (below), it has to be approached with some respect. This is a part of J-pop DNA.

More on this in a sec

Part of the beauty of “Give Me Up” is that it isn’t just distnat reference point, but active song bouncing around in the Japanse music tributary. There are so many covers of this in J-pop history, and not just as curios…these are telling, and tell a story of an industry in their own right. It might be the most important non-Japanese song in the history of Japanese music ever, give or take a “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

Yoko Nagayama — “Give Me Up” (1987)

The canary in the gold-hits mine of Japanese pop music. Yoko Nagayama standas as a textbook case in eschewing your dreams in favor of commercial success…she wanted to be an enka singer in the 1980s (lame!) but the folks around her said “nah, be an idol” (cha-ching!) but she didn’t really hit (:( ). Eventually, in the ‘90s, she returned to her actual passion, but her 1987 album Venus stands as a weird sign of the times. It is Nagayama covering a wide arrary of Western pop hits in Japanese, from “Venus” to “Papa Don’t Preach” to “Take My Breath Away.” Overall, a forgettable effort to turn the hits of the West, into the hits of Japan! But it does feature the first cover of “Give Me Up,” delivered faithfully and hinting at greater sonic trend shifts bound to happen in just…weeks.

BaBe — “Give Me Up” (1987)

See those two women who ran out to join Fortunati in the above live performance? They owe their career to that suave Italian.

BaBe represent a shift from the shimmering disco-funk “city pop” sound of the first half of the ‘80s towards a more synthesized pop paradise defining the latter part of the decade. More machines at the expense of studio sessions. The duo’s debut single “Give Me Up” is vital because it serves as the true mainstreaming moment for European dance sounds in Japan. Before this, you’d have to head out to a club in some ritzy neighborhood to hear Fortunati or Duran Duran or Dead Or Alive offer continental floor fillers. BaBe interpolated “Give Me Up” for a domestic audience, translating the song into their native language while offering up enough nods to far-flung places (references to rugby balls, a sporting nod to the British Empire, also embraced by proto-idol-group Onyanko Club).

The legacy of this “Give Me Up” is as bridge, leading to the monotone synth-pop of Wink which then morphed into a fundamental part of early J-pop, with Europe serving as a point of inspiration. Yet it’s also worth celebrating as a very early and unexpected shift in point of view. Fortunati’s “Give Me Up” is exceedlingy masculine, but the BaBe version recasts it from the female point of view, turning what could be read as a “I’m over you for something better” anthem into something touched by a longing and sweetness that feels much more relateable in modern times.

Masaru Narita — “Give Me Up” (1987)

While BaBe delivered Italo sounds in an arena-ready package, Masaru Narita offered up a soundtrack for revelers ready to waste a night in Roppongi. The 1980s in Tokyo and other major Japanese cities saw the arrival of decadent clubs like Maharaja, once the beating heart of dance-pop culture but now exist as weird nostalgia bait for older folks and a faux Bubble experience for younger patrons stuck in economic doldrums. But at the same time Fortunati’s big hit was being transformed into a mainstream offerring, Narita offered a much smoother and bubblier take on “Give Me Up” for the post-last-train fateful. Gone are the ambitions of sold-out arenas in favor of…an actual Japanese cover of “Give Me Up,” in all its Italo-Disco sweetness. Though the A-side also sounds…pretty similar, showing just how in-demand this sound must have been.

W — “Give Me Up” (2004)

The ‘90s didn’t need “Give Me Up.” The sonic touchstones of that song and countless other early Eurobeat numbers became absorbed in the sound of Tetsuya Komuro and Avex Trax and countless other producers eyeing a slot at Velfarre. By the 2000s, though, a longing for the past was starting to become apparrent. Pop duo W’s cover of “Give Me Up” is noteworthy becuase it’s the first instance of pure “gee, remember when” performance, taking BaBe’s read on Fortunati’s number and giving it a barely-there Aughts sheen. Covering “Give Me Up” in the ‘80s meant picking a style to support and champion. W’s cover in 2004 is just an acknowledgement that they had once-hip parents.

Nicomono! — “Give Me Up” (2005)

Startlingly ahead of their time. Idol outfit Nicomono! came together through a local Osaka TV talent show, and preceded to become a cover band for ‘80s Italo Disco and Japanese pop. If they existed in 2012, they’d be sisters to Especia when it comes to subverting AKB48-era expectations. Alas, they emerged in the idol Sahara of the mid Aughts, and their swifter version of “Give Me Up” is totally lost to time.

Beni Arashiro — “Give Me Up” (2005)

Oh let’s go!

The first post-millenial shift in how this classic gets covered in Japan. First off, it’s a take on Fortunati’s original as oppossed to BaBe’s cover, delivered by Japanese-American singer Beni Arashiro (who would become just Beni a few years later) and keeping all the original genders in place, always a plus rather than clumsily flipping them around. More importantly, it’s less an effort at recreating yesteryear and more about briging “Give Me Up” into modern times. This beat borders on breakcore…those opening vocal loops are DJ Newtown under construction…and casts everything in a neon glow tightroping between nostalgia and modern nights out. The first example of how “Give Me Up” can stay relevant in the 21st century beyond sonci museum piece.

PONI-CAMP — “Give Me Up” (2006)

Guess I have to hunt down this version…another Fortunati cover…on CD, becuase it is nowhere to be found digitally. The White Whale (Italo-Disco version) of this expedition.

LH Music Creation — “Give Me Up” (2006)

You can’t talk about Eurobeat or speedier mutations on J-pop without talking Dance Dance Revolution and Bemani at large. That game series introduced a geneartion of arcade-dwelling suburbanites to floor-centric tunes across the world⁴, and of course Fortunati's Japanese breakthrough appeared in one of the titles in the seires. Less important musically — a bit slower, designed for novice players — and much more important in introducing a new era to this sort of pop smash.

Melon Kinebi — “Give Me Up” (2008)

What the hell was idol music between Morning Musume (original version) and AKB48’s “River?” It largely seems unexciting, with groups that would be idols in any other time better served as being not that. Of course, that can’t be the case, and I have no doubt all kinds of important and exciting stuff was happening during what feels like a dead space before idol roared back into the spotlight.

Hello! Project outift Melon Kinebi snuck a cover of BaBe’s “Give Me Up” onto their best-of album, a fitting choice given that they operated in similar terrain in the years prior. It’s probably the most above-average cover featured here — nothing special, but picking up the pace and adding some pop warmth come the chorus to make this more memorable than what amounts to a bonus track should be — offerring no major shifts but also doing more than make a Eurobeat diorama. Perhaps this kind of oddity could only exist in the purgatory of Aughts idol, when…whatever seemed OK.

Nami Tamaki — “Give Me Up” (2009)

Oh, do I know HyperPop? Buddy, I was there when Nami Tamaki invented HyperPop.

God, I love this version so much. Speedy and bubbly in equal measures, Tamaki gets extra points for coming up with entirely new lyrics for the song, venturing to add a new take on the song into the canon. As far as I’m concerned, she succeeds — this is “Give Me Up” on “expert,” jetting ahead and adding then-in-style splashes of vocal manipulation (thanks Nakata!) to give this a futuristic bend while connecting with the history of Eurobeat and para para in the country. It’s years ahead of the time…this really does sound like PC Music half a decade before that was a thing, and does everything artists dropped onto the Spotify “hyperpop” playlist do with a straight face and better moves. But forget all that…Tamaki and company pinpoint the heart of “Give Me Up,” and show how it remains vital in modern times even when thrust into entirely different sonic circumstances. That’s a sign of a masterpiece.

Akina Nakamori — “Give Me Up” (2017)

I see this one as legends respecting legends. Akina Nakamori is one of the top-level pop stars in Japanese music history — she recently returned to the public eye, with new independent management company in tow —  and she can do whatever she wants. That includes cover albums, of which she’s put out plenty. In 2017, she turned her gaze towards shimmering ‘80s synth-pop with Cage, a set not all that different than Nagayama’s effort to bring the Western zeitgeist to Japan back in the Bubble era. Yet there’s something much more intriguing about hearing a seasoned vet revisit the tunes of their prime and find new life to them. In the case of “Give Me Up,” that means mutating the Italo Disco glow into a more percussion-centric jam built around familiar breakbeats. Nakamori also coats her voice in a layer of electronic fuzz, always a plus. An example of looking at the past with a fresh perspective from modern times.

BaBe — “Give Me Up (Night Tempo Showa Groove Remix)” (2020)

Full disclosure — have been hired to write Night Tempo’s bio / press materials in the past, salute to the fine folks at Fuji Pacific Music for the opportunity.

The boom in city pop and other strains of older Japanse music hasn’t really carried over to the pop idols of the time, despite so many of them having connections with the prior. Similarly, Italo Disco has enjoyed waves of resurgence (you could feel it all around) in the last decade, but Fortunati never appears in the fearures or lists trying to make sense of it.

Here’s an effort to correct both ends of that, more curatorial than creative. South Korean prodcuer Night Tempo’s rework of BaBe’s “Give Me Up” adds the thinnest of future-funk outlines to the song (some vocal warping, the beat might be a bit more forceful), but I respect that decision — this song still stands on its own, and in the 2020s, with this wave of discovery still ongoing, why not just point to the original rather than try to gloss it up?

Same applies to Fortunati’s original too — hopefully, with borders open, he can come back to perform to packed veneus, shopping centers and whatever the equivalent of SMAP X SMAP is in 2022 or 2023. There’s still plenty of folks young and old ready to return to this slice of pop perfection…even if they have to go to Aeon to enjoy it.

Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies

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1. Had these recently, pretty solid!

2. In the same way that…sure, a techincally gifted singer might be able to replicate something resembling emotion, but just letting some newly minted adults work through young love via a layer of Auto-tune is much more human after all.

3. Editorializing here, but…total bullshit, they cribbed from “Give Me Up.”

4. I remember sitting in sophomore year history class in high school, placed next to two classmates who ONLY talked about DDR. As an uncoordinated youth, I would never go near that machine in the movie theater lobby, but I lived vicariously through those two talking about combos and the soundtrack for a whole year. Hoping they reconnected at Second Sky Festival in the last few years.